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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (May 4, 2016)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Wednesday, May 4, 2016 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW Remembering, rewarding our favorite teachers To celebrate Teacher Appreciation there. Teachers teach skills. Sometimes Week, the East Oregonian is spotlighting a number of educators in those skills are letters and numbers, multiplication tables and vocabulary, our neighborhood who are making a laws of science and important difference in the lives of students. All of us who are able to read historical dates. this editorial can thank a teacher for And sometimes those skills that ability. (Or, at the very least, for are passion, determination, thirst for knowledge, the ability to inish social and group reading this before a sense tomorrow’s paper Teaching is a interaction, of self-worth and is already on the job that deies esteem. doorstep.) It’s hard to ind A good teacher description, anyone who doesn’t marries both. They have a soft spot for because most impart and perfect a beloved educator. little building of the educators the Like ireighters and blocks of knowledge pediatricians, in this allow us to we remember that partisan time they master the basic fondly stepped skills needed to are one of the few professions with high successfully navigate outsides the approval ratings. the world. But they normal bounds also impart the Yet we’re not very good at pinpointing ineffable traits that of the job. what makes a good make us good human teacher. It’s a job that beings, and push us deies description, down the path that because most of the educators we will hopefully bring us happiness and remember fondly stepped beyond the contentedness. bounds of the professional deinition A great, standout teacher is hard of the job. They had so much joy to ind — but those who have found for Shakespeare that it seeped out of them will never forget them. As we them and into you. They were able as a state and nation try continuously to sneak hard-learning past you with to improve our lagging education enjoyable, understandable chunks. system, one way that should not be They stopped you on your way out understated is identifying, honoring of class to ask if you are OK. They and rewarding great teachers. complimented your work. They Those rare souls leave tremendous opened a window to the world of legacies and prove indispensable adulthood and all the knowledge, to individuals, communities and doubt, beauty and terror that reside cultures. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. YOUR VIEWS Fairley has ability to build up, not tear down Our energy future may reside in outer space Scott Fairley has the aptitude and drive to help Pendleton move forward. Our city faces real challenges, short and long term, and we should support those local leaders that would try to solve problems using all available resources, including the tools of city government. Scott has served all of Pendleton in various positions: Planning and Airport commissions, Budget Committee, Farmers Market, and soccer coach. He has years of economic development experience right here in Eastern Oregon, and he has partnered with other elected and business leaders throughout the Northwest. He has the right judgment to balance the unique character of Pendleton with the steps necessary to promote growth. Mr. Fairley’s opponent has been a thorn in the side of city government for a long time and if elected would likely continue to be antagonistic. It’s easy to be a critic, but it’s hard to devise and implement actual, workable solutions. Which candidate is most likely to contribute to the good of the citizens of Pendleton? Scott sees the issues confronting Pendleton, he has suficient experience to know how to respond, and he is committed to helping the citizens of Pendleton prosper and move forward. He has earned my vote. There is a big plan to explore interstellar space with minuscule craft. Looking at this as a renewable energy engineering student, this could be an amazing step for today’s society. If this works it has the potential to change society. A low-cost exploration operation will give us the option to discover precious metals and minerals once thought to be depleted. Our society has become addicted to the once-abundant resources the planet had. Soon, or in the near future, I believe the human race will panic realizing what we, as a society, have done. That is when this technology will be appreciated. Will Perkinson Pendleton Jeffrey Wilson Troutdale Letters deadline Friday Ballots have arrived and voters across Oregon are considering candidates and inalizing their choices. The East Oregonian will institute a deadline for letters to the editor, so we can be fair with all the letters we receive and allow for responses before Election Day if necessary. Please submit your endorsement letters to the editor by Friday at noon. You can email them to editor@ eastoregonian.com, drop them off at our Hermiston or Pendleton locations, or mail them to East Oregonian, 211 SE Byers Ave., Pendleton OR 97801. We will publish our last letters on May 7. Election Day is May 17. OTHER VIEWS Donald the dove, Hillary the hawk ASHINGTON — It seems battle of the sexes, with its chest- odd, in this era of gender thumping versus maternal hugging, luidity, that we are headed there’s a more intriguing gender toward the most stark X versus Y battle dynamic. since Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. On some foreign policy issues, the Donald Trump exudes macho, roles are reversed for the candidates wearing his trucker hat, retweeting and their parties. It’s Hillary the Hawk bimbo cracks, swearing with abandon against Donald the Quasi-Dove. and bragging about the size of his Just as Barack Obama seemed the Maureen manhood, his crowds, his hands, more feminized candidate in 2008 Dowd his poll margins, his bank account, because of his talk-it-out management Comment his skyscrapers, his steaks and his style, his antiwar platform and his “beautiful” wall. delicate eating habits, always watching He and his pallies Paul Manafort and Roger his igure, so now, in some ways, Trump seems Stone seem like a latter-day Rat Pack, having less macho than Hillary. a gas with tomatoes, twirls and ring-a-ding- He has a tender ego, pouty tweets, needy temperament and obsession with hand sanitizer, ding. The beauty pageant impresario’s coarse whereas she is so tough and combat-hardened, comments to Howard Stern, rating women she’s known by her staff as “the Warrior.” on their breasts, fading beauty and ability to The prime example take the kids off his hands, of commander-in-chief reverberate through the judgment Trump offers is campaign. the fact that, like Obama, he In Indiana, Trump boasted thought the invasion of Iraq that “Iron” Mike Tyson was a stupid idea. and “all the tough guys” He can sound belligerent, had endorsed him. The of course, saying that he chair-throwing Bobby Knight would bomb the expletive- backed Trump with the brass- deleted out of ISIS and that knuckles encomium that he would think up new and Trump, like Harry Truman, imaginative ways to torture would have the guts to drop terrorists and kill their families. the bomb. When his rallies become Fight Club, But he says that in most cases he would Trump boasts that it adds a little excitement. rather do the art of the deal than shock and awe. Hillary Clinton’s rallies, by contrast, can “Unlike other candidates for the presidency, seem like a sorority rush reception hosted war and aggression will not be my irst instinct,” by Lena Dunham, or an endless episode of he said in his maiden foreign policy speech in “The View,” with a girl-power soundtrack by Washington last week, adding, “A superpower Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Demi Lovato. understands that caution and restraint are really The ultimate insider is portraying herself as truly signs of strength.” an outsider because she’s a woman, and the These Kumbaya lines had the neocons candidate who is considered steely is casting leaping into Hillary’s muscular embrace. herself as cozy because she’s a doting granny. If the neocons get neophyte Republicans Her website is chockablock with on the presidential ticket, they prefer ones empowerment gear, from a hot pink “woman’s like Dan Quayle, W. and Sarah Palin, who are card” to a “Make Herstory” T-shirt to a “Girls “educable,” as Bill Kristol, the editor of The Just Wanna Have Fun-damental Rights” tote Weekly Standard, once said of Quayle. bag to “A Woman’s Place Is in the White Trump may have a lot to learn about the House” throw pillow. She says her favorite issues, but he’s not malleable. shows are “The Good Wife,” “Madam In his new book, “Alter Egos,” New York Secretary” and “Downton Abbey,” and she did a Times White House correspondent Mark guest shot on “Broad City.” Landler makes the case that the former Trump’s most ardent supporters, white Goldwater Girl, the daughter of a Navy petty men, are facing off against Hillary’s most loyal oficer and a staunch Republican, has long had supporters, black women. hawkish tendencies, relected in her support for Clinton and Trump have moved on to their military action in Iraq and Libya and a no-ly mano a womano ight, leaving behind “the zone in Syria. leftovers,” as Trump labels delated rivals. “It’s bred in the bone,” Landler told me. Already, it’s unlovely. “There’s no doubt that Hillary Clinton’s “It’s going to be nasty, isn’t it?” says Obama more muscular brand of American foreign Pygmalion David Axelrod. “Put the small policy is better matched to 2016 than it was children away until November.” to 2008,” Jake Sullivan, Hillary’s policy A peeved Jane Sanders called on the FBI adviser both at the State Department and in her to hurry up with the Hillary classiied email campaign, told Landler. investigation. A desperate Ted Cruz cut a But Hillary never expected to meet this mix deal with John Kasich, who then put a bag of dove, hawk and isolationist. She thought she over his head and acted as if he didn’t know would face Marco Rubio, a more traditional Cruz. Then Cruz latched onto Cruella Fiorina, conservative who would out-hawk her. Instead, accomplishing the impossible: inding a she’s meeting Trump, who is “a sheep in Potemkin running mate who’s even more odious. We can only hope that Cruz, who croons wolf’s clothing,” as Axelrod put it. Like a free-swinging asymmetric boxer, Trump can Broadway show tunes, and Carly, who breaks keep Hillary off balance by punching from both into song at the lectern, will start doing duets the left and the right. from “Hamilton.” You can actually envision a foreign policy In one of the most gratifying moments of debate between Trump and Clinton that sounds an unhinged campaign, former Speaker of the oddly like the one Obama and Clinton had in House John Boehner told Stanford University 2008, with Trump playing Obama, preening students that Cruz was “Lucifer in the lesh.” about his good judgment on Iraq, wanting an Satanists immediately objected, saying it was end to nation-building and thinking he could unfair to their deity. have a reset with Russia. Even though Trump is the one who has Despite gossip when she was irst lady that no governing experience, he will suggest that she did not like people in uniform, the truth is the irst woman at the top of a major party the reverse: She gravitates toward “nail-eaters,” ticket is unqualiied by charging that she lacks her aides told Landler, and loves the gruff, Irish, “strength” and “stamina” and claiming that bearlike demeanor of Jack Keane, a retired if she were a man, she would not get even 5 four-star general and the resident hawk on Fox percent of the vote. During his unburdening at Stanford, Boehner News who helped deine her views on military issues and is still in touch. imitated Clinton, saying, “Oh, I’m a woman, As secretary of state, she hit it off with Gen. vote for me.” Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus. And But such mockery merely plays into Clinton’s hands. As former Jeb Bush super PAC she loved to have a stiff drink with Bob Gates strategist Mike Murphy told MSNBC, “Her big and John McCain. She has a weakness for big, swaggering, judo move is playing the victim.” And as former rascally he-men. Like Donald Trump. Jeb aide Tim Miller noted to CNN, Trump’s ■ numbers with women are so bad that the only Maureen Dowd, winner of the Pulitzer Prize way he can win is if he manages to repeal for distinguished commentary, became a New women’s suffrage before November. Once you get beyond the surface of the 2016 York Times columnist in 1995. W Clinton and Trump have moved on to their mano a womano ight. LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper re- serves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.