OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 2017
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
Washington
state should
follow Oregon
on gillnetting The politics of cowardice
T
he Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission is to be com-
mended for recognizing that a 2013 policy dictated by
former Gov. John Kitzhaber to kick commercial salmon
fishing off the Columbia River has failed.
It isn’t just Lower Columbia River residents who think
so. Bobby Levy, former commission chair, commented on
Facebook, “Oregon Fish and Wildlife commissioners did the
fair and right thing! I applaud you!!” Levy led the commis-
sion in 2012 and 2013 when the two fish and wildlife commis-
sions of Oregon and Washington state headed down the path to
implementing the Kitzhaber scheme.
Never fully thought out, gutting a centurylong tradition of
supplying local consumers with some of the salmon we sup-
port with our taxes and electric rates was largely the prod-
uct of intense lobbying by one subset of recreational fishing,
embodied by the Northwest Sportsfishing Industry Association.
A long-successful alliance between different salmon-fishing
interests was cast aside, resulting in a loss of important uni-
fied advocacy for salmon recovery in the Columbia estuary and
basin.
Evicting gillnetters from the main stem of the Columbia by
the end of 2016 was premised on a number of assumptions,
including:
• Successful alternative methods were supposed to be devel-
oped to gillnets, including seine nets deployed from vessels
and the shoreline. These alternatives have failed to achieve
goals in terms of catching fish or allowing naturally spawning
salmon to be freed unharmed and returned to the water.
• Additional areas were supposed to be identified and devel-
oped where hatchery salmon could be reared in net pens.
These select area fishery enhancement projects, like the one
that already exists in Youngs Bay, nurture salmon that are spe-
cifically intended to be caught by commercial gillnetters.
However, there are few locations suitable for such projects —
nowhere near enough to replace the opportunities provided in
the river’s main stem.
• Commercial fishermen were to be kept financially whole
via state compensation, license and equipment buybacks and
other measures. The states have failed to put their money
where their mouths were, at least to an adequate extent to make
up for the damages caused by the Kitzhaber scheme.
The right thing
Oregon did the right thing with its open-ended deferral of
dispossessing gillnetters of their livelihoods. Washington state
commissioners, however, are motoring ahead with fishing
restrictions.
This conflict between fishing regulations in the two states
will require resolution. Oregon has jurisdiction over most of
the Columbia estuary, with Washington controlling only a nar-
row band of water close to the north shore. Presumably, a
short-term compromise can be worked out. In the longer term,
a majority of Washington’s commission appears committed to
eliminating gillnetting on the river, even calling for an aggres-
sive license buyback program.
This comes at the same time the Washington agency is
cranking down commercial fishing on Willapa Bay, asserting
escaped hatchery Chinook have now become “natural” salmon
worthy of full-fledged conservation protections. This is disap-
pointing. At the time of the 2013 decision to remove gillnets
from the main Columbia, many envisioned Willapa could host
some replacement commercial fishing, in effect becoming a
fishery enhancement area.
Sports fishing vital
None of this means recreational fishing is unimportant or
under-valued by the communities of the Columbia River and
Willapa Bay. Sports fishing is a vital part of our local culture
and economy. We would be at least equally opposed to curtail-
ing recreational fisheries as we are to the ill-considered moves
against gillnetting.
But by chopping gillnetting, Washington state directly
threatens the financial stability of local families. There are fish-
ing families who will no longer be able to anchor their lives
here without the income that seasonal gillnetting represents.
These are men and women who will no longer shop in local
stores, children who will no longer attend local schools.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee should let his appointed com-
missioners know it’s time to go back to the drawing board and
find a true path to the future for Columbia River commercial
fishing.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
President Donald Trump, center, grabs the hand of Defense Secretary James Mattis, right, after he signed
an executive action on rebuilding the military during an event at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on
Friday. Vice President Mike Pence watches, left.
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times News Service
T
his is a column directed
at high school and college
students. I’m going to try to
convey to you how astoundingly
different the
Republican Party
felt when I was
your age.
The big
guy then was
Ronald Reagan.
Temperamentally, though not
politically, Reagan was heir to the
two Roosevelts. He inherited a love
of audacity from TR and optimism
and charm from FDR.
He had a sunny faith in
America’s destiny and in America’s
ability to bend global history
toward freedom. He had a sunny
faith in the free market to deliver
prosperity to all. He had a sunny
faith in the power of technology to
deliver bounty and even protect us
from nuclear missiles.
He could be very hard on big
government or the Soviet Union,
but he generally saw the world as
a welcoming place; he looked for
the good news in others and saw
the arc of history bending toward
progress.
When he erred it was often
on the utopian side of things,
believing that tax cuts could pay
for themselves, believing that he
and Mikhail Gorbachev could shed
history and eliminate all nuclear
weapons.
The mood of the party is so
different today. Donald Trump
expressed the party’s new mood to
David Muir of ABC, when asked
about his decision to suspend
immigration from some Muslim
countries: “The world is a mess.
The world is as angry as it gets.
What, you think this is going to
cause a little more anger? The
world is an angry place.”
Consider the tenor of Trump’s
first week in office. It’s all about
threat perception. He has made
moves to build a wall against the
Mexican threat, to build barriers
against the Muslim threat, to end
a trade deal with Asia to fight the
foreign economic threat, to build
black site torture chambers against
the terrorist threat.
Trump is on his political honey-
moon, which should be a moment
of joy and promise. But he seems
to suffer from an angry form of
anhedonia, the inability to experi-
ence happiness. Instead of savoring
the moment, he’s spent the week in
a series of nasty squabbles about
his ratings and crowd sizes.
If Reagan’s dominant emotional
note was optimism, Trump’s is
fear. If Reagan’s optimism was
expansive, Trump’s fear propels
him to close in: Pull in from Asian
entanglements through rejection of
the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Pull
in from European entanglements
by disparaging NATO. It’s not a
cowering, timid fear; it’s more a
dark, resentful porcupine fear.
Trump has
changed
the way the
Republican
Party sees
the world.
Republicans
used to have
a basic faith in
the dynamism
and openness
of the free
market. Now
the party fears
openness and
competition.
We have a word for people who
are dominated by fear. We call
them cowards. Trump was not a
coward in the business or campaign
worlds. He could take on enormous
debt and had the audacity to appear
at televised national debates with
no clue what he was talking about.
But as president his is a policy
of cowardice. On every front, he
wants to shrink the country into a
shell.
J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “A
man that flies from his fear may
find that he has only taken a short-
cut to meet it.”
Desperate to be liked, Trump
adopts a combative attitude that
makes him unlikable. Terrified
of Mexican criminals, he wants
to build a wall that will actually
lock in more undocumented aliens
than it will keep out. Terrified of
Muslim terrorists, he embraces
the torture policies guaranteed to
mobilize terrorists. Terrified that
U.S. business can’t compete with
Asian business, he closes off a
trade deal that would have boosted
annual real incomes in the United
States by $131 billion, or 0.5 per-
cent of GDP. Terrified of Mexican
competition, he considers slapping
a 20 percent tariff on Mexican
goods, even though U.S. exports to
Mexico have increased 97 percent
since 2005.
Trump has changed the way
the Republican Party sees the
world. Republicans used to have
a basic faith in the dynamism
and openness of the free market.
Now the party fears openness and
competition.
In summer 2015, according
to a Pew Research Center poll,
Republicans said free trade deals
had been good for the country by
51 to 39 percent. By summer 2016,
Republicans said those deals had
been bad for America by 61 per-
cent to 32 percent.
It’s not that the deals had
changed, or reality. It was that
Donald Trump became the
Republican nominee and his dark
fearfulness became the party’s dark
fearfulness. In this case fear is not
a reaction to the world. It is a way
of seeing the world. It propels your
reactions to the world.
As Reagan came to office he
faced refugee crises, with suffering
families coming in from Cuba,
Vietnam and Cambodia. Filled
with optimism and confidence,
Reagan vowed, “We shall seek new
ways to integrate refugees into our
society,” and he delivered on that
promise.
Trump faces a refugee crisis
from Syria. And though no Syrian-
American has ever committed an
act of terrorism on American soil,
Trump’s response is fear. Shut
them out.
Students, the party didn’t used
to be this way. A mean wind is
blowing.