OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 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
Small newspaper
takes on bully in
records fight
I
n an age of transparency the nexus of education, democracy
and technology should be creating an environment in which
public information is widely available.
But for some governmental entities, the age remains more
opaque than transparent. As conspiracy theory websites grow
in popularity and are given credence despite an absence of fact,
traditional media is increasingly denied access to the hard data
that reliable reports are based on. And sensing the upper hand,
government has become more aggressive about shutting down
public record releases and whistleblowers.
A perfect example of this obstructionist behavior by a gov-
ernmental board came up in Eastern Oregon last week after a
small weekly paper was denied public records and then faced a
lawsuit from the board it had
requested the records from.
Fortunately, it ended this
As conspiracy
week in favor of the newspa-
theory
per and the public, but it’s a
websites grow
lesson in needed reform.
The Malheur Enterprise,
in popularity
a weekly newspaper in Vale
and are given
with a circulation of about
1,300, published a detailed
credence
report about a con man
despite an
who avoided prison time
by feigning insanity in a
absence of
1996 kidnapping case. The
fact, traditional
Oregon Psychiatric Security
media is
Review Board, a 10-mem-
ber independent board that
increasingly
supervises people who have
denied access
asserted “guilty except for
insanity” defenses in crim-
to the hard
inal cases, discharged
data that
Anthony Montwheeler last
reliable reports
year, even though medical
officials said he was danger-
are based on.
ous. Less than a month later
he was accused of kidnap-
ping and killing his ex-wife, fleeing police and crashing into a
married couple on their way to work, killing the husband.
The newspaper’s in-depth story is the kind of reporting
that brings real insight to the way the criminal justice sys-
tem operates. It’s an incredible tale, one supported by facts
and evidence, research and the reputation of those sourced by
journalists.
What would have made the report more complete is docu-
mentation detailing Montwheeler’s mental evaluations — doc-
uments that were used as evidence at hearings of the Security
Review Board. When the board refused to release the records
to the Enterprise, the paper appealed the decision to Attorney
General Ellen Rosenblum’s office, which ruled last month that
the documents should be turned over.
The board had said it was worried that releasing medical
records publicly would violate laws intended to protect patient
privacy, and instead of complying, it sued the paper to keep
the records secret. The board said it filed suit because the law
required a state agency that has “legal concerns” about an AG’s
public records order to sue the requester to get a judge’s opin-
ion. To that end, the agency filed suit and hired a $400-an-hour
attorney on the taxpayers’ dime to argue the case in court.
Gov. Kate Brown intervened on Tuesday and called the cir-
cumstances “extraordinary.” She said the board agreed to drop
the lawsuit and release the records immediately. “I believe the
public is best served by bringing this matter to an end now,
rather than after a lengthy and costly litigation,” Brown said.
Brown also said the situation showed where the state’s pub-
lic records law needs improvement.
“This is plain wrong,” Brown said. “I have directed my staff
to explore solutions that would provide for swift judicial resolu-
tion without filing a lawsuit against a requester.”
The specific records provision certainly needs changing as
the case exemplifies, but the entire law should be subject to an
overhaul that favors more transparency and openness.
The owners of the Enterprise, Scotta Callister and Les Zaitz,
have deep backgrounds in rural journalism and weren’t intimi-
dated by bureaucracy or obstinance. Zaitz, a former Oregonian
reporter, says the paper received an outpouring of support from
people “offended by the legal mismatch.”
Zaitz said the case underscored the importance of public
access into what the government is doing. And he is hopeful it
will cultivate an environment in which real reform is possible.
“We appreciate the governor sparing the taxpayers and our
supporters a lengthy, costly legal battle,” Zaitz said. “This has
always been a matter of holding the state accountable, not aim-
lessly wandering through private medical files.”
In search of a good emperor
By ROSS DOUTHAT
New York Times News Service
O
ne of the hard truths of
human affairs is that diversity
and democracy do not go
easily together. In the Middle East
today as in Europe’s
not-so-distant past,
the transition from
authoritarianism to
popular sovereignty
seems to run
through ethnic or
religious purges. Worldwide, many
of the models of successful demo-
cratic government are effectively
ethno-states, built on past cleansings
or partitions or splendid isolation.
And in the West in recent years, both
mass immigration and cultural frag-
mentation have brought authoritarian
temptations back to life.
This pattern runs deep in our
species’ history. A new paper from
the economists Oded Galor and Marc
Klemp finds a strong correlation
between diversity and autocracy in
pre-colonial societies, with a legacy
that extends to today’s institutions
as well. The authors suggest that
authoritarianism emerges from both
bottom-up and top-down pressures:
A diverse society seeks strong central
institutions for the sake of cohesion
and productivity, and internal
division, stratification and mistrust
increase “the scope for domination”
by powerful elites.
Here in the United States we like
to think of ourselves as exceptions to
this rule — and, notwithstanding the
fate of the Native American tribes and
the legacy of chattel slavery, we have
been more successful at combining
republican self-government with
racial and religious diversity.
But at the same time we aren’t
exactly governing ourselves via New
England town meeting anymore. As
America has become larger, more
diverse and lately more fragmented,
power has grown ever more central-
ized in Washington, and the face of
that central government, the presi-
dency, has accrued more and more
authority. The caudillo-from-Queens
style of Donald Trump is unique
to the man himself, but it’s also an
outgrowth of trends that go back
generations. We still have republican
forms in place, but we also have a
kind of elected emperor who presides
over our enduring color lines, our
not-always-melted immigrants, our
increasing mistrustful sects and tribes
and classes.
The European Union doesn’t
have so singular a leader, but its
ruling class is in a similar situation
— they’re the custodians of a diverse
imperium, trying to preside over
Greeks and Germans, Scandinavians
and Sicilians, Christian natives and
Muslim immigrants, while wielding
powers that are at least one remove
from democratic accountability.
This means that in understanding
the challenge facing Western leader-
ship, it’s worth pondering the ways
in which the world’s authoritarian
regimes interact with ethnic and
religious diversity — exploiting it,
managing it, or both.
In one common pattern, author-
itarian rule evolves as a way for a
majority or plurality group to hold
power against the claims of diverse
minorities, and to impose a kind
of uniformity on weaker ethnic or
religious groups. The Erdogan regime
in Turkey and the Saudi monarchy’s
Sunni authoritarianism offer obvious
examples; so does the Han-Chinese
chauvinism of the Chinese Politburo,
the Orthodox-Christian Russian
nationalism of Putin, and many more.
In another pattern, an authoritarian
leader — sometimes from a minority
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
President Donald Trump and Jordan’s King Abdullah II leave their news
conference in the Rose Garden of the White House on Wednesday.
group himself — casts himself as
a protector of diversity, promising
to shield minorities who would be
threatened should a majoritarian
populism take power. This is the
pattern of the Assad family’s rule in
Syria, which has drawn support from
its own Alawite sect as well as Syrian
Christians and others fearful of what
Sunni rule might mean for them. The
Egyptian military regime, likewise,
promises to protect urbanites and
Coptic Christians from the Islamist
order that democracy might usher in.
There might
be a form of
nationalism
that helps
bind a diverse
society
together, but
Trump’s seems
more likely
to bind a ‘real
American’
ex-majority in
opposition to
every other
race and faith
and group.
These patterns have echoes in our
own imperial — er, presidential poli-
tics. The coalition that Barack Obama
built across two presidential elections
united minority constituencies with
the upper-class intelligentsia and
promised to champion their diverse
interests against the remains of the
country’s white Christian heartland
core. The Trump reaction was more
Erdoganian or Putinesque, promising
to protect a once-dominant majority,
to restore its privileges and reverse its
sense of cultural decline.
In Europe, meanwhile, the
European Union often seems to be
run for the benefit of Germans at
the center and ethnic minorities at
the periphery, favoring separatists
and immigrants over old national
majorities. The present populist surge
is, in its turn, an attempt to establish
a different dynamic between the
Continent’s diverse factions, in which
Germany has less power, more immi-
grants are turned away, and the old
nations reassert themselves as centers
of influence once more.
Neither continent is poised for a
real slide into autocracy — I think!
But on both, paradoxically, the cause
of liberal order might be better served
by leaders who took a slightly more
imperial perspective — not in the
sense of imposing policy at sword
point, but in the sense of realizing
that their societies are so diverse as to
require a more disinterested kind of
vision from their rulers.
Such a disinterested ruler — a
good emperor, let’s call him —
would see a crucial part of his role
as reassurance, recognizing that in a
diverse, fragmented and distrustful
landscape, any governing coalition is
going to look dangerous to those who
aren’t included in it. If he comes from
a historically dominant group and
speaks on their behalf, he needs to go
out of his way to address the anxieties
of minorities and newcomers. If
he’s building a coalition of minority
groups, he needs to reassure the
former majority that the country of
the future still has a place for them.
Whatever the basis of his power, he
needs to be constantly attuned to the
ways that diversity, difference and
distrust can make political conflict
seem far more existential than it
should.
Our last two chief executives
recognized that they needed to make
efforts along these lines, but with
exceptions — George W. Bush
after Sept. 11, Obama in his 2008
campaign — they were not partic-
ularly successful. In Obama’s case,
his White House failed to grasp the
feeling of abandonment and crisis in
the white heartland, and the extent
to which that feeling was creating a
new identity-based voting bloc. He
failed to grasp, too, how threatening
the regulatory state’s enforcement of
liberal sexual norms was to religious
conservatives, how much it made
them feel like strangers in their own
country.
From that alienation and fear
came Trump, who is barely even try-
ing to reach out and reassure, to make
his nationalism seem larger than just
white identity politics, to make the
groups who feel afraid of his admin-
istration sense that he has their anxiet-
ies in mind. There might be a form of
nationalism that helps bind a diverse
society together, but Trump’s seems
more likely to bind a “real American”
ex-majority in opposition to every
other race and faith and group.
His eventual successor, liberal or
conservative, should not seek to learn
from Assad or Erdogan or Putin. But
he (or she) might learn something
from an earlier age’s custodians of
diverse, fragmented societies — from
monarchies like that of the Austrian
Hapsburgs, in particular, that worked
to contain and balance religious and
ethnic divisions, to prevent disinte-
gration and forestall totalitarianism,
and might have succeeded longer
absent the folly of 1914.
If we’re going to have an impe-
rial presidency, we should want
a president who thinks less like a
party leader and more like a good
emperor — who doesn’t just divide
and conquer, but who tries to make
all his empire’s many peoples feel
like they’re safe and recognized and
home.