OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
E
ach week we recognize those people and organizations
in the community deserving of public praise for the good
things they do to make the North Coast a better place to
live, and also those who should be called out for their actions.
SHOUTOUTS
This week’s Shoutouts go to:
• Georgia-Pacific’s Wauna Mill, which donated $20,000
toward a large playground at a park and boat launch on 27 acres
of land in Westport that the mill gave to the county several years
ago. At the time, the land was valued at $230,000. The coun-
ty’s planned site upgrades are expected to take more than a year
to complete, and will also include a picnic area, restrooms and
a refurbished boat launch. The entire project is estimated to cost
$900,000.
• Organizers within the Cannon Beach Gallery Group of the
ninth annual Plein Air & More arts festival last weekend which
drew thousands to the area. More than 30 artists from across
the Northwest created art on location throughout Cannon Beach
and at 10 participating galleries while interacting with onlookers
as they worked. The artists created in different paint mediums
along with other art forms including metalworking, printmaking,
woodworking, stone carving, bronze sculpture, jewelry making
and fused or blown glass.
Submitted Photo
Megan Schacher, right, was chosen Miss Scandinavia and Miss
Finland at the Astoria Scandinavian Midsummer Festival.
• Megan Schacher, who was crowned Miss Scandinavia and
Miss Finland at the recent Astoria Scandinavian Midsummer
Festival. The festival is an annual celebration of the area’s deep
Scandinavian heritage, and Schacher isn’t the first in her family
to wear both crowns. Both her sister and mother were prior win-
ners of each.
• Doug Deur, an Arch Cape native and resident who was
recently named the North Coast’s representative on the Oregon
Parks and Recreation Commission. Deur is replacing Robin
Risley on the commission after she reached her eight-year term
limit. Deur grew up on the North Coast and has spent much of
his career studying national state parks history and the North
Coast’s cultural heritage as an associate research professor at
Portland State University.
• Cannon Beach City Manager Brant Kucera, whose
last day on the job was today prior to moving to Sisters in
Deschutes County to become its new city manager. Kucera
served in Cannon Beach since 2014, and during his tenure he
helped the city adopt its first strategic plan, and he worked to pri-
oritize and address housing, infrastructure and emergency ser-
vices needs. The city is conducting a national search for his
replacement.
CALLOUTS
This week’s Callouts go to:
• The annual “gathering” of The Rainbow Family of Living
Light, which is underway in Grant County and expected to grow
to 20,000 people who are camping, cooking and living on pub-
lic land in the Malheur National Forest through the Fourth of
July. The Rainbow Family is a loose-knit group of people with-
out leadership or organization who participate in an annual
national gathering. Attendees come from across the country and
since 1972 the countercultural event has taken place at a dif-
ferent national forest each year. U.S. Forest Service leaders say
attendees often strain local resources, particularly in a remote
area where there isn’t the infrastructure to deal with large groups
and the camping is primitive. Past gatherings have included
drug arrests and run-ins with police. It simply isn’t possible for
a group of that size, without adequate infrastructure, to leave the
land undamaged.
Suggestions?
Do you have a Shoutout or Callout you think we should know about?
Let us know at news@dailyastorian.com and we’ll make sure to take a
look.
Trump’s Obama obsession
By CHARLES BLOW
New York Times News Service
D
onald Trump has a thing
about Barack Obama. Trump
is obsessed with Obama.
Obama haunts
Trump’s dreams.
One of Trump’s pri-
mary motivators is
the absolute erasure
of Obama — were it
possible — not only
from the political landscape but also
from the history books.
Trump is president because of
Obama, or more precisely, because
of his hostility to Obama. Trump
came onto the political scene by
attacking Obama.
Trump has questioned not only
Obama’s birthplace but also his
academic and literary pedigree. He
was head cheerleader of the racial
“birther” lie and also cast doubt
on whether Obama attended the
schools he attended or even whether
he wrote his acclaimed books.
Trump has lied often about
Obama: saying his inauguration
crowd size exceeded Obama’s, say-
ing that Obama tapped his phones
and, just this week, saying that
Obama colluded with the Russians.
It’s like a 71-year-old male ver-
sion of Jan from what I would call
the Bratty Bunch: Obama, Obama,
Obama.
Trump wants to be Obama —
held in high esteem. But, alas,
Trump is Trump, and that is now
and has always been trashy. Trump
accrued financial wealth, but he
never accrued cultural capital, at
least not among the people from
whom he most wanted it.
Therefore, Trump is constantly
whining about not being sufficiently
applauded, commended, thanked,
liked. His emotional injury is mea-
sured in his mind against Obama.
How could Obama have been so
celebrated while he is so reviled?
The whole world seemed to
love Obama — and by extension,
held America in high regard — but
the world loathes Trump. A Pew
Research Center report issued this
week found:
“Trump and many of his key
policies are broadly unpopular
around the globe, and ratings for the
U.S. have declined steeply in many
nations. According to a new Pew
Research Center survey spanning
37 nations, a median of just 22
percent has confidence in Trump to
do the right thing when it comes to
international affairs. This stands in
contrast to the final years of Barack
Obama’s presidency, when a median
of 64 percent expressed confidence
in Trump’s predecessor to direct
America’s role in the world.”
Obama was a phenomenon. He
was elegant and cerebral. He was
devoid of personal scandal and
drenched in personal erudition. He
was a walking, talking rebuttal to
white supremacy and the myths
of black pathology and inferiority.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump speaks during an energy roundtable with
tribal, state and local leaders Wednesday in the Roosevelt Room of
the White House.
He was the personification of the
possible — a possible future in
which legacy power and advantages
are redistributed more broadly to
all with the gift of talent and the
discipline to excel.
It is not a stretch here to link
people’s feelings about Obama to
their feelings about his blackness.
Trump himself has more than once
linked the two.
Just two months before
Trump announced his candidacy,
he weighed in on the unrest in
Baltimore in the wake of the police
killing of Freddie Gray, tweeting:
“Our great African American
President hasn’t exactly had a pos-
itive impact on the thugs who are
so happily and openly destroying
Baltimore!”
For Trump, the
mark of being
a successful
president is
the degree
to which he
can expunge
Obama’s
presidency.
Months earlier, following the
unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after
the police killing of Michael Brown,
Trump complained:
“President Obama has absolutely
no control (or respect) over the
African American community—
they have fared so poorly under his
presidency.”
Trump also tweeted:
“Sadly, because president Obama
has done such a poor job as presi-
dent, you won’t see another black
president for generations!”
Clearly, not only was Obama’s
blackness in the front of Trump’s
mind, but Trump also appears to
subscribe to the racist theory that
success or failure of a member of a
racial group redounds to all in that
group. This is a burden under which
most minorities in this country
labor.
Trump’s racial ideas were
apparently a selling point among
his supporters. Recent research has
dispensed with the myth of “eco-
nomic anxiety” and shone a light
instead on the central importance
race played in Trump’s march to the
White House. As the researchers
Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel
reported in The Nation in March:
“In short, our analysis indicates
that Donald Trump successfully lev-
eraged existing resentment towards
African Americans in combination
with emerging fears of increased
racial diversity in America to
reshape the presidential electorate,
strongly attracting nativists towards
Trump and pushing some more
affluent and highly educated people
with more cosmopolitan views to
support Hillary Clinton. Racial
identity and attitudes have further
displaced class as the central battle-
ground of American politics.”
Trump was sent to Washington
to strip it of all traces of Obama, to
treat the Obama legacy as a histori-
cal oddity. Trump’s entire campaign
was about undoing what Obama had
done.
Indeed, much of what Trump has
accomplished — and it hasn’t been
much — has been to undo Obama’s
accomplishments, like pulling out of
the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the
Paris climate agreement and revers-
ing an Obama-era rule that helped
prevent guns from being purchased
by certain mentally ill people.
For Trump, even plans to repeal
and replace the Affordable Care Act
aren’t so much about creating better
policy as they are about dismantling
Obama’s legacy. The problem
with Obamacare isn’t that it hasn’t
borne fruit, but rather that it bears
Obama’s name.
For Trump, the mark of being a
successful president is the degree
to which he can expunge Obama’s
presidency.
WHERE TO WRITE
• U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici
(D): 2338 Rayburn HOB, Washing-
ton, D.C., 20515. Phone: 202- 225-
0855. Fax 202-225-9497. District
office: 12725 SW Millikan Way,
Suite 220, Beaverton, OR 97005.
Phone: 503-469-6010. Fax 503-326-
5066. Web: bonamici.house. gov/
• U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D): 313
Hart Senate Office Building, Wash-
ington, D.C. 20510. Phone: 202-224-
3753. Web: www.merkley.senate.gov
• U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D):
221 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, D.C., 20510. Phone:
202-224-5244. Web: www.wyden.
senate.gov
• State Rep. Brad Witt (D):
State Capitol, 900 Court Street N.E.,
H-373, Salem, OR 97301. Phone:
503-986-1431. Web: www.leg.state.
or.us/witt/ Email: rep.bradwitt@
state.or.us
• State Rep. Deborah Boone (D):
900 Court St. N.E., H-481, Salem,
OR 97301. Phone: 503-986-1432.
Email: rep.deborah boone@state.
or.us District office: P.O. Box 928,
Cannon Beach, OR 97110. Phone:
503-986-1432. Web: www.leg.state.
or.us/ boone/
• State Sen. Betsy Johnson (D):
State Capitol, 900 Court St. N.E.,
S-314, Salem, OR 97301. Telephone:
503-986-1716. Email: sen.betsy john-
son@state.or.us Web: www.betsy-
johnson.com District Office: P.O.
Box R, Scappoose, OR 97056. Phone:
503-543-4046. Fax: 503-543-5296.
Astoria office phone: 503-338-1280.
• Port of Astoria: Executive
Director, 10 Pier 1 Suite 308, Asto-
ria, OR 97103. Phone: 503-741-3300.
Email: admin@portofastoria.com
• Clatsop County Board of Com-
missioners: c/o County Manager, 800
Exchange St., Suite 410, Astoria, OR
97103. Phone: 503-325-1000.