OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2016
What’s the case for Hillary?
Founded in 1873
By CHARLES
KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
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
Doing it for
the home team
What are Steve Fulton and Bill
Hunsinger’s motives?
he Port of Astoria Commission is a reliable source of enter-
tainment for many of our readers. Our reports on these cha-
rades would be funny if they weren’t so costly.
The events described by qualiied if they didn’t already
Edward Stratton in the Aug. know about groundwater
26 edition are the latest install- issues.”
ment. Faced with an urgent
After the Port’s lawyer
state of Oregon demand to assured the commission that
improve its stormwater dispo- readjusting a bid in light of
sition, the Port needed to move new information is legal, com-
ahead with a solution.
missioners voted 3-2 to con-
In picking a contractor for tract with Conway.
the job, Conway Construction
Self-dealing and crony-
was the low bidder. However, ism are the bane of all ports,
Conway had omitted a key ele- but it has run especially deep
ment of the job in its bid. But in the culture of the Port of
even when that was added in, Astoria. It is widely under-
Conway was well under the bid stood that Hunsinger is on the
from Big River Construction. Port Commission to represent
Conway is based in Ridgeield, the interests of the longshore
Washington, while Big River union and that Fulton rep-
is Astoria-based.
resents his employer, Martin
A majority of the com- Nygaard. There is nothing ille-
mission favored the low bid- gal about that, so long as com-
der. But as Stratton reported, missioners declare their con-
“Commissioners
Stephen licts of interest. But there is
Fulton and Bill Hunsinger a larger detriment to Fulton’s
called foul on Conway and Hunsinger’s myopic
Construction’s contract, say- approach. It effectively takes
ing the company had been two commissioners out of the
unfairly allowed to ix omis- line-up. Instead of playing a
sions in its initial bid to the det- role in setting larger policy,
riment of Big River.
these two operate by a differ-
“Fulton said the Port should ent playbook. That appeared to
discuss the issue more, adding be the case in this most recent
he doesn’t think Conway is incident.
T
ASHINGTON — “The
best darn change-maker
I ever met in my entire life.”
W
So said Bill Clinton in mak-
ing the case for his wife at the
Democratic National Convention.
Considering that Bernie Sand-
ers ran as the author of a political
revolution and Donald Trump as
the man who would “kick over the
table” (to quote Newt Gingrich) in
Washington, “change-maker” does
not exactly make the heart race.
Which is the fundamental prob-
lem with the Clinton campaign.
What precisely is it about? Why is
she running in the irst place?
Like most dynastic candidates
(most famously Ted Kennedy in
1979), she really doesn’t know. She
seeks the ofice because, well, it’s
the next — the inal — step on the
ladder.
Her campaign’s premise is that
we’re doing OK but we can do bet-
ter. There are holes to patch in the
nanny-state safety net. She’s the one
to do it.
It amounts to Sanders lite. Or
the short-lived Bush slogan: “Jeb
can fix it.” We know where that
went.
The one man who could have
given the pudding a theme, who
could have created a plausible Hil-
laryism was Bill Clinton. Rather
than do that — the way in Cleveland
Gingrich shaped Trump’s various
barstool eruptions into a semi-co-
herent program of national popu-
lism — Bill gave a long chronolog-
ical account of a passionate liberal’s
social activism. It was an attempt, I
suppose, to humanize her.
Well, yes. Perhaps, after all,
somewhere in there is a real person.
But what a waste of Bill’s talents.
It wasn’t exactly Clint Eastwood
speaking to an empty chair, but at
the end you had to ask: Is that all
there is?
He grandly concluded with this:
“The reason you should elect her is
that in the greatest country on earth
we have always been about tomor-
row.” Is there a rhetorical device
more banal?
Trump’s acceptance speech was
roundly criticized for offering a
dark, dystopian vision of America.
For all of its exaggeration, how-
ever, it relected well the view from
Fishtown, the ictional white work-
ing-class town created statistically
by social scientist Charles Murray
in his 2012 study “Coming Apart.”
It chronicled the economic, social
Boneyard Ridge buy I
a tremendous step
P
presettlement conditions, with
a healthy variety of plants and
animals.
A trail system is being
planned to permit public access
to parts of the ridge. The pur-
chase was widely supported,
garnering a $524,000 grant
from the Oregon Watershed
Enhancement Board, $500,000
from an anonymous donor, and
contributions from more than
120 additional donors.
As the population grows
on the North Coast and else-
where west of the Cascades
this century, we won’t be able
to preserve everything, and
few would want to. Clearly, a
concerted effort is required to
encourage additional housing
in our increasingly popular
area. But steps like Boneyard
Ridge conservation will help
to ensure that we maintain
all-important connections to
the natural world.
These are islands of con-
tinuity in a fast-changing
world. We all are grateful for
the foresight, generosity and
diligence involved in creating
such natural preserves.
and spiritual disintegra-
white working-class alien-
tion of those left behind
ation from Clinton.
by globalization and eco-
As for the chaos
nomic
transformation.
abroad, the Democrats are
Trump’s capture of the
in see-no-evil denial. The
resultant feelings of anx-
irst night in Philadelphia,
iety and abandonment
there were 61 speeches.
explains why he enjoys
Not one mentioned the
an astonishing 39-point
Islamic State or even ter-
advantage over Clinton
rorism. Later references
among whites without a
were few, far between and
Charles
college degree.
highly defensive. After
Krauthammer
His solution is to beat
all, what can the Demo-
up on foreigners for “steal-
crats say? Clinton’s call-
Why
ing” our jobs. But while
ing card is experience. Yet
trade is a factor in the loss
as secretary of state she
is she left
of manufacturing jobs,
a trail of policy fail-
even more important, by a running ures from Libya to Syria,
large margin, is the emer-
from the Russian reset to
gence of an information
in the the Iraqi withdrawal to the
economy in which educa-
rise of the Islamic State.
first
tion, knowledge and var-
Clinton had a strong
ious kinds of literacy are
second half of the conven-
place? tion as the Sanders revolt
the coin of the realm. For
all the factory jobs lost to
faded and as President
Third World competitors, far more Obama endorsed her with one of
are lost to robots.
the iner speeches of his career. Yet
Hard to run against higher pro- Trump’s convention bounce of up to
ductivity. Easier to run against cun- 10 points has given him a slight lead
ning foreigners.
in the polls. She badly needs one of
In either case, Clinton has found her own.
no counter. If she has a theme, it’s
She still enjoys the Democrats’
about expanding opportunity, shatter- built-in Electoral College advan-
ing ceilings. But the universe of dis- tage. But she remains highly vul-
criminated-against minorities — so nerable to both outside events and
vast 50 years ago — is rapidly shrink- internal revelations. Another major
ing. When the burning civil rights terror attack, another email drop —
issue of the day is bathroom choice and everything changes.
for the transgendered, a lummoxed
In this crazy election year, there
Fishtown understandably asks, are no straight-line projections. As
“What about us?” Telling coal min- Clinton leaves Philadelphia, her
ers she was going to close their mines lifelong drive for the ultimate prize
and kill their jobs only reinforced is perilously close to a coin lip.
What does it mean to love America?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
urchase of Boneyard
Ridge on Tillamook
Head last week by the North
Coast Land Conservancy is
a tremendous step forward in
protecting one of the Paciic
Northwest’s most iconic
coastal landscapes.
Comprising a little more
than half a square mile of acre-
age, the former commercial
tree farm is next to the Elmer
Feldenheimer State Natural
Area and Ecola State Park
and west of the land conser-
vancy’s Circle Creek Habitat
Reserve in the Necanicum
River loodplain west of U.S.
Highway 101.
A much smaller cousin to
The Nature Conservancy of
Washington’s Ellsworth Creek
preserve and Willapa National
Wildlife Refuge in Paciic
County, the assembled 3,500-
acre block of Tillamook Head
lands will create a large enough
area to cushion wildlife from
disruption. Through long-
term management choices,
Boneyard Ridge and neigh-
boring forests will be restored
to something more resembling
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former Presi-
dent Bill Clinton arrive for a rally at McGonigle Hall at Temple Univer-
sity in Philadelphia Friday.
t has been quite a week in
politics.
On one side, the Democratic
National Convention was very
much a celebration of America.
On the other side, the Republi-
can nominee for president, pressed
on the obvious support he is get-
ting from Vladimir Putin, once again
praised Putin’s leadership, suggested
that he is OK with Russian aggres-
sion in Crimea, and urged the Rus-
sians to engage in espionage on his
behalf. And no, it wasn’t a joke.
I know that some Republicans
feel as if they’ve fallen through
the looking glass. After all, usually
they’re the ones chanting “USA!
USA! USA!” And haven’t they spent
years suggesting that Barack and
Michelle Obama hate America, and
may even support the nation’s ene-
mies? How did Democrats end up
looking like the patriots here?
But the parties aren’t really expe-
riencing a role reversal. Barack
Obama’s speech Wednesday was
wonderful and inspiring, but when
he declared that “what we heard in
Cleveland last week wasn’t partic-
ularly Republican,” he was ibbing
a bit. It was actually very Repub-
lican in substance; the only differ-
ence was that the substance was less
disguised than usual. For the “fan-
ning of resentment” that Obama
decried didn’t begin with Donald
Trump, and most of the lag-waving
never did have much to do with true
patriotism.
Think about it: What does it mean
to love America? Surely it means
loving the country we actually have.
I don’t know about you, but when-
ever I return from a trip abroad, my
heart swells to see the sheer variety
of my fellow citizens, so different in
their appearance, their cultural her-
itage, their personal lives, yet all of
them — all of us — Americans.
That love of country doesn’t have
disregarding; it’s actually
to be, and shouldn’t be,
the point — it’s all about
uncritical. But the faults
drawing a line between
you ind, the critiques you
us (white Christians) and
offer, should be about the
them (everyone else), and
ways in which we don’t
yet live up to our own ide-
national security has noth-
als. If what bothers you
ing to do with it.
about America is, instead,
Which brings us back
the fact that it doesn’t look
to the Vlad-Donald bro-
exactly the way it did in
mance. Trump’s will-
the past (or the way you
ingness
to cast aside our
Paul
imagine it looked in the
nation’s
hard-earned rep-
Krugman
past), then you don’t love
utation as a reliable ally
your country — you care
So is the
Surely it is odd remarkable.
only about your tribe.
speciicity of his sup-
And all too many inlu-
for Putin’s priori-
means port
ential igures on the right
ties, which is in stark con-
are tribalists, not patriots.
loving trast with the vagueness
We got a graphic
of everything else he has
the
demonstration of that
said about policy. And he
reality after Michelle
has offered only evasive
Obama’s speech, when country nonanswers to questions
she spoke of the wonder
about his business ties to
we
of watching her daugh-
Putin-linked oligarchs.
ters play on the lawn of actually
But what strikes me
“a house that was built by
most is the silence of so
have.
slaves.” It was an uplift-
many leading Republi-
ing and, yes, patriotic
cans in the face of behav-
image, a celebration of a nation that ior they would have denounced as
is always seeking to become better, treason coming from a Democrat —
to transcend its laws.
not to mention the active support for
But, all many people on the right Trump’s stance among many in the
— especially the media igures base.
who set the Republican agenda —
What this tells you, I think, is
heard was a knock on white people. that all the lag-waving and hawk-
“They can’t stop talking about slav- ish posturing had nothing to do with
ery,” complained Rush Limbaugh. patriotism. It was, instead, about
The slaves had it good, insisted Bill using alleged Democratic weakness
O’Reilly: “They were well fed and on national security as a club with
had decent lodgings.” Both men which to beat down domestic oppo-
were, in effect, saying that whites nents, and serve the interests of the
are their tribe and must never be tribe.
criticized.
Now comes Trump, doing the
This same tribal urge surely bidding of a foreign power and invit-
underlies a lot of the right’s rheto- ing it to intervene in our politics —
ric about national security. Why are and that’s OK, because it also serves
Republicans so ixated on the notion the tribe.
So if it seems strange to you that
that the president must use the phrase
“Islamic terrorism,” when actual these days Democrats are sounding
experts on terrorism agree that this patriotic while Republicans aren’t,
would actually hurt national secu- you just weren’t paying attention.
rity, by helping to alienate peaceful The people who now seem to love
America always did; the people who
Muslims?
The answer, I’d argue, is that the suddenly no longer sound like patri-
alienation isn’t a side effect they’re ots never were.