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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 28, 2016)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 2016 Stay sane America, please! By DAVID BROOKS New York Times News Service Founded in 1873 STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager Governor launches a smart initiative Classroom teachers will gain professional support T he Chalkboard Project is Oregon’s research and devel- opment arm for K-12 education. For 12 years, this orga- nization, which was created and funded by Oregon’s most prominent foundations, has run trial programs in public schools and measured results. It has been a struggle to educator supports that focus get the Legislature to fund on professional develop- Chalkboard’s pilot programs. ment. Hildick says these Gov. John Kitzhaber became supports will kick in at Chalkboard’s advocate. And the point when a young now Gov. Kate Brown has Oregonian decides to taken a giant step in the same pursue classroom teaching as a profession. They will direction. In a little noticed element also recognize the impor- of her agenda announced tance of mentoring teachers last week, Gov. Brown is WKURXJK WKH FULWLFDO ¿UVW breaking new ground. Says few years. And they will Chalkboard’s executive foster the development of director, Sue Hildick: “The administrators. Hildick describes why a governor is stepping out into K-12 space with something private partner is essential. ³,W KDV EHHQ GLI¿FXOW IRU we think is important.” By executive order, Brown the Oregon Department of is creating a group to design Education to administer a public-private entity to do because they are a compli- things Chalkboard has tried ance agency. It’s hard for them to do innovation, to do for years. The eventual product will because largely they give out be a Council on Educator dollars based on formulas. Chalkboard is one of the Advancement. Chalkboard will provide the venture brightest spots in Oregon education. Gov. dollars for this innova- K-12 tion. This center’s aim will Brown’s initiative will lead be a statewide system of to some excellent outcomes. I n January of 2017 someone will stand at the U.S. Capitol and deliver an Inaugural Address. This is roughly the place where Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan once stood. I am going to spend every single day between now and then believing that neither Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz nor Bernie Sanders will be standing on that podium. One of them could win the election, take the oath, give the speech and be riding down David Pennsylvania Brooks Avenue. I will still refuse to believe it. Yes, I know what the polling evidence is telling us about Trump, Sanders and Cruz, but there are good reasons to cling to my disbelief. First, these primary campaigns will not be settled in February. They won’t be settled in March or April. Sometimes a candidate can sweep ,RZDDQG1HZ+DPSVKLUHDQGFUXLVH to the nomination. But that candidate has to be broadly acceptable to all parts of the party. Trump, Cruz and Sanders are not. As Jay Cost writes in The Weekly Standard, “This could mean a lengthy nomination battle that stretches all the way to the California primary in June.” On the Republican side the early primaries and caucuses allocate delegates proportionally. Only 16.2 percent of the delegates overall come from winner-take-all states. That means the delegate-getting war will be a slog. 7KH ¿UVW GD\ ZKHQ DQ\ FDQGLGDWH could rack up a big winner-take-all delegate harvest is March 15, an eternity from now. More than half the delegates will be allocated after that date. Second, Cruz and Trump will go after each other with increasing ferocity over the next many weeks or months. There is a decent chance, given their personalities, that they will make each other maximally unattractive and go down in each other’s death embrace. Third, the Trump and Sanders turnout problems are real. Trump is T his winter’s heavy rain — 5 inches in some places last Thursday — is weighing down the ground, lubricating old faults and causing land- slides. It’s a problem that impacts property owners, developers, communities and planning departments. Ground is visibly slipping in Emerald Heights, along the Astoria Riverwalk, at Ilwaco Cemetery and other places around the Columbia estuary. Some of these slides already are, or will become, expensive liabilities at a time when there are few public resources to stabilize them. The Ilwaco Cemetery, historically and culturally important, faces expenses far beyond its means. • Property owners need to watch for warning signs of impending slides. These include new cracks in the ground, foundations and sidewalks; tilting trees on slopes; changes in door and window openings; springs, seeps or standing water on previously dry ground. If these signs appear, steps like diverting water away from affected areas can slow or stop slippages. Prevention is expensive, but a far cheaper and better option than attempting to mitigate damages after slides occur. Consult an engineer. • Developers, and municipal and county planners, have to incorporate both known and suspected geophysical dangers in decisions about develop- ment. Failure to do so exposes all parties to expenses and invites litigation. • Logging on steep slopes must be subjected to scrutiny. 7KH 3DFL¿F 1RUWKZHVW LV rife with landslide issues and there’s plenty of good advice available. One good overview is available at www.tinyurl. com/LandslideInfo. This costly and disruptive problem isn’t going away, and is likely to worsen as devel- opment spreads into former forested areas and onto steeper hillsides. Climatologists believe rainfall events will become more severe. Tree roots are rotting away in long-settled areas, relaxing their hold on soil. We have to keep landslides from happening when we can, and identify more affordable ways to repair the destruction after they happen. doing very well among people who Marco Rubio has had a bad month, haven’t voted in the past four elections. darkening his tone and trying to sound It’s possible he has energized them so like a cut-rate version of Trump and much they will actually caucus and Cruz. vote, but you wouldn’t want to bet your Before too long Rubio will realize gold-plated faucets on it. People who KLV¿UVWWDVNLVWRUDOO\WKHYRWHUVZKR don’t vote generally don’t vote. detest or fear those men. That means Sanders is drawing support from running as an optimistic American nonvoters, too. Sanders is up in some QDWLRQDOLVW ZLWK VSHFL¿F SURSRVDOV polls overall, but he trails big time to reform Washington and lift the among people in Iowa who caucused working class. LQDQGDPRQJWKRVHZKRDUHGH¿- If he can rally mainstream Republi- nitely registered to vote. cans he’ll be at least tied It’s quite possible that with Trump and Cruz in The the big story post-Iowa the polls. Then he can will be how badly these counter their American Trump two underperformed. decline narrative, Fourth, establish- with one of his own: and ment Republicans who This country is failing are softening on Trump Sanders because it got too narcis- because they think sistic, became too much turnout like a reality TV show. he is more electable than Cruz are smoking Americans lost the ability something. According to problems to work constructively to a Pew Research survey, things done. are real. get Finally, a majority of Americans eventually think Trump would make the electorate is going a poor or terrible president. to realize that in an age of dysfunc- Chuck Todd ran through Trump’s tional government, effective leadership favorable-unfavorable ratings on capacity is the threshold issue. That “Meet the Press” on Sunday: Among means being able to listen to others, independents, Trump is negative 26 surround yourself with people smarter points; among women, negative 36; than you, gather a governing majority among suburban voters, negative 24. and above all have an actual imple- Is the Republican Party really going to PHQWDWLRQ VWUDWHJ\ 1RW 7UXPS &UX] nominate one of the most loathed men or Sanders has any remote chance of in American public life? turning his ideas, such as they are, into Fifth, America has never elected a actual laws. candidate maximally extreme from the In every recent presidential election political center, the way Sanders and U.S. voters have selected the candidate Cruz are. According to the FiveThir- with the most secure pair of hands. tyEight website, Cruz has the most They’ve elected the person who would conservative voting record in the entire be a stable presence and companion for Congress. That takes some doing. the next four years. I believe they’re Sixth, sooner or later the candi- going to do that again. And if they’re dates from the governing wing of their not, please allow me a few more parties will get their acts together. months of denial. Sarah Palin saves feminism She used the last refuge what a woman in politics of scoundrels in Tulsa, is wearing. But again, Palin Oklahoma, Wednesday, has freed us up. She sported wrapping herself in patri- $6+,1*721 ² ,W¶V D a cardigan so gaudy and otism. In her convoluted, WRXJK FDOO WR ¿JXUH RXW rogue at her Iowa endorse- disingenuous way, she ment of Donald Trump (the which place is more benighted: man who viciously mocked charged President Barack Hollywood or Saudi Arabia. her former running mate’s Obama with a lack of “respect” for veterans Saudi Arabia was pulling ahead war record) that we would be remiss not to mention and suggested that Track with all its beheadings and its top that it was the sartorial had post-traumatic stress Maureen cleric’s fatwa on chess as “the work of UHÀHFWLRQ RI 3DOLQ DQG disorder and became Dowd Satan.” Trump themselves. “hardened,” implying this Ordinarily, you have to tread is what led to the incident prompting But then Hollywood took the lead with its Jim Crow Oscars, Scully gingerly in critiquing a working his arrest. This from the archconserva- being offered half of Mulder’s pay for woman on her mothering skills. But tive who presents herself as a model the “X-Files” reboot, and its second- Palin’s brawling brood runs so wild of personal responsibility and scourge class treatment of Rey — the scrappy around the state she once governed, of victimhood? Outraged vets urged Palin not to heroine of “Star Wars: The Force in a way that is so contrary to her Awakens.” Rey, played by Daisy evangelistic, sanctimonious homilies reduce PTSD to a political “chew toy,” Ridley, embodies the awakening on family values, that it seems only as one put it, or to excuse domestic Force. Yet even the director, J.J. Christian to advise her to study the violence by citing the disorder. The rattlebrained Palin has Abrams, called it “preposterous and Obamas to see what exceptional reversed her Iraq position, so that now ZURQJ´ WKDW 5H\¶V DFWLRQ ¿JXUH ZDV parenting looks like. With Palin and Trump, a failed her stance somehow matches Trump’s missing in action from some game and toy tie-ins — a traditionally male reality star and a successful one, consistent and prescient one against gall is divided into two parts. There the Iraq invasion. realm. $QG /XFDV¿OP LV UXQ E\ D JLUO has been a lot of talk this campaign When she saw Track off to Iraq season about how female in 2008, she echoed W.’s specious DFWLRQ ¿JXUH .DWKOHHQ pols bring superior qualities argument, calling the war a “righteous .HQQHG\VRJR¿JXUH Yes, to the table: collegiality cause” to avenge “the enemies who That is why it’s so listening skills. But planned and carried out” 9/11. But inspiring to see a woman Sarah and Sarahcuda shows that we in her endorsement of Trump, she out on the campaign trail truly the equals of praised Rand Paul, who thinks we who has had such a historic Palin, are men, capable of narcis- should have left Saddam Hussein in impact on feminism, sistic explosions, brazen place, and argued that America should helping to recast outmoded I’m hypocrisy and unapolo- stop “footin’ the bill” for oil-rich assumptions about women. giving getic greed. She had barely nations and “their squirmishes that Yes, Sarah Palin, I’m WKH HQGRUVHPHQW have been going on for centuries, giving you a shout-out. you a ¿QLVKHG Tuesday when she began ZKHUHWKH\¶UH¿JKWLQ¶HDFKRWKHUDQG Before Palin, if a woman using it to raise money for yellin’ ‘Allah akbar,’ calling jihad on ÀDPHG RXW LQ D VSHFWDFXODU shout- SarahPAC, so she can take each other’s heads for ever and ever.” fashion, it was considered her show on the road. an X through the X chro- Hillary Clinton is presenting out. Her oldest son, Track, herself as the embodiment of women, mosome. If Billie Jean King lost to Bobby Riggs, women would was a kid with a temper before he an American Marianne, pushing be seen as second-class athletes. If served in Iraq for a year, conveniently her gender in an all-for-one-one- *HUDOGLQH )HUUDUR VHHPHG XQ¿W IRU shipping off in the fall of 2008 as for-all, now-or-never way. She’s even the White House, all women might be his mother began her hockey-mom campaigning this week in Iowa with spiel. The 26-year-old was arrested Billie Jean King. Women should judged incapable. But when Palin turned out to be Monday on an assault charge, accused support her because if she founders, XWWHUO\XQTXDOL¿HGDQGXQLQWHOOLJLEOH of punching his girlfriend in the face it will be bad for women. One Demo- spouting her own special Yoda-like and kicking her during an alcohol-fu- cratic senator said privately that many ODQJXDJHLWGLGQRWUHÀHFWSRRUO\RQ eled argument at the Palins’ home in Democrats believe that Hillary is still women as a whole — only on her and Wasilla, Alaska. His girlfriend told the the presumed nominee only because John McCain. What the hell were you police that he was also waving around she is a woman. DQ$5DVVDXOWULÀH thinking, Senator? But Palin has done us a favor by Instead of just admitting that her proving that a woman can stumble, Ordinarily, it’s considered sexist to call a woman shrill. But Palin family is a mess, Palin exhibited babble incoherently on stage and liberated us on that score. She really Trump-like swagger, conjuring a story spew snide garbage, and it isn’t a blot in an attempt to gin up the crowd and on the female copybook. is shrill. Ordinarily, it’s dicey to focus on occlude her son’s behavior. It’s all on her. Can I get a hallelujah? By MAUREEN DOWD New York Times News Service Landslides happen W If we can’t prevent them, we must mitigate the outcome Mary Altaffer/AP Photo A supporter winks at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump after he signed an autograph for her during a campaign event at the Roundhouse Gymnasium, Tuesday, in Marshalltown, Iowa.
