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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
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Circulation Manager
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Production Manager
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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.