OPINION
4A
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
Raise smoking age
from 18 to 21
ome in Washington state are trying to raise the legal
smoking age from 18 to 21, a step that should be adopted
by Oregon and throughout the nation.
It will be a challenge to rently are major sources of
get all the pieces in place illegal tobacco for younger
during the remainder of teens.
Butting-up against the
Washington’s short legisla-
tive session this winter. A REYLRXVEHQH¿WVRIUDLVLQJWKH
bill to increase the tobacco tobacco age is the crass esti-
possession age has passed mate that Washington would
a House committee, but the miss out on $10.4 million in
Everett Herald reported this taxes in its current cycle and
Tuesday that the overall leg- $21.9 million in the 2017-19
islation has run into opposi- budget period.
A few legislators also cite
tion based on concerns about
tax revenue and fairness. The the unfairness of restrict-
age increase is supported by ing tobacco use for an age
65 percent of Washington group that serves in the mili-
residents, according to poll- tary. This is about like saying
ing, and has a strong advo- they shouldn’t have to wear
cate in state Attorney General motorcycle helmets or fas-
ten their seatbelts. Keeping
Bob Ferguson.
Desire for the change is young people off tobacco is
driven by modern awareness one of the kindest steps leg-
that teenage tobacco addic- islators can take, irrespective
WLRQVDUHGLI¿FXOWWRNLFNDQG of whether they are in the
lead to lifetimes of adverse armed services.
So far, only Hawaii has
health consequences.
By the time they reach age enacted this smart and
21, evidence suggests young benevolent 21 tobacco age.
people are less likely to take Oregon, Washington and the
up smoking. At the same rest of the nation should all
time, 18- to 20-year-olds cur- get on board.
S
Do Republicans
want to govern?
he latest gambit of
Republican lawmakers
and presidential candidates
raises the most basic ques-
tion in the race for the White
House and control of the U.S.
T
Senate. Do Republicans want to
govern?
The assertion that a sit-
ting president must not nom-
LQDWH D FDQGLGDWH WR ¿OO D
vacancy on the Supreme
Court is the latest iteration of
a political ideology that goes
nowhere. Republican pres-
idential candidates and the
GOP blogosphere encour-
age belief in the concept
of total victory, instead of
compromise. A Democratic
African-American president
only fuels that illusion of the
demand for total victory.
Hillary Clinton was on tar-
get when she told a Harlem
audience
that,
“Some
(Republicans) are even say-
ing he doesn’t have the right
to nominate anyone, as if
somehow he’s not the real
president.”
Clinton added that, “They
demonize President Obama
and encourage the ugli-
est impulses of the paranoid
fringe. This kind of hatred
and bigotry has no place in
our politics or our country.”
The sad thing is that many
Republicans would dis-
pute Clinton’s last assertion.
Hatred and bigotry are at
the heart of the Republican
presidential campaign – in
the words of Donald Trump.
And thus far, audiences love
it when Trump spreads a gos-
pel that is right out of the pre-
civil rights South.
Republicans’ preference
for 12 months of a vacated
Supreme Court position is
only one aspect of a reluc-
tance to govern. One sees
it in shutting down the fed-
eral government. It was also
apparent in the economically
scary notion of defaulting on
the federal debt.
In the deepest sense,
Republican lawmakers and
presidential candidates are
turning their back on the par-
ty’s birthright. The Grand Old
Party is becoming Hateful
Old Party.
Editorials that appear on this page are written by
Publisher Steve Forrester and Matt Winters, editor of the
Chinook Observer and Coast River Business Journal, or staff
members from the EO Media Group’s sister newspapers.
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2016
The eternal sunshine
of the spotless Trump
supported the crime bill and welfare
reform.
Bernie Sanders would
have us luxuriate in his
onald Trump has
vision of economic jus-
been recognized
tice. He’d rather us not
for his mastery of the
glance backward and note
media, his fascination
how little headway he’s
made to date.
with gilt and his bold
But Trump is in a dif-
DGYRFDF\ IRU EDIÀLQJ
ferent category altogether.
Matt Rourke/AP Photo
hair.
He doesn’t so much recast Republican presidential candi-
But I think his greatest
his yesterdays as utterly date Donald Trump smiles during
UHLQYHQW WKHP FRQ¿GHQW a campaign stop, Wednesday,
distinction is as a surre-
Frank
that the brio of his proc- Feb. 17, 2016, in Bluffton, S.C.
alist. Not since Salvador
Bruni
lamations will mask their
Dalí has someone so
of war, he was like a D.J. dusting
bogusness.
ambitiously jumbled reality and
Lately he’s been trumpeting his off a golden oldie from the vault.
hallucination.
prescience in having urged the Bush We hadn’t heard that song in a
I’m thinking of his news con- administration not to invade Iraq while.
We seldom read much anymore
ference in South Carolina on Mon- back in 2003, but there’s no such
about Trump the birther (unless it’s
day and of one assertion in particu- urging on record.
The website PolitiFact went in in relation to Ted Cruz and Canada).
lar, although with Trump it’s always
search of it, combing through news- And while that’s partly because his
hard to pick and choose.
In an appeal to African-Ameri- papers and television transcripts, 5HSXEOLFDQULYDOVVHHQRSUR¿WLQDQ
attack on him that could be taken
can voters, he charged that Barack and came up empty-handed.
“Trump makes it sound like he as a defense of Obama, it’s also
Obama had done nothing for them,
and drew a contrast between himself stood on a railroad to try to stop because there’s been so much other,
fresher fodder since.
and the president by saying: “I’m a the Iraq war train in
The sheer volume
its tracks,” PolitFact
XQL¿HU2EDPDLVQRWDXQL¿HU´
His
of his offenses min-
The second of those sentences reported. “In real-
each affront,
LVGHEDWDEOH7KH¿UVWLVMXVWDMRNH ity, by the time he got
greatest imizes
and as his shock tac-
Trump sneeringly divides the world around to forcefully
into winners and losers, savagely criticizing the war,
trick isn’t tics become predict-
able, they inevitably
mocks those who challenge him, that train had already
to toy with grow less menacing,
dabbles in sexism, marinates in rac- left the station.”
too.
His greatest trick,
ism, and on and on.
memory
I hear it in the
7RFDOOWKDWXQL¿FDWLRQLVODXJK- though, isn’t to toy
conversations
around
able under any circumstances. To with memory but to
but to
make that claim to blacks is per- overwhelm it, render-
me; I see it in media
verse. Not long ago, he insis- ing insults and provo- overwhelm coverage that increas-
tently questioned the legitimacy of cations at such a hec-
ingly treats him as
it.
Obama’s presidency by latching tic pace that the new
a normal candidate.
onto the popular right-wing con- ones eclipse and then
Familiarity
breeds
spiracy theory that Obama had been expunge the old ones. It’s as if surrender, even rationalizations:
born in Kenya and couldn’t produce the DVR of the electorate and the He doesn’t actually mean what he
media can store only so many epi- says. He doesn’t ultimately believe
DSURSHU86ELUWKFHUWL¿FDWH
Has he forgotten that? Or is sodes before it starts erasing earlier in anything. It’s all strategy, all
he simply betting that Americans indignities.
spectacle. Sit back and enjoy the
+LV ÀDPER\DQW SUHVHQW RYHU- show.
have?
Every campaign is a painstak- writes his distressing past. It’s the
“It’s so fun to watch,” Ezra Klein
ing manipulation of memory, an eternal sunshine of the spotless of Vox recently wrote, “it’s easy to
attempt to get voters to focus on Trump.
lose sight of how terrifying it really
His proposed ban on Muslims is.”
only certain parts of the past and
coming into the country exited the
disregard the rest.
I might quibble with “fun,” but
Candidates say that they’re eager discussion much more quickly than not with the notion that Trump has
to run on their records, but what it should have. So did his false used a kind of sensory overload to
they want from voters isn’t total claims that Muslims in Jersey City QXPEXVWRWKH¿FWLRQVKHVSLQVWKH
celebrated by the thousands on 9/11. indecency he indulges.
recall. It’s selective amnesia.
At the Republican debate Satur-
Hillary Clinton would have us
We can’t lose track. We must
GZHOO RQ KHU ¿JKW IRU FLYLO ULJKWV day night, when Jeb Bush brought keep score. The sum of them is the
in the 1960s. She’d prefer that we up Trump’s galling dismissal of essence of him, a picture worth a
edit out bits of the 1990s, when she John McCain’s ordeal as a prisoner thousand slurs.
By FRANK BRUNI
New York Times News Service
D
What do we hold most dear now?
their local economy.”
“the other” for lost jobs,
In short, we’re not
even though more jobs,
particularly low-skilled
socialists.
The report outlines
¿QG WKLV HOHFWLRQ EL]DUUH jobs, are lost to micro-
many steps government
for many reasons but none chips, not Mexicans.
What we have in Amer-
can take — from dereg-
more than this: If I were given ica is so amazing — a plu-
ulation to education to
a blank sheet of paper and told ralistic society with plu-
¿QDQFH ² WR XQORFN
more entrepreneurship in
to write down America’s three ralism. Syria and Iraq are
pluralistic
societies
with-
America, and not just in
greatest sources of strength, out pluralism. They can
Silicon Valley, but any-
Thomas L.
they would be “a culture of only be governed by an
where, like Louisville,
Friedman
where “a vibrant startup
entrepreneurship,” “an ethic of LURQ¿VW
Just
to
remind
again:
We
have
community
has developed. …
pluralism” and the “quality of
twice elected a black man whose 7RGD\ WKH FLW\ ERDVWV ¿YH DFFHOHU-
our governing institutions.”
grandfather was a Muslim and who ators, a vibrant angel investor com-
And yet I look at the campaign defeated a woman to run against munity and partnerships with large
so far and I hear leading candi- a Mormon! Who does that? That companies to support startup enter-
is such a source of strength, such prises like the GE FirstBuild center,
dates trashing all of them.
a magnet for the best talent in the which brings together micro-man-
Donald Trump is running against world. Yet Trump, starting with his ufacturing and the maker move-
pluralism. Bernie Sanders shows “birther” crusade, has sought to ment.” We can do this! We are doing
zero interest in entrepreneurship undermine that uniqueness rather it. “Roughly half of private-sec-
tor employees work in small busi-
and says the Wall Street banks that than celebrate it.
Sanders seems to me like some- nesses, and 65 percent of new jobs
provide capital to risk-takers are
involved in “fraud,” and Ted Cruz one with a good soul, and he is right created since 1995 have come from
speaks of our government in the that Wall Street excesses helped tank small enterprises.”
Unlike Sanders, Ted Cruz does
same way as the anti-tax zealot Gro- the economy in 2008. But thanks to
ver Norquist, who says we should the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform not have a good soul. He brims
and Consumer Protec- with hate, and his trashing of Wash-
shrink government “to
tion Act, that can’t easily ington, D.C., is despicable. I can’t
the size where I can drag
‘E
happen again.
it into the bathroom and
defend every government regula-
I’d take Sanders more tion. But I know this: As the world
drown it in the bathtub.”
(Am I a bad person if I Pluribus seriously if he would stop gets faster and more interdependent,
about break- the quality of your governing insti-
hope that when Norquist
Unum’ bleating
ing up the big banks tutions will matter more than ever,
slips in that bathtub and
has to call 911, no one
— Out and instead breathed life and ours are still pretty good. I won-
into what really matters der how much the average Russian
answers?)
I don’t remember an of Many, for jobs: nurturing more would pay to have our FBI or Jus-
entrepreneurs and start- tice Department for a day, or how
election when the pillars
One.
er-uppers. I never hear much a Chinese city dweller would
of America’s strength
Sanders talk about where pay for a day of the U.S. Securities
were so under attack —
and winning applause, often from employees come from. They come and Exchange Commission or Envi-
from employers — risk-takers, peo- ronmental Protection Agency? Cruz
young people!
Trump’s famous hat says “Make ple ready to take a second mortgage ZUDSV KLPVHOI LQ DQ$PHULFDQ ÀDJ
America great again.” You can’t to start a business. If you want more and spits on all the institutions that
do that if your message to His- employees, you need more employ- it represents.
panics and Muslims is: Get out or ers, not just government stimulus.
America didn’t become the rich-
I have just the plan for him: The est country in the world by practic-
stay away. We have an immigra-
tion problem. It’s an outrage that 2015 “Milstein Commission on ing socialism, or the strongest coun-
we can’t control our border, but Entrepreneurship and Middle-Class try by denigrating its governing
both parties have been complicit — Jobs” report produced by the Uni- LQVWLWXWLRQVRUWKHPRVWWDOHQW¿OOHG
Democrats because they saw new versity of Virginia, which notes: country by stoking fear of immi-
voters coming across and Republi- “The identity of America is intrin- grants. It got here via the motto “E
cans because they saw cheap labor sically entrepreneurial (enshrined) Pluribus Unum” — Out of Many,
FRPLQJ DFURVV %XW ZH FDQ ¿[ WKH by the founders, popularized by One.
border without turning every His- Horatio Alger, embodied by Henry
Our forefathers so cherished
panic into a rapist or Muslim into a Ford. … With enough hard work that motto they didn’t put it on a
anyone can use entrepreneurship hat. They put it on coins and then
terrorist.
Trump seized on immigration as to pave their own way to prosper- on the dollar bill. For a guy with so
an emotional wedge to rally his base ity and strengthen their communi- many of those, Trump should have
against “the other” and to blame ties by creating jobs and growing noticed by now.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times News Service
I