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Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Saturday, October 22, 2016 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor MARISSA WILLIAMS Regional Advertising Director MARCY ROSENBERG Circulation Manager JANNA HEIMGARTNER Business Ofice Manager MIKE JENSEN Production Manager EO MEDIA GROUP East Oregonian • The Daily Astorian • Capital Press • Hermiston Herald Blue Mountain Eagle • Wallowa County Chieftain • Chinook Observer • Coast River Business Journal Oregon Coast Today • Coast Weekend • Seaside Signal • Cannon Beach Gazette Eastern Oregon Real Estate Guide • Eastern Oregon Marketplace • Coast Marketplace OnlyAg.com • FarmSeller.com • Seaside-Sun.com • NorthwestOpinions.com • DiscoverOurCoast.com OUR VIEW Trump is a disaster — Clinton the only choice for president Everything was lining up for a Republican to take the White House in 2016. It’s the natural course of things in this country — after eight years of Clinton, America wanted Bush. After eight years of Bush, America wanted Obama. After eight years of Obama, it was likely the country was leaning toward a change in tactics and vision. But the GOP nominated Donald J. Trump, and the possibility that the party would take back the White House immediately went up in smoke. Quite simply: Trump represents the worst of America, is an affront to the essential values of this country and has no business anywhere near the White House. Here are a few nonpartisan reasons: ▪ He is trying to undermine the entire American democracy, claiming that the election will be rigged weeks before any voting even took place. Trump has not yet said he will accept the results of the election — thus putting at risk the country’s long history of peaceful transfer of power. Being the sore loser and publicity hound that he is, one can imagine Trump undermining the legitimacy of the next president for as long as the cameras and crowds allow him. ▪ He oozes greed and narcissism. Throughout his life, he has done everything he can to cheat his way out of his obligations via bankruptcy and tax loopholes, and stifing the little guy whenever his clout and power allowed it. ▪ He is blatantly working in concert with one of America’s enemies — in this case Russia — to undermine our democracy. That bears repeating: He is working with information supplied illegally by a foreign government and a foreign non-state actor to defeat his opposition. ▪ He is a xenophobe. He has inlamed white supremacists across the country, refusing to denounce them in every campaign stop and interview. He has done irreparable damage, especially to young minds, with his vicious verbal assaults against Mexicans, Muslims and African-Americans, just to name a few groups he has targeted. ▪ He treats women terribly. He has left one wife after another — cheating on each — and is a serial abuser of women. He admitted to that fact in the leaked 2005 video, and plenty of women have stood up to corroborate Trump’s own words. ▪ He has undermined faith in the media. The media is not tasked with fair and equal handling of unequal candidates. Our job is to test and poke and prod each candidate fairly, and Trump failed those tests to a far greater degree than his competitor. We tried to ind one newspaper that has endorsed Trump, and have been unable to do so. And that’s the way it should be. Anyone of unbiased mind, with the facts in front of them, has to come to the conclusion that Trump is a far weaker choice. What he sees as conspiracy is simply consensus. ▪ He has inlicted terrible damage on the Republican Party. He is not a conservative and believes in none of the core beliefs of the GOP — small government, free trade, personal responsibility. He has laid waste to the party in his self-absorbed sprint to November, and may have handed Congress to the Democrats and Hillary Clinton. ▪ He has committed crimes against common decency. His language, his casual support of violence, and his continuous, bilious insults of others will be what this campaign is remembered for. When we look back upon a man who said such awful, ignorant things in front of thousands of cheering fans, we are bound to be shocked and saddened, embarrassed by ourselves and the way we turned against our neighbors and our democratic institutions. Yet despite all that, while it is clear that Trump is an odious person, that does not necessarily preclude him from being a good president. But the plain and simple truth about why Donald Trump cannot do the job: He has no idea what he’s talking about. Literally, no idea. We doubt he could pass an eighth grade civics test. He has learned so little through the campaign process and refused to prepare substantively for any of the debates. Trump’s promise was that he was so brilliant and successful, that given a few weeks or months he could know more than the dumb generals and bring peace to the Middle East, know more than the dumb economists and boost American incomes, know more than the politicians and untangle all the intractable problems that America faces. Yet, when faced with the daunting task of forming and then defending his positions, he gave up with a whimper. Instead he sat in his hotel room, turned on CNN and Fox News, and tweeted about how nasty everyone who disagrees with him is. ——— And now a word about the next President of the United States: Hillary Clinton. She is a noticeably poor campaigner. She doesn’t have the oratory skills of her husband or her predecessor in the White House. She doesn’t have the natural instinct for politics and people that those men do, either. Obama and Bush are excellent speakers. Bush especially seemed to relish the competition of an election much more than the daily grind of governance. Hillary is the opposite. She fails to whip crowds into a frenzy, fails to dazzle us in debates. And her constant shading of political positions and personal beliefs is maddening, her hawkish foreign policy a clear cause for concern. But she is a dogged, determined policy guru. She will put her head down and work, looking for solutions to every possible problem this nation will face. She may even help rebuild the Republican Party just by being who she is — a straightforward foil that half the country relexively opposes. Clinton is worthy of the ofice. She has worked all her life to get there, and no one will work harder once she arrives. Her opponent isn’t worthy of anything except sitting in his chair in his lonely, gilded hotel room, lipping through cable news channels and complaining about them. 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. OTHER VIEWS Repairing moral capital H The sad fact is that in the realm illary Clinton, who has been in of common life, gnats can undo the politics all her adult life, seems work of giants. “Moral communities to have learned something are fragile things, hard to build and from Michelle Obama, who has never easy to destroy,” Jonathan Haidt run for public ofice. Clinton gave writes in his book “The Righteous three masterful answers in the debate Mind.” “When we think about very Wednesday night that were tonally large communities such as nations, different from her normal clichés. the challenge is extraordinary and the They were about Donald Trump’s David alleged assaults on women, his refusal Brooks threat of moral entropy is intense.” We are now in a country in which to respect the democratic process Comment major presidential candidates can and the contrast between his years of gibe about the menstrual cycles of “Celebrity Apprentice” experience their interviewers and the penis size of their and her own governing experience. Clinton’s answers were given in a slow and understated opponents. We are now in a society in which the childish desires of a reality-TV narcissist manner, but they were marked by moral can insult the inheritance that passion, clarity and quiet Washington and Hamilton contempt. risked their lives to bequeath. They were not spoken We are now in a society in from the point of view of a which serial insults to basic politician. They were spoken decency aren’t automatically from the point of view of a disqualifying. parent, which is the point Clearly, we have a giant of view Michelle Obama task of moral repair ahead frequently uses. The politician of us. That starts with a asks: What can I offer to win renunciation of the Trump votes? The parent asks: What style. One big lesson of 2016 world are my children going is that that can only happen if people police out into when they leave the house? members of their own party. If somebody is The politician is focused on individual destroying the basic social and moral fabric interest, but the parent is interested in through brutalistic rhetoric and vicious the shared social, economic and moral misogynistic behavior, it doesn’t really environment. matter that he agrees with you on taxes and That turns out to be a useful frame for this the Supreme Court; he has to be renounced ugly year. It’s becoming ever clearer that the or else he will drag the whole society to a nation’s moral capital is being decimated, level of degradation that will make all decent and the urgent challenge is to name that politics impossible. decimation and reverse it. It also means addressing the substantive Moral capital is the set of shared habits, norms, institutions and values that make social chasms that fueled Trump’s rise. We are common life possible. Left to our own, we clearly going to have a lot of angry populists human beings have an impressive capacity for around in the years ahead, of right and left. selishness. Unadorned, the struggle for power It should be possible to oppose them with a has a tendency to become barbaric. So people political movement that champions dynamism in decent societies agree on a million informal with cohesion, globalism with solidarity — a restraints — codes of politeness, humility and movement that supports free trade, open mutual respect that girdle selishness and steer skilled immigration, ethnic diversity and a us toward reconciliation. free American-led world order, but also local This year Trump is dismantling those community building, state-fostered economic restraints one by one. By savagely attacking security, moral cohesion and patriotic Carly Fiorina’s looks and Ted Cruz’s wife he purpose. dismantled the codes of etiquette that prevent In other words, it should be possible to be politics from becoming an unmodulated conservative on macroeconomics, liberal on screaming match. By lying more or less all immigration policy, traditionalist on moral the time, he dismantles the fealty to truth and civic matters, Swedish on welfare state without which conversation is impossible. By policies, and Reaganesque on America’s role refusing to automatically respect the election in the world. results he corrodes conidence in our common The election of 2016 has exposed the institutions and risks turning public life into a staleness of the Republican and Democratic never-ending dogight. ideologies. It has also established a nihilistic, Clinton has contributed to the degradation reality TV standard of conduct that will pull too. As the James O’Keefe videos remind down the country if it is allowed to survive. us, wherever Hillary Clinton has gone in The one nice thing about Trump is that he has her career, a cloud of unsavory people and prompted so many people to ind their voice, unsavory behavior has traveled alongside. and to turn from their revulsion to a higher But she is right to emphasize that Trump is alternative. the greatest threat to moral capital in recent ■ history and that the health of that capital is David Brooks became a New York Times more fundamental than any particular policy Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. He is position. also currently a commentator on PBS. Clearly, we have a giant task of moral repair ahead of us. Disagree with our choice for president? Drop off a letter to the editor at our Hermiston or Pendleton locations, or email editor@eastoregonian.com. Keep it under 400 words and make your best case for Trump.
