OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2016
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
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
OUR VIEW
States need
to comply
with ID act The authentic power
tate legislatures in Oregon and Washington state are in a
stare down with the federal government, one they are likely
to lose.
At issue is the adoption of federal standards for driver’s licenses
and state-issued identiication cards in Oregon and Washington
that can be used at secured areas, including airports.
The law requiring it, the Real ID Act of 2005, was enacted as
a result of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent war on terrorism. It
requires higher standards of proof of U.S. citizenship or proof of
lawful status in the U.S. in order for state-issued IDs to be valid
for federal purposes, such as at airport security points or when
entering federal courthouses or other secure federal facilities.
S
The deadlines
The Transportation Security Administration, which oversees
airport security, has said it intends to stop accepting noncompli-
ant IDs on Jan. 22, 2018. States that are still noncompliant — but
have been granted deadline extensions — will face a hard deadline
of October 2020, when Homeland Security has said it will require
all air travelers to carry a Real ID-compliant license. At that point,
residents from noncomplaint states will be required to present
other identiication which does meet Real ID requirements, like
a passport, to ly domestically or to enter federal courthouses or
other secure federal facility. Passports are already required for
international air travel.
The opposition
Across the country, 21 states currently comply, but others
including Oregon and Washington have fought the law, saying it
is an overreaching, unfunded federal
Technology
mandate. In 2009, Oregon lawmak-
ers prohibited the Department of Motor and
Vehicles from spending state funds to
expense
comply with the act. They have argued
that many of the requirements were too issues that
expensive to undertake, and they have existed
asked for extensions each year, which
in 2005
have been routinely granted. Just this
along with
month, Oregon was granted another
extension, but this time only until June security
concerns
2017, essentially just enough time for
the Legislature to reconsider its posi-
about the
tion. Oregon lawmakers have said they cards’ data
will continue to seek extensions, which
shouldn’t
if granted, would make its deadline for
be a factor
full compliance in 2020.
In Washington, the state does have
today.
an option for drivers to purchase an
enhanced ID at the DMV, but it is currently only suficient for land
and sea travel and does not meet the federal standards. Washington
has also asked for extensions, but its most recent request for more
time was rejected, and residents there now face the 2018 deadline.
Time to act
While we understand the two states’ initial reluctance to com-
ply, it’s time to start implementing the changes.
Congress enacted the law more than a decade ago and aviation
safety remains a deep concern. The Real IDs will help ease some
of the worries. The security measures also make the licenses and
ID cards harder to replicate and they have the potential to reduce
fraud and identity theft.
Additionally, technology and expense issues that existed in
2005 along with security concerns about the cards’ data shouldn’t
be a factor today. Experts say better technology and security now
exists at far less cost than it did then. And on some of the con-
cerns, like data security, the states should already be addressing
those issues regardless of the Real ID requirements.
Failure in the two states to take the needed implementation
steps will eventually force all residents in both states who want to
board a plane or enter a federal courthouse to spend the time and
money themselves to obtain a compliant ID when one could easily
exist otherwise through state-issued driver’s licenses.
Legislators in each state shouldn’t allow that to happen and
should address it in their next sessions.
of Michelle Obama
By FRANK BRUNI
New York Times News Service
I
sn’t it delicious that after
traficking in racism, promoting
sexism and using a lie about
Barack Obama’s birthplace as
a pivot into political relevance,
Donald Trump could receive his
inal death blow
from a black
woman: the presi-
dent’s wife?
And isn’t it
interesting that
after so many
years of keeping a studied distance
from the ugliness of the political
arena, the irst lady is throwing
herself with such passion into this
grotesque campaign?
That says everything about the
singular threat that Trump poses,
and she’s emerging as the iercest
counter to it: Michelle Obama,
octopus slayer. She’s effective
because she has never gone looking
for a ight — we know that about
her. She acts when she has some-
thing to defend, and as she made
clear in a stirring, searing speech
late last week, that’s more than her
husband’s legacy, which a Trump
victory would decimate. It’s her
dignity as a woman. It’s the dignity
of all women.
I don’t mean to overstate her
impact: Trump was going down
before she joined the chorus of
condemnation. But her eloquence
is sealing the deal. First at the
Democratic convention in late
July and then in New Hampshire
on Thursday, she embodied the
nation’s conscience and staked her
claim as the most earnest guardian
of our most important values.
Hillary Clinton can’t play that
part. She has made too many messy
compromises and revealed too much
rococo calculation. Those hacked
John Podesta emails suggest that
she doesn’t blink until a sprawling
committee of Clinton whisperers
has hashed out the wisdom of it.
Barack Obama can’t play that
part, not at this exact moment, in
his precise mood. On the stump
in Ohio last week, he essentially
asked voters not just to reject
Trump but to punish the GOP, and
his obvious, warranted glee over
the party’s travails had a score-set-
tling, told-you-so quality to it.
He excoriated Republicans
for the “swamp of crazy that has
been fed over and over and over
and over again.” He told them
that Trump is the nominee you get
when your agenda is “based on
lies, based on hoaxes.” He wasn’t
merely safeguarding America’s
future. He was reveling in his
revenge.
Not a politician
Michelle Obama probably also
wants revenge for the worst of what
her husband (and she) went through,
but you don’t hear that in her words.
That’s largely because she has
the luxury of not being a politician.
She isn’t and won’t be running for
anything. She hasn’t been forced to
weigh in on a bevy of issues, poten-
tially alienating voters who dis-
agree, or to exhaust her ammunition
on a range of fronts. You want high
approval ratings? Exit elected ofice,
or never enter it in the irst place.
But in addition to that, she has
honed a talent — rare in Washington
— for rising above pettiness, and
she and her speechwriters have aced
a nuanced, soulful alternative to
common reproach and garden-va-
riety rancor. I think of the gorgeous
passage in her convention speech
about moving to Washington and
watching her daughters wake up
every morning in a white house
built by black slaves. That observa-
tion admonished America for its sins
but also brimmed with appreciation,
complimenting and congratulating
the country on its progress. It got at
something that politics and politi-
cians seldom do: the complicated,
inarguable truth.
Her speech last week was just
as exceptional, because it was less
a summons to the barricades than
a cry from the heart, and she’d
planned to make remarks along
these lines even before she heard
the recording of Trump’s 2005
conversation with Billy Bush.
Then that recording came out,
intensifying her determination. “It
hurts,” she said, referring to the sort
of entitlement that Trump expresses,
the kind of language that he uses
and his obvious belief that women
exist chiely for his pleasure, which
takes precedence over their auton-
omy. “It’s like that sick, sinking
feeling you get when you’re walk-
ing down the street, minding your
own business, and some guy yells
out vulgar words about your body.”
She added that women often
“pretend like this doesn’t really
bother us, maybe because we think
that admitting how much it hurts
makes us as women look weak.”
“Maybe we’re afraid to be that
vulnerable,” she theorized, but she
let her own vulnerability show, in
a voice that trembled. It was her
bridge to every American she had
any hope of reaching.
There has been incessant chatter
during this election cycle about
authenticity. There has been as
much misunderstanding, especially
among Trump’s boosters, about
what it really means.
Insults aren’t badges of authen-
ticity. They’re evidence of rudeness
and frequently cruel. Profanity
doesn’t render you authentic. It just
proves that you’re a child.
You know what struck me as
authentic? The way that the irst
lady and George W. Bush leaned
into each other and held hands at a
funeral for police oficers in Dallas
back in July. Or the way that they
embraced last month in Washington
at the opening of the National
Museum of African American
History and Culture.
To look at those images is to
understand Michelle Obama’s
power. She isn’t tailoring her
behavior to talking points. She isn’t
iltering her emotions through any
partisan agenda. She has arguably
become the 2016 race’s moral
authority, which is why Clinton,
in the most recent debate, repeated
her widely quoted assertion that
“when they go low, we go high.”
That’s hardly accurate about
everyone in the Democratic Party,
the Clinton campaign or the Obama
administration, but it’s a fair
enough description of how the irst
lady comports herself.
In contrast
What a contrast to other politi-
cal surrogates. What an antidote to
all the crazy spinning. Kellyanne
Conway, Trump’s campaign
manager, is playing some parlor
game to see how far she can travel
from reality, how creatively she
can gin up distractions and how
subtle an expression — by turns
bemused and beatiic — she can
wear. My favorite Conway-ism was
that certain members of Congress
shouldn’t upbraid Trump because
they are guilty themselves of
forcing French kisses on unwilling
women. Translation: Let he who is
without tongue cast the irst stone.
Can you believe that she once
marketed herself as a strategist who
could help Republicans collapse the
gender gap? Trump trails Clinton by
15 points among women, according
to an analysis of October polls that
Nate Silver did last week. At this
point in 2012, Mitt Romney trailed
Obama by 8. “It seems fair to say
that, if Trump loses the election,
it will be because women voted
against him,” Silver wrote.
How perfect. Misogyny will
play midwife to history. After being
treated by Trump as if they’re
disposable, women will dispose
of him — at the urging of the irst
lady, in the service of the irst
female president. They will let him
know that no matter how much
money he has or how big a star he
is, there are places where his tenta-
cles can’t travel.
Not all the Tic Tacs in the world
could sweeten that fate.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
The trolley is key
he Astoria Trolley is one of
the main attractions that bring
people to our town, and it pro-
vides a wonderful lasting memory.
Recently we have been told that
much of the required improve-
ments to some of the wooden por-
tions of the Riverwalk will cost
signiicant money over the next 10
years.
At a City Council meeting I
attended, it appeared the city was
going to “ask” the trolley vol-
unteers to help pay for these
T
improvements. The current $1 ride
provides the money the volun-
teers need to operate and maintain
the trolley, and I do not believe it
should be increased.
Instead, we should stop paying
the Astoria-Warrenton Area Cham-
ber of Commerce over $300,000
each year to provide visitor ser-
vices and general advertising of
the area. The wonderful trolley
volunteers do more to promote
our city, and should not have to
increase costs, which might dis-
courage some families from enjoy-
ing this wonderful experience.
Instead of increasing the cost of
the trolley ride, the City Council
needs to increase the amount they
currently are spending on River-
walk improvements from the Pro-
mote Astoria Fund (which collects
a tax levied on hotels in town), as
well as decrease the over $300,000
from that fund given to the Cham-
ber of Commerce, and leave the
trolley with its special volunteers
alone.
GEORGE (MICK) HAGUE
Astoria