OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 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
OUR VIEW
E
ach week we recognize those people and organizations
in the community deserving of public praise for the good
things they do to make the North Coast a better place to
live, and also those who should be called out for their actions.
SHOUTOUTS
This week’s Shoutouts go to:
• The organizers of fun-filled, ongoing holiday events and
activities across the North Coast. Astoria, Warrenton, Seaside
and Cannon Beach each have a “sleigh-full” of free-to-low-cost
holiday events throughout the month that include “shop local”
promotions; caroling and concerts; craft classes; performances
of “A Christmas Carol” at the Liberty Theater, “Scrooged in
Astoria” at the Astor Street Opry Co., “The Nutcracker” ballet at
Astoria High School and “It’s a Wonderful Life” at the Coaster
Theatre; the annual Providence Seaside Hospital Festival of
Trees; holiday teas; and pictures and visits with Santa.
• The Warrenton Fred Meyer store and store director
Jerry Sandness, who sponsored a “How To Cook A Turkey”
Thanksgiving contest in The Daily Astorian for schoolchildren
who entered the contest by writing essays on the subject. The
store awarded the winning entry a Thanksgiving dinner for six,
but also went the extra mile by creating a stocked gift basket for
another family of a third grader who lost their home in a fire.
The third-grader was hopeful to win because her family is living
in a trailer with little money and she wanted her parents and sis-
ters to have a free turkey dinner. Sandness made the wish come
true.
• Members of Seaside Elks Lodge and the Long Beach,
Washington, Elks Lodge who provided for people in need
during the Thanksgiving holiday. In Seaside, the Elks delivered
102 boxes of food to needy families. The program, known as
Holiday Helpers, is in its third year of providing food and house-
hold needs to families at Thanksgiving time. Boxes included tur-
keys, fresh produce, canned and boxed food, toothpaste and toi-
let paper among other items. In Long Beach, the Elks hosted a
Thanksgiving dinner and served more than 500 meals to people
in need.
• Members of the Seaside Dispatch Center, who received
a critical incident award from their peers during the recent
APCO/NENA annual conference. The organization is devoted
to the advancement of public safety communications, and the
award recognized the Seaside dispatchers for their professional-
ism and dedication to duty in the aftermath of when Sgt. Jason
Goodding was shot and killed in the line of duty in February.
This past month the Oregon Peace Officers Association recog-
nized Officer David Davidson with a medal of honor for his
quick action in returning fire that night and killing the man who
took Goodding’s life.
CALLOUTS
This week’s Callouts go to:
• The Oregon Department of Transportation, which spent
nearly $1 million on a management audit that may not address
one of the reasons the review was ordered in the first place. Gov.
Kate Brown had ordered the audit at the request of legislators
who want to ensure ODOT is operating effectively before they
consider costly transportation funding requests in their next ses-
sion. Among their concerns were instances when ODOT hired
or kept contractors who appeared to have conflicts of interest.
While the audit included a question on how conflicts are identi-
fied, it did not ask for an assessment of how much weight ODOT
officials give conflicts in the process of recommending contrac-
tors to the Oregon Transportation Commission, which officially
hires the contractors. As a result, the audit may not give legisla-
tors all the answers they sought from the agency.
Suggestions?
Do you have a Shoutout or Callout you think we should know
about? Let us know at news@dailyastorian.com and we’ll make
sure to take a look.
LETTERS WELCOME
Letters should be exclusive to
The Daily Astorian.
Letters should be fewer than
350 words and must include the
writer’s name, address and phone
numbers. You will be contacted
to confirm authorship.
All letters are subject to edit-
ing for space, grammar and, on
occasion, factual accuracy. Only
two letters per writer are printed
each month.
Letters written in response to
other letter writers should address
the issue at hand and, rather than
mentioning the writer by name,
should refer to the headline and
date the letter was published.
Discourse should be civil and
people should be referred to in a
respectful manner.
Submissions may be sent in
any of these ways:
E-mail to editor@dailyasto-
rian.com; online at www.dailyas-
torian.com; delivered to the Asto-
rian offices at 949 Exchange St.
and 1555 N. Roosevelt in Seaside
or by mail to Letters to the Editor,
P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR 97103.
A case for Mitt Romney
By FRANK BRUNI
New York Times News Service
A
show of hands, please: How
many of you would like
Donald Trump to step away
— far away — from his Twitter
account? I’m
pretty sure I have
a majority, but
to be safe: How
many can at least
agree on no tweets
before breakfast?
Yowza. I’m above 95 percent.
Reince, you don’t have to nod
wildly and jump up and down; the
raised hand alone will do. And you
get one hand, Melania, not two.
Two is a real, provable case of
voter fraud.
Thanks in part to the pres-
ident-elect’s predilection for
outbursts of fewer than 140
characters, he routinely comes
across as petty and mercurial. But
right now he has an opportunity
for the opposite impression. He
can choose Mitt Romney as his
secretary of state.
That he’s actually mulling this
is alone extraordinary. Trump
knows how to carry a grudge
the way Jim Brown knew how
to carry a football, and Romney
gave him cause for vengefulness,
with a major speech during
the Republican primaries that
labeled him a fraud and exhorted
Americans to reject him.
Had some knowledgeable inti-
mate of Trump’s told me on Nov.
9 that an unexpected fate awaited
Romney, the State Department
would have been my millionth
guess. The stockade would have
been my first.
If Trump taps Romney, he’ll
be sending a powerful message
to an anxious world that he’s not
hostage to the darkest parts of his
character. He needs to project that
as much as we need to see it.
Granted, Romney’s résumé
isn’t the most logical for the job.
He has spent most of his life
as a businessman, and his lone
public office was governor of
Massachusetts.
But not all our secretaries
of state were steeped in foreign
affairs from an early point,
like Madeleine Albright and
Condoleezza Rice. Many had
backgrounds principally devoted
to other concerns. That was true
of James Baker, who held the post
under the first President Bush,
and of Hillary Clinton, though she
traveled the world as first lady
and served on the Senate Armed
Services Committee.
Besides which, Romney isn’t
competing against the entire
universe of possibilities. He’s
competing against Rudy Giuliani,
who, over recent years, has done
such a masterful impersonation
of a raving lunatic that I doubt he
could get seasonal retail work at
the Container Store.
David Petraeus is also in play,
but his supposed brilliance matters
less in this case than his conviction
for mishandling classified infor-
mation. Picking him would brand
Trump an utter hypocrite, given
how vehemently he threatened to
jail Clinton for related trespasses.
As for Sen. Bob Corker, he’s
a real Washington insider, unlike
Romney, and doesn’t have the use-
ful political celebrity that Clinton
and then John Kerry brought to the
position. Romney does.
Over his own two presidential
campaigns, Romney became
ever more fluent in international
issues, and he even showed some
prescience, identifying Vladimir
Putin’s Russia as a grave menace
before other politicians woke up to
that. He was ridiculed for dwelling
in the past. Turns out he was living
in the future.
That wariness and his advocacy
of free trade put him at odds with
Trump but also make him a pru-
dent counterbalance, if Trump can
find the modesty and confidence
to size up the situation that way.
(That’s a big if.) So do Romney’s
seriousness and unflappability.
He’d temper Trump’s tantrums.
Giuliani would just goad Trump
on.
With Trump’s Cabinet and
staff picks so far, he has repaid
his staunchest supporters. With
Romney, he would be taking
a more inclusive, conciliatory
approach that befits his lack of any
mandate, tries to move the country
past such a divisive campaign and
reassures jittery allies. It would
be an open-minded, big-hearted,
self-aware move that challenges
Americans to see him in a more
nuanced light. It would help him
govern, by signaling that he’s
bigger than his grievances.
Despite the howls of protest
from some on the right, it would
hardly be an undignified, unprec-
edented surrender: There was bad
blood aplenty between Clinton and
President Barack Obama before he
brought her aboard.
It would also reward someone
who seems to have the country’s
best interests at heart. Romney,
interestingly, would be following
the example of his father, George,
who went from Richard Nixon’s
adversary to his housing secretary,
because a person can arguably do
more on the field, under a flawed
coach, than on the sidelines, grip-
ing. A person can potentially steer
the game in a better direction.
So there’s a Trump tweet I do
hope to see, at whatever hour he
likes: “Impressive dinner with Mitt
Romney. I believe he can help
us MAKE AMERICA GREAT
AGAIN. He’s hired!”
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The gift of music
annon Beach Community
Church celebrates the gift of
music in our local community by
announcing the intent to purchase
a new concert quality grand piano
in 2017 to benefit our whole com-
munity. This holiday season, give
our community the gift of music
by donating to the Grand Piano
Fund at Cannon Beach Community
Church.
The total fund to be raised is
$50,000, and Community Church
has already received a $10,000
donation. Funds may be designated
to the Grand Piano Fund, and
sent to Cannon Beach Commu-
nity Church, P.O. Box 37, Cannon
Beach, OR, 97110, or made online
at www.beachcommunity.org
Our county has a limited num-
ber of performing arts musical
venues. One of the finest venues
in South County for music events
is the Cannon Beach Community
Church. Bono declared that “music
can change the world because it
can change people.” Cannon Beach
Community Church has been help-
ing to change people through
music for 85 years, since 1931.
Weekly, Cannon Beach Com-
munity Church hosts two of our
community music groups, the Can-
non Beach Chorus and the North
Oregon Coast Symphony. Annu-
ally, Cannon Beach Commu-
nity Church hosts multiple music
events, including recitals, choral
concerts, touring music groups,
classical concerts, and seasonal
music events such as, the Can-
C
non Beach Chorus concert at Can-
non Beach Community Church at
7 p.m. Dec. 9.
The most frequent music
offered at Community Church is in
worship, including contemporary
(Sunday, 9 a.m.); classic (10:45
a.m.); and evensong (first and third
Sundays at 6 p.m.).
We invite you to join us in
the gift of music in worship this
Advent and Christmas season. Ald-
ous Huxley expressed the wonder
of the gift of music when he wrote,
“after silence, that which comes
nearest to expressing the inex-
pressible is music.”
DAVID ROBINSON
Lead pastor, Cannon Beach
Community Church
Rigged vote
onald Trump was right, the
election was rigged. Presi-
dent-elect Trump has the Elec-
toral College to thank for the rig-
ging. Wyoming has a population of
586,000 with three electoral votes,
while California has a population
of 38.8 million with 55 electoral
votes, giving Wyoming one elec-
toral vote for each 195,000 votes,
and giving California one elec-
toral vote for each 800,000 votes.
To balance the scale, California
should have 220 electoral votes.
The presidential election is the
only election in the country where
the majority or plurality doesn’t
win the election. Our politicians
wave the flag and say “Get out and
vote, every vote counts.” I voted
D
for Hillary, but some rancher in
Wyoming’s vote counted more
than mine, so actually every vote
doesn’t count.
Al Gore won the plurality back
in 2000. If Al Gore could have
moved into the White House,
there’s a good likelihood there
would have been no Iraq, no tax
break for the wealthy, $10 tril-
lion less debt (the cost of the tax
break and Iraq). There also would
be a good likelihood that the U.S.
would be leading the world in
alternative energy.
Now we soon will have Presi-
dent-elect Donald Trump, a lying
charlatan for president, who most
likely will do more damage than
Bush — if that is possible —
and still keep the country from
imploding.
The Electoral College has zero
chance of being repealed. Social
Security is in jeopardy, as well
as Obamacare. The climate com-
mitment Obama signed in Paris?
Trump vowed to tear it up. The
current almost 70 percent corpo-
rate-favored decisions will climb
to 80 percent, or more, for many
years to come. Roe vs. Wade is
gone within two years. Planned
Parenthood will probably be
another casualty.
Anyone who thinks that all
these things are good for the coun-
try is mired down in his wee-little-
world on a single issue that caused
him to vote for Trump in the first
place.
MURRAY E. STANLEY JR.
Astoria