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OPINION
East Oregonian
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
MARISSA WILLIAMS
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MARCY ROSENBERG
Circulation Manager
JANNA HEIMGARTNER
Business Office Manager
MIKE JENSEN
Production Manager
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OUR VIEW
OTHER VIEWS
The internal invasion
T
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
President Donald Trump smiles during the inaugural luncheon at the
Statuary Hall in the Capitol, Friday in Washington.
Living with Trump
legends or Meryl Streep.
Friday it became official: Donald
Whether President Trump likes it
J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th
or not, this will be a divided country.
president of the United States.
He gets to run it, we have to live in it.
No, he is not favored by a
So how do we make it better?
majority of Americans, but he
How can we bridge the divide?
won the election. The keys to
We can start with communication.
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have
We consider our thoughts and write
exchanged hands and the earth did
them down, send them to you to
not tilt off its axis. The country still
read and respond. We hope you
stands, and the democratic transfer
do more of the
of power yet again
— two-way
provided proof of
We hope Trump’s latter
conversation is the
the strength and
first brick toward
resilience of the
successes are
United States.
plentiful and we bridge-building.
This opinion
We’ve made
page
not a safe
clear our distrust of
really do get sick space. is We
expect to
Trump. In our view,
of winning.
present ideas that
he has not proven to
others don’t agree
be a moral person,
with, and to be
nor knowledgeable
about the many problems this country confronted with ideas that challenge
our thinking as well.
faces. We’re worried that his bag of
We can all say something, and
tricks is filled only with platitudes
we can all do something. Protest
and insults.
peacefully, if you so chose. Donate
But worried is no way to go
to the charity of your choice. Buy
through life, nor a presidential term.
American products. Hire American
Perhaps Trump will be similar to the
44 men before him, just one that likes workers. Read a newspaper. Be
involved in local decisions. Make
to beat his own chest a little more
suggestions. Write your Congressman
than the rest.
We’re happy to give him credit for and tell them how Obamacare
each and every success he earns. And affected you — if it saved your life
we hope those successes are plentiful or priced you out of house and home.
and we really do get sick of winning, We need knowledge, not rancor. Our
politicians need it even more.
whatever that means.
Donald Trump has his work cut
But we know that Trump has
out for him. We must no longer cheer
a tendency toward division and a
his rock throwing — nor our own —
penchant for conflict. His few calls
but instead implore him to build.
for unity are drowned out by his
Together we must work, against all
continual jabs at whoever he chooses
threats both foreign and domestic, to
to fight with at the time — House
Keep America Great.
Republicans, the media, civil rights
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
Officeholders shouldn’t be able
to hand-pick successors
The (Bend) Bulletin
regon House Bill 2429 is a tribute
to Doug and Gail Whitsett. But
it’s not for the work the married
Republicans did to represent their
districts in Eastern Oregon. It’s for the
way the Whitsetts effectively picked
their successors.
Just minutes before the filing deadline
for the Republican primary in March,
former Klamath County Commissioner
Dennis Linthicum filed for Doug
Whitsett’s Senate seat. Businessman
Eric “Werner” Reschke filed for Gail
Whitsett’s House seat. Then, the day
after the deadline, both Whitsetts pulled
out of their respective races.
The Whitsetts, Linthicum and
Reschke insisted they had done nothing
wrong. But plenty of people thought it
looked wrong.
It was wrong. Rep. Mike McLane,
R-Powell Butte, the House minority
leader, said he might have filed to run
O
for Doug Whitsett’s Senate seat if he had
known Whitsett did not plan to run. It
was unfair to McLane and anyone else
who thought about running but perhaps
did not want to challenge an incumbent.
Democrats don’t do well in that part
of Oregon. The Republican primary can
be the only real contest. Both Linthicum
and Reschke went on to win their
elections relatively comfortably.
This legislative session, State Rep.
Julie Parrish, R-West Linn, introduced
HB 2429 to attempt to prevent a similar
thing from happening again. The bill
gives office-seekers more time to apply
if an incumbent state senator or state
representative files for re-election and
then withdraws.
It doesn’t matter if there was a deal or
not in the withdrawal of the Whitsetts.
Voters should pick who represents them.
The incumbent officeholder should not
be able to game the process to influence
his or her successor. Lawmakers should
pass HB 2429.
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 web-
site. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of
residence and a daytime phone number. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave.,
Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.
his is a remarkable day in the
give consistent, clear and informed
history of our country. We
direction, the whole system goes
have never over our centuries
haywire, with vicious infighting and
inaugurated a man like Donald Trump
creeping anarchy.
as president of the United States. You
Some on the left worry that we
can select any random group of former
are seeing the rise of fascism, a new
presidents — Madison, Lincoln,
authoritarian age. That gets things
Hoover, Carter — and none of them
exactly backward. The real fear in the
are like Trump.
Trump era should be that everything
David
We’ve never had a major national
Brooks will become disorganized, chaotic,
leader as professionally unprepared,
degenerate, clownish and incompetent.
Comment
intellectually ill informed, morally
The real fear should be that Trump
is Captain Chaos, the ignorant dauphin
compromised and temperamentally
unfit as the man taking the oath on Friday. So
of disorder. All the standard practices, norms,
let’s not lessen the shock factor that should
ways of speaking and interacting will be
reverberate across this extraordinary moment.
degraded and shredded. The political system
It took a lot to get us here. It took a
and the economy will grind to a battered
once-in-a-century societal challenge — the
crawl.
stresses and strains brought by the global
That’s ultimately why this could be a
information age — and
pivotal day. For the past
it took a political system
few decades our leadership
that was too detached and
class has been polarized.
sclerotic to understand and
We’ve wondered if there
deal with them.
is some opponent out there
There are many ways
that could force us to unite
to capture this massive
and work together. Well,
failure, but I’d rely on the
that opponent is being
old sociological distinction
inaugurated, not in the form
between gemeinschaft and
of Trump the man, but in
gesellschaft. All across the
the form of the chaos and
world, we have masses of
incompetence that will
voters who live in a world
likely radiate from him,
of gemeinschaft: where
month after month. For
relationships are personal,
America to thrive, people
organic and fused by
across government will
particular affections. These
have to cooperate and build
people define their loyalty to
arrangements to quarantine
community, faith and nation
and work around the
in personal, in-the-gut sort
president.
of ways.
People in the defense,
But we have a leadership class and an
diplomatic and intelligence communities will
experience of globalization that is from the
have to build systems to prevent him from
world of gesellschaft: where systems are
intentionally or unintentionally bumbling into
impersonal, rule based, abstract, indirect and
a global crisis. People in his administration
formal.
and in Congress will have to create systems
Many people in Europe love their particular so his ill-informed verbal spasms don’t derail
country with a vestigial affection that is
coherent legislation.
like family England, Holland or France.
If Trump’s opponents behave as clownishly
But meritocratic elites of Europe gave them
as he does — like the congressmen who
an abstract intellectual construct called the
are narcissistically boycotting the inaugural
European Union.
— the whole government will get further
Many Americans think their families and
delegitimized. But if people redouble their
their neighborhoods are being denuded by the
commitment to constitutional norms and
impersonal forces of globalization, finance and practices, to substance and dignity, this thing
is survivable.
technology. All the Republican establishment
Already you see the political system
could offer was abstract paeans to the free
uniting to contain Trump. In negotiations on
market. All the Democrats could offer was
Hillary Clinton, the ultimate cautious, remote, the Hill, administration officials feel free to
ignore his verbiage on health care and other
calculating, gesellschaft thinker.
issues. Members of his team are already good
It was the right moment for Trump, the
at pretending that Trump doesn’t mean what
ultimate gemeinschaft man. He is all gut
he clearly does mean, on matters of NATO
instinct, all blood and soil, all about loyalty
and much else.
over detached reason. His business is a
pre-modern family clan, not an impersonal
I’ve been rewatching “Yes, Minister” these
corporation, and he is staffing his White
days. That was a hilarious British sitcom
House as a pre-modern family monarchy,
about a permanent government apparatus that
with his relatives and a few royal retainers. In
contained and overruled a bumbling political
his business and political dealings, he simply
master. America will need a beneficent version
doesn’t acknowledge the difference between
of that sort of clever cooperation.
private and public, personal and impersonal.
With Trump it’s not the ideology, it’s the
Everything is personal, pulsating outward
disorder. Containing that could be the patriotic
from his needy core.
cause that brings us together.
The very thing that made him right
■
electorally for this moment will probably
David Brooks became a New York Times
make him an incompetent president. He
Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. He
is the ultimate anti-institutional man, but
has been a senior editor at The Weekly
the president sits at the nerve center of a
Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek
routinized, regularized 4-million-person
and the Atlantic Monthly, and is currently a
institution. If the figure at the center can’t
commentator on PBS.
For America
to thrive,
people across
government
will have to
cooperate
and build
arrangements to
work around the
president.
YOUR VIEWS
Land near Umatilla River not
best place for new housing
The purpose of this letter is to let people
know of a proposed change in the status of the
land on the north side of the Umatilla River.
The city owns a number of small parcels of
land on the north side of the river. One of
the larger plots lies at the end of Northwest
Seventh Street (east side of the street). The
planning commission proposes to partition a
segment of that plot and offer it for sale for the
purpose of developing housing. The land is
zoned R3, high density residential.
The property description given by the
planning commission is in error. It indicates
the parcel is fairly level land, with a noticeable
drop-off nearer the river. The drop-off is
actually very steep at the north side of the
parcel in question. The 100-year flood line is
at the mid-point of the plot.
It is proposed that vehicle access to the
property be a driveway (yet to be constructed)
at the end of Northwest Seventh Street.
Because it is a dead-end street, Northwest
Seventh does not lend itself to parallel
parking. Current residents must “head in,”
which allows them to back around before
pulling forward up the hill to exit. Using half
the street as a driveway is impossible under
the circumstances.
At a time when many cities are working
to make their environment more livable
by promoting wild spaces and park areas,
it seems backward for us to destroy one
of Pendleton’s most enjoyable areas by
developing it instead.
True, the city’s various departments are
concerned about — and are attempting to
improve — the housing in town. An excellent
goal. But this is not the best place to do it.
I encourage people to come down to
the south end (the bottom) of Northwest
Seventh Street and take a look at the land the
city proposes to develop. Imagine another
apartment or condo in this location.
Is this what we want? Is this what’s good
for Pendleton?
Peg Willis
Pendleton