OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, DECEMBER 29, 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
Don’t applaud just
yet for proposed
wave-energy facility
M
uch high-level political praise was heaped on a federal
OK this month for a wave-energy test facility in
Newport — some of it justified.
Making electricity from the ocean’s always undulating waves
has been a dream for decades. The European Marine Energy
Centre lists 256 companies and other entities working on various
wave power concepts.
Wave-energy converter machines run the gamut of human
ingenuity. They depend on varying levels of complexity — it’s
possible to conceive of some being relatively straightforward to
maintain, while others seem unlikely to survive for long.
The Newport facility authorized by Congress and the U.S.
Department of Energy aims to “play an integral role in moving
forward on the testing and refinement of wave energy technol-
ogies,” its director said. Testing at the new center will provide
proof of concept for inventions, a crucial last step before com-
mercial installation.
Modern civilization lives on electricity. The old ways of mak-
ing it — primarily by burning various forms of fossil fuels —
are running their course. It’s essential that we perfect technol-
ogies that don’t produce greenhouse gases. (Never mind our
recent cold snap relating to the end of a record El Niño: 2016 is
almost certain to be the warmest year in human history, accord-
ing to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)
Considering the increasing need for clean power, why might
anyone be less than enthusiastic about the Newport facility?
For one thing, it may not happen. Though it has been autho-
rized, funds have not been appropriated. The new Trump admin-
istration is putting a Southern politician described as a “fierce
deficit hawk” in charge of the budget.
Other concerns — if wave energy moves toward implementa-
tion here — include conflicts with fishermen and other existing
users of near-shore waters. Transmitting electricity to the inter-
state grid also presents some monumental challenges.
All this means that while we can join in applauding move-
ment toward wave energy, any real celebration remains drasti-
cally premature for now.
‘The Boy Scout’ earns
his new leadership post
W
hen Jeff Merkley was speaker of the Oregon House of
Representatives, his close attention to members and
his ability to count votes earned him the nickname
“the Boy Scout.” That capability has apparently been recognized
in Merkley’s seventh year as Oregon’s junior U.S. senator.
Last week, the new Senate Minority Leader, Charles Schumer
of New York, gave Merkley the position of chief deputy whip.
The importance of this appointment is, as Merkley said last
Friday, “it gets you into the leadership meetings.”
Merkley has also gained a seat on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. That plays to his undergraduate and grad-
uate work at Stanford and Princeton universities — in interna-
tional relations.
Each Congress has a different personality, and that is even
more so for the Senate. The institution was designed to be a
brake on a runaway House of Representatives or a reckless pres-
ident. “Much of the political story of the Republic is the story
of intermittent contest between the Senate and the Presidency,”
wrote William S. White in his classic 1956 work, Citadel.
As a new member of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Merkley will have an opportunity to question
Donald Trump’s controversial nominee for secretary of state,
Rex Tillerson. Of the president-elect, Merkley last Friday said,
“I am most concerned about having someone with his emo-
tional immaturity and high ego needs in control of the nuclear
weapons.”
More broadly Merkley said, “Right now, the (Trump) Cabinet
nominations are counter to the messages of his campaign. He
was going to take on Wall Street. But he’s handed it over to
Goldman Sachs.”
Success in politics is largely about luck and getting a break.
Merkley had the good fortune to challenge Sen. Gordon Smith
when Smith was weakened by the growing disaffection for the
Iraq War. And now Sen. Schumer has decided to give Merkley a
large measure of responsibility. Another big break.
Jeff Merkley’s unassuming exterior masks a relentless intel-
lect and assiduous attention to detail. This new assignment is
pregnant with opportunity for “the Boy Scout.”
Building the Trump-era matrix
By ROSS DOUTHAT
New York Times News Service
escalation everywhere.
Authority vs. chaos
A
nyone who tells you, with
perfect confidence, what a
Trump administration will do
is either bluffing or a fool. We have a
prospective Cabinet
and a White House
staff, but we
haven’t got the first
idea how the two
will fit together or
how the man at the
top will preside over it all.
What we can do is set up a matrix
to help assess the Trump era as it
proceeds, in which each develop-
ment gets plotted along two axes.
The first axis, the X-axis, represents
possibilities for Trumpist policy,
the second, the Y-axis, scenarios
for Donald Trump’s approach to
governance.
The policy axis runs from full
populism at one end to predictable
conservative orthodoxy on the
other. A full populist presidency
would give us tariffs and trade wars,
an infrastructure bill that would
have Robert Moses doing back
flips, a huge wall and E-Verify and
untouched entitlements and big tax
cuts for the middle class. On foreign
policy it would be Henry Kissinger
meets Andrew Jackson: Détente
with Russia, no nation-building
anywhere, and a counterterrorism
strategy that shoots, bombs and
drones first and asks questions later.
In an orthodox-conservative
Trump presidency, on the other hand,
congressional Republicans would
run domestic policy and Trump
would simply sign their legislation:
A repeal of Obamacare without an
obvious replacement, big tax cuts for
the rich, and the Medicare reform
of Paul Ryan’s fondest dreams.
On foreign policy, it would offer
hawkishness with a dose of idealistic
rhetoric — meaning brinkmanship
with Vladimir Putin plus military
The second axis, the possibilities
for how Trump governs, runs from
ruthless authoritarianism at one end
to utter chaos at the other. Under the
authoritarian scenario, Trump would
act on all his worst impulses with
malign efficiency. The media would
be intimidated, Congress would be
gelded, the Trump family would
enrich itself fantastically — and
then, come a major terrorist attack,
Trump would jail or intern anyone
he deemed a domestic enemy.
At the other end of this axis,
Trump and his team would be too
hapless to effectively oppress any-
one, and the Trump era would just
be a rolling disaster — with the deep
state in revolt, the media circling
greedily and any serious damage
done by accident rather than design.
Trump’s transition can be charted
along both axes. On policy, much
of his Cabinet falls closer to the
conventional conservative end, with
appointees like Tom Price and Betsy
DeVos, who would be at home in a
Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or even
Jeb! administration.
On the other hand, his inner circle
will have its share of truer Trumpists.
Stephen Bannon is intent on remak-
ing the GOP along nationalist lines,
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump
seem eager for their paterfamilias
to negotiate with Democrats, Peter
Navarro is girding for a trade war
with China. And Trump’s foreign
policy choices — especially Rex
Tillerson at State — seem closer
to full-Trumpist realpolitik than to
Reaganism-as-usual.
On the governance axis, the
president-elect’s strong-arming of
the private sector, his media-bashing
tweets and his feud with the intel-
ligence community all suggest an
authoritarian timeline ahead.
But anyone who fears incompe-
tence more than tyranny has plenty
of evidence as well. Trump’s tweets
might be a sign not of an incipient
autocrat but of an unstable president
who will undermine himself at every
step. He has no cushion in popular
opinion: If things go even somewhat
badly, his political capital will go
very fast indeed. He has plenty of
hacks, wild cards and misfit toys
occupying positions of real respon-
sibility — and his White House has
already had its first sex scandal!
Then, finally, there is the ques-
tion of how the axes interact. A
populist-authoritarian combination
might seem natural, with Trump
using high-profile deviations from
conservative orthodoxy to boost his
popularity even as he runs rough-
shod over republican norms.
But you could also imagine an
authoritarian-orthodox conservative
combination, in which congressio-
nal Republicans accept the most
imperial of presidencies because it’s
granting them tax rates and entitle-
ment reforms they have long desired.
Or you could imagine a totally
incompetent populism, in which
Trump flies around the country
holding rallies while absolutely
nothing in Washington gets done ...
or a totally incompetent populism
that ultimately empowers conven-
tional conservatism, because Trump
decides that governing isn’t worth
it and just lets Paul Ryan run the
country.
Sweet spot
As for what we should actually
hope for — well, the center of the
matrix seems like the sweet spot for
the country: A Trump presidency
that is competent-enough without
being dictatorial and that provides a
populist corrective to conservatism
without taking us all the way to
mercantilism or a debt crisis.
But this is Donald Trump we’re
talking about, so a happy medium
seems unlikely. Along one axis or
the other, bet on the extremes.
A letter to Trump about health care
By DAVID LEONHARDT
New York Times News Service
D
ear Mr. President-elect:
Your position on uni-
versal health insurance has
been admirably clear. You support
it. You did before
you ran for presi-
dent and continued
to do so in the
campaign.
In 2000, you
wrote, “We must
have universal health care.” In a
Fox News debate last year, you
said, “We have to take care of the
people that can’t take care of them-
selves.” On “60 Minutes,” you said,
“Everybody’s got to be covered.”
I am writing to you now because
I am concerned that Republicans
in Congress do not share your goal
and are not giving you good advice.
I’m worried that they are not acting
in the best interests of your presi-
dency or the country. I encourage
you to be skeptical of them.
It is entirely possible for you to
sign a conservative health care bill
that lives up to your belief in uni-
versal coverage. It’s a bill that you
could celebrate as a replacement of
Obamacare. But it would be quite
different from the bills that con-
gressional Republicans are pushing.
When they claim that their bills
will not take health insurance away
from millions, they’re engaging in
magical thinking. They are trying to
fool the media, voters and you.
They are focusing on a strategy
of “repeal and delay,” in which
parts of Obamacare will remain for
months or years. In the intervening
time, they say, they will somehow
keep people from losing insurance.
But they do not have a realistic
plan, despite years of talk. Nor, to
be blunt, does your choice for sec-
retary of health and human services,
who is one of those congressional
Republicans. And a repeal is likely
to undermine insurance markets
long before its effective date.
Businessman
Mr. President-elect, you are a
businessman. You understand savvy
executives don’t simply live in the
present. They look to the future.
They’re fond of quoting Wayne
Gretzky: “Skate to where the puck
is going, not where it has been.”
Insurance executives can see
through the magical thinking
of politicians. They know that
a functioning insurance market
must include both healthy and sick
people. There are very few ways
to guarantee this combination.
Without Obamacare’s subsidies to
help people buy coverage and its
mandate (weak as it is) to require
they have coverage, markets will
break down. The healthy will leave,
the sick will stay and costs will
soar.
After a repeal is signed, the
uncertainty will give insurers rea-
son to exit quickly.
The chaos runs a risk of leav-
ing millions of people without
insurance early in your presidency.
Many of them will be members
of the white working class who
voted for you. Everyone who loses
insurance will be grist for criticism
of you.
As you know, the Republican
leaders in Congress have never
been your biggest fans. I think it’s
fair to say that they care more about
being able to brag that they got
rid of Obamacare than about your
political standing. The bills they are
considering threaten your standing.
Alternatives
But you have alternatives.
The crucial first step is to avoid
repealing the insurance expansion
without simultaneously replacing
it. The new Congress comes to
Washington next week, and its
members should know where you
stand from the beginning. It won’t
work to promise millions of people
health insurance on spec.
If you avoid this trap, you can
push both parties toward a different
version of universal coverage.
That deal could give states
more flexibility to meet the top-
line coverage goals. It could rely
more heavily on subsidies to bring
healthy people into the market —
and ultimately scrap the mandate.
It could permit insurers to charge
young people less (and older people
more). It could create incentives for
personal responsibility, allowing
higher prices for people who have
voluntarily gone without insurance.
I will be honest that I do not
favor some of these ideas and worry
that they would cause hardships.
But I was not elected president, and
you were. And all of these ideas are
within the realm of serious debate
about our health care system.
For your sake and the country’s,
I hope you insist that Congress
deals in reality. Magical thinking
isn’t good for a presidency.