OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 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
Answers are
needed before
military arrives
D
iscussions about using part of Tongue Point for U.S.
Army training will raise questions about the considerable
benefits — and a few potential downsides — of having a
more active military presence in our area.
When it comes to military bases, there’s little doubt that most
communities regard the cost/benefit ratio as highly positive.
Locally, U.S. Coast Guard Sector Columbia River and the
Camp Rilea Armed Forces Training Center support many civil-
ian jobs and produce millions in retail spending, rents and other
benefits. Coast Guard personnel are particularly appreciated for
civic and economic contributions both during and after active
service. It’s impossible to imagine this place without them.
In modern memory, there have been few downsides to mili-
tary use of local land, water and airspace. Military aircraft occa-
sionally rattle windows, for example. There is ongoing con-
cern among wildlife defenders about naval sonar exercises off
the coast that have been implicated in problems experienced by
marine mammals. Legacy soil contamination from the World
War II and Korea era still persists in some spots.
Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s interest in using part of South
Tongue Point for “infiltration and exfiltration training, as well
as other unconventional warfare scenario training” is, for now,
more ambiguous in terms of local costs and benefits.
It can be fairly argued that we all gain by having better-pre-
pared soldiers in this era of wildly unpredictable challenges. The
landowner, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has offered some
assurances that Clatsop Community College would still be able
to operate its increasingly successful Marine and Environmental
Research and Training Station in the same area. It is important
to nail down the details in writing and to understand any ways
in which training might even temporarily impact land and water
access.
As college President Christopher Breitmeyer has observed,
it’s also increasingly necessary for CCC to acquire state land at
Tongue Point to help ensure a long-term future for its promising
maritime classes.
The Army’s Tongue Point ideas are only a fraction of the
armed services’ overall thoughts for using parts of the Lower
Columbia region and offshore waters for transitory training and
other purposes. For example he U.S. Navy has floated the idea
of using coastal state parks in Southwest Washington to train
its Special Warfare or SEAL Team units. And in June 2015,
the Army disclosed its intention to designate a large helicopter
training area encompassing much of Washington’s Pacific and
Wahkiakum counties, plus parts of Lewis and Cowlitz counties.
As a general matter, we should be proud to share our area in
the national interest. But we must remain mindful of the need
to ensure that any negative impacts are communicated to mili-
tary leadership and dealt with in a responsive and constructive
manner. It will be interesting to see what comes of some of these
plans.
Patriotic opposition to Trump
By CHARLES M. BLOW
New York Times News Service
N
othing is safe or sacrosanct
in Donald Trump’s devel-
oping governance team,
and America had better start being
alarmed about it
and moving to
actively oppose it.
The time for vot-
ing has elapsed, but
the time for being
vocal has emerged.
Let’s take the tally:
He has chosen a man hostile to
immigrants and with a complicated
— to put it mildly — history on
race to be attorney general.
He has chosen a man who is
anti-abortion, pro-fetal “person-
hood,” and anti-Obamacare to be
secretary of health and human
services.
He has chosen a man who has
criticized paid sick-leave policies
and opposes increasing the federal
minimum wage to lead the Depart-
ment of Labor.
He has chosen a climate change
denier and anti-environmental-reg-
ulation crusader to lead the Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency.
He has chosen a vocal propo-
nent of school vouchers to run the
Department of Education.
In a way, Trump seems to be
trying to destroy these agencies
from the inside out, the way a
worm slowly devours an apple.
Furthermore, he is stacking
these jobs with people who have
given him cash. According to The
Washington Post:
“President-elect Donald Trump
has now tapped six big donors and
fundraisers to serve in his adminis-
tration, lining up an unprecedented
concentration of wealthy backers
for top posts. Together with their
families, Trump’s nominees gave
$11.6 million to support his presi-
dential bid, his allied super PACs
and the Republican National Com-
mittee, according to a Washington
Post analysis of federal campaign
filings.”
Trump’s defense: “I want people
that made a fortune!”
And, just as the CIA was assert-
ing that Russia meddled in our
election specifically to provide suc-
cor to this sap, reports emerged
that Trump’s likely pick for secre-
tary of state is Exxon’s chief execu-
tive, who has close ties to Vladimir
Putin. Daddy Warbucks is hellbent
on appeasing Mother Russia.
Not alone
Angry yet? Yes. Good!
And understand this: You are
not alone; you aren’t even in the
minority.
A Pew Research Center report
published last week found:
“Trump also receives low marks
for his initial Cabinet choices and
other high level appointments. By
51 percent to 40 percent, more say
they disapprove than approve of
the Cabinet choices and appoint-
ments Trump has made so far. In
contrast, majorities approved of
the choices made” by the past four
presidents-elect. “In fact, approval
ratings for Trump’s cabinet choices
are 18 points lower than for the
next lowest-rated president-elect.”
The beautiful
diversity of
America, and
indeed all
of humanity,
will always
outshine the
darkness of
racial enmity.
Furthermore, the report found:
“Just 37 percent of the pub-
lic views Trump as well-quali-
fied; 32 percent of registered voters
described Trump as well-qualified
in October. Majorities continue to
say Trump is reckless (65 percent)
and has poor judgment (62 percent),
while 68 percent describe him as
‘hard to like.’”
Since the election I have heard
from more people than I can count
who express fear and anxiety about
Trump and the future of the coun-
try. There is a stifling sense of
discontent and foreboding and
apprehension.
I know that it can feel like we
are all drowning in a deluge of
compounding outrages, with every
headline about this impending
administration appearing to one-up
the last, but take heart.
You may have been on the losing
side of this year’s election, but you
are on the right side of history. In
the final tally, courage will always
defeat fear; love will always con-
quer hate; the beautiful diversity of
America, and indeed all of human-
ity, will always outshine the dark-
ness of racial enmity.
This is the reason I write, to
remind people of honor and cour-
age; to tell them that their cause
isn’t lost, that their destiny is
victory.
Maybe I am confined by my
craft, pumping out polemics that,
it is my great hope, help to stiffen
the spines and lift the spirits of
those determined to stare down the
threat. Language, in that way, holds
the possibility of transcendence
and conscription. One of the first
and most essential ways to mobi-
lize around a cause is to establish its
moral framing.
In a 1780 letter written to a fel-
low revolutionary considering
“retiring into private life,” staunch
abolitionist Samuel Adams — a
man strongly opposed to slavery
and therefore one of my favorite
founders — wrote:
“If ever the Time should come,
when vain & aspiring Men shall
possess the highest Seats in Gov-
ernment, our Country will stand
in Need of its experiencd Patri-
ots to prevent its Ruin. There may
be more Danger of this, than some,
even of our well disposd Citizens
may imagine. If the People should
grant their Suffrages to Men, only
because they conceive them to have
been Friends to the Country, with-
out Regard to the necessary Qualifi-
cations for the Places they are to fill,
the Administration of Government
will become a mere Farce, and our
pub-lick Affairs will never be put on
the Footing of solid Security.”
There is no other time to which
this could apply more perfectly than
now. This is not the time for the
“retiring” of “experiencd patriots.”
A “vain and aspiring” man now
possesses the highest seat in gov-
ernment and the administration of
the government is on the verge of
becoming a farce.
America needs you … now.
Speak up.
Tweets and theater entertain, but Congress is the main event
By CHARLES
KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
W
ASHINGTON — The
most amusing part of the
Trump transition has been
watching its effortless confound-
ing of the media,
often in fewer than
140 characters. One
morning, after a
Fox News report
on lefty nuttiness at
some obscure New
England college — a flag burning
that led a more-contemptible-than-
usual campus administration to take
down the school’s own American
flag — Donald Trump tweets that
flag burners should go to jail or lose
their citizenship.
An epidemic of constitutional
chin tugging and civil libertarian
hair pulling immediately breaks
out. By the time the media have
exhausted their outrage over the
looming abolition of free speech,
judicial supremacy and affordable
kale, Trump has moved on. The
tempest had a shorter half-life than
the one provoked in August 2015
by a Trump foray into birthright
citizenship.
Trump so thoroughly owns the
political stage today that the word
Clinton seems positively quaint and
Barack Obama, who happens to
be president of the United States,
is totally irrelevant. Obama gave a
major national security address on
Tuesday. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s
son got more attention.
Unpresidential
Trump has mesmerized the
national media not just with his
elaborate Cabinet-selection produc-
tion, by now Broadway-ready. But
with a cluster of equally theatrical
personal interventions that by tra-
ditional standards seem distinctly
unpresidential.
It’s a matter of size. They seem
small for a president. Preventing
the shutdown of a Carrier factory in
Indiana. Announcing, in a contex-
tless 45-second surprise statement,
a major Japanese investment in the
U.S. Calling for cancellation of the
new Air Force One to be built by
Boeing.
Pretty small stuff. It has the feel
of a Cabinet undersecretary haggling
with a contractor or a state governor
drumming up business on a Central
Asian trade mission. Or of candidate
Trump selling Trump steaks and
Trump wine in that bizarre victory
speech after the Michigan primary.
Presidents don’t normally do
such things. It shrinks them. But
then again, Trump is not yet presi-
dent. And the point here is less the
substance than the symbolism.
The Carrier coup was meant to
demonstrate the kind of concern for
the working man that gave Trump
the Rust Belt victories that carried
him to the presidency. The Japa-
nese SoftBank announcement was
a down payment on his promise to
be the “the greatest jobs president
that God ever created.” (A slightly
dubious claim: After all, how instru-
mental was Trump to that invest-
ment? Surely a financial commit-
ment of that magnitude would have
been planned long before Election
Day.) And Boeing was an ostenta-
tious declaration that he would be
the zealous guardian of government
spending that you would expect
from a crusading outsider.
Logic to it
What appears as random Trum-
pian impulsiveness has a logic to it.
It’s a continuation of the campaign.
Trump is acutely sensitive to his
legitimacy problem, as he showed
in his tweet claiming to have actu-
ally won the popular vote, despite
trailing significantly in the official
count. His best counter is approval
ratings. In August, the Bloomberg
poll had him at 33 percent. He’s now
up to 50 percent. Still nowhere near
Obama’s stratospheric 79 percent at
this point in 2008, but a substantial
improvement nonetheless.
The mini-interventions are work-
ing but there’s a risk for Trump in
so personalizing his coming pres-
idency. It’s a technique borrowed
from Third World strongmen who
specialize in demonstrating their
personal connection to the ordi-
nary citizen. In a genuine democ-
racy, however, the endurance of any
political support depends on the
larger success of the country. And
that doesn’t come from Carrier-size
fixes. It comes from policy — pol-
icy that fundamentally changes the
structures and alters the trajectory of
the nation.
“I alone can fix it,” Trump ring-
ingly declared in his convention
speech. Indeed, alone he can do
Carrier and SoftBank and Boeing.
But ultimately he must deliver on
tax reform, health care, economic
growth and nationwide job creation.
That requires Congress.
The 115th is Republican and
ready to push through the legislation
that gives life to the promises. On
his part, Trump needs to avoid need-
less conflict. The Republican lead-
ership has already signaled strong
opposition on some issues, such
as tariffs for job exporters. None-
theless, there is enough common
ground between Trump and his con-
gressional majority to have an enor-
mously productive 2017. The chal-
lenge will be to stay within the
bounds of the GOP consensus.
Trump will continue to tweet
and the media will continue take the
bait. Highly entertaining but it is
a sideshow. Congress is where the
fate of the Trump presidency will be
decided.