OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, DECEMBER 26, 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
A TRIBUTE
Populism, real and phony
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
A
Alex Pajunas/The Daily Astorian
Michael Foster at his home in 2010.
Foster believed
in Astoria when
others scoffed
I
f you ranked Astoria’s biggest curiosities, the Flavel home
at 15th Street and Franklin Avenue would get the top spot.
Close behind would be Michael Foster’s Irving Avenue
home — a three-storied pile that is equivalent to an art museum.
There are many ways of describing this town. And one is that
Astoria is one big attic. Foster created one of the biggest attics
within that attic.
I once spoke to Hal Snow about the size of Michael’s collec-
tion. Hal revealed that he was an executor of Michael’s estate.
“That’s why I hope I die first,” said Hal.
“Michael has things in drawers that he doesn’t know he has,”
said Snow. When Foster retained an art expert to catalogue his
collection, the curator listed 3,600 works. And, admitted Foster,
there remained an untold number of uncatalogued pieces.
When Michael’s remake of the Irving Avenue home was in an
early stage, he showed my wife and me the design elements that
would make that home such an unforgettable experience.
Foster was a sought-after designer. That caused a number of
people to retain him to decorate their living rooms. He did that
for my parents when they moved here in 1971. When I became
this newspaper’s editor in 1988, I wanted to put all of the paper’s
historical photos and documents in one room. I asked Michael to
hang them. Watching him work, I realized that he moved quickly
and entirely from intuition. There was no drawing to work from.
It was all in his head.
Belief in the future
In Astoria’s immediate postwar decline, Michael did an
important thing. He believed in the future of this place at a time
when Oregonians dismissed Astoria as a rundown backwater.
As John Goodenberger has noted, the town’s size did not limit
Michael’s imagination.
A case in point: High schools much larger than Astoria have
no scholarship fund of the size of the corpus of Astoria High
School Scholarships Inc.
Not all of Michael’s dreaming went somewhere. I watched
him sketch the concept of a plaza between the Astoria Post
Office and Clatsop County Courthouse, featuring a statue of
John Jacob Astor.
For Michael, Astoria’s darker history was a living memory.
His grandfather, Charles, was Astoria’s fire chief until the Ku
Klux Klan prevailed in the municipal election of 1922. Charles
was fired because he was Catholic. In 1927, he returned to
office.
Eccentric and visionary
Michael was idiosyncratic. He understood that. When we
assembled the book “Astorians: Eccentric and Extraordinary,”
for the town’s bicentennial, another man who was creatively
offbeat begged that we not include him among our cameos.
Michael embraced the concept of eccentricity with relish.
But Michael was an acquired taste. To serve on a board with
him involved — sooner or later — frustration. He did two great
things for the Liberty Theater’s restoration. He gilded a large
portion of the architectural decoration. And he hatched the idea
of creating a second-floor reception room, which became the
McTavish Room.
There is a theory that the most effective economic develop-
ment strategy for a town is to add and enhance elements that
make the place attractive to its residents. That is precisely what
Michael did. He was instrumental in making Astoria a rich cul-
tural experience. It is providential that he lived long enough to
see the town become a persona that was unimaginable just 25
years ago.
Steve Forrester is the former editor and publisher of The Daily Astorian.
uthoritarians with an animus
against ethnic minorities are on
the march across the Western world.
They control governments in Hun-
gary and Poland, and will soon take
power in the United States. And
they’re organizing across borders:
Austria’s Freedom
Party, founded by
former Nazis, has
signed an agree-
ment with Russia’s
ruling party — and
met with Donald
Trump’s choice for
national security adviser.
But what should we call these
groups? Many reporters are using
the term “populist,” which seems
inadequate and misleading. I guess
racism can be considered popu-
list in the sense that it represents
the views of some non-elite people.
But are the other shared features of
this movement — addiction to con-
spiracy theories, indifference to the
rule of law, a penchant for punish-
ing critics — really captured by the
“populist” label?
Still, the European members of
this emerging alliance — an axis of
evil? — have offered some real ben-
efits to workers. Hungary’s Fidesz
party has provided mortgage relief
and pushed down utility prices.
Poland’s Law and Justice party has
increased child benefits, raised the
minimum wage and reduced the
retirement age. France’s National
Front is running as a defender of
that nation’s extensive welfare state
— but only for the right people.
Trumpism is, however, different.
The campaign rhetoric may have
included promises to keep Medi-
care and Social Security intact and
replace Obamacare with something
“terrific.” But the emerging policy
agenda is anything but populist.
All indications are that we’re
looking at huge windfalls for bil-
lionaires combined with savage cuts
in programs that serve not just the
poor but also the middle class. And
the white working class, which pro-
vided much of the 46 percent Trump
vote share, is shaping up as the big-
gest loser.
True, we don’t yet have detailed
policy proposals. But Trump’s Cab-
inet choices show which way the
wind is blowing.
Both his pick as budget director
and his choice to head Health and
Human Services want to disman-
tle the Affordable Care Act and pri-
vatize Medicare. His choice as labor
secretary is a fast-food tycoon who
has been a vociferous opponent of
Obamacare and of minimum wage
hikes. And House Republicans have
submitted plans for drastic cuts in
Social Security, including a sharp
rise in the retirement age.
What would these policies do?
Obamacare led to big declines in the
number of the uninsured in regions
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
President-elect Donald Trump attends a meeting at Mar-a-Lago in
Palm Beach, Fla.
This epic bait-and-switch,
this betrayal of supporters,
certainly offers Democrats a
political opportunity. But you
know that there will be huge
efforts to shift the blame.
that voted Trump this year, and
repealing it would undo all those
gains. The nonpartisan Urban Insti-
tute estimates that repeal would
cause 30 million Americans —
16 million of them non-Hispanic
whites — to lose health coverage.
And no, there won’t be a “ter-
rific” replacement: Republican plans
would cover only a fraction as many
people as the law they would dis-
place, and they’d be different people
— younger, healthier and richer.
Converting Medicare into a
voucher system would also amount
to a severe benefit cut, partly
because it would lead to lower gov-
ernment spending, partly because
a significant fraction of spending
would be diverted into the over-
head and profits of private insurance
companies. And raising the retire-
ment age for Social Security would
hit especially hard among Ameri-
cans whose life expectancy has stag-
nated or declined, or who have dis-
abilities that make it hard for them
to continue working — problems
that are strongly correlated with
Trump votes.
In other words, the movement
that’s about to take power here
isn’t the same as Europe’s far-right
movements. It may share their rac-
ism and contempt for democracy;
but European populism is at least
partly real, while Trumpist populism
is turning out to be entirely fake, a
scam sold to working-class voters
who are in for a rude awakening.
Will the new regime pay a politi-
cal price?
Well, don’t count on it. This epic
bait-and-switch, this betrayal of sup-
porters, certainly offers Democrats a
political opportunity. But you know
that there will be huge efforts to
shift the blame. These will include
claims that the collapse of health
care is really President Barack
Obama’s fault; claims that the fail-
ure of alternatives is somehow the
fault of recalcitrant Democrats; and
an endless series of attempts to dis-
tract the public.
Expect more Carrier-style stunts
that don’t actually help workers
but dominate a news cycle. Expect
lots of fulmination against minori-
ties. And it’s worth remembering
what authoritarian regimes tradition-
ally do to shift attention from failing
policies, namely, find some foreign-
ers to confront. Maybe it will be a
trade war with China, maybe some-
thing worse.
Opponents need to do all they
can to defeat such strategies of dis-
traction. Above all, they shouldn’t
let themselves be sucked into coop-
eration that leaves them sharing part
of the blame. The perpetrators of
this scam should be forced to own
it.
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