Page 4A
East Oregonian
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
A model statesman
Politics isn’t easy.
Combining personal principles with
the will of your constituents and coming
up with a workable policy is one thing.
Selling that policy to a body of
differing principles and wills and
agendas is another.
Coming home at the end of a
day with your conscience intact and
something to show for your efforts is
something else entirely.
For 18 years, Bob Jenson represented
our corner of Eastern Oregon in the
halls of the Capitol in Salem, and for 18
years he navigated the delicate balance
of standing firm on his own principles,
pursuing the most good for District 58
and negotiating with the other forces at
work in the Legislature.
At the end of each day, each session,
each term, Jenson could stand proud by
his work.
He was known as the Dean of the
House, and when he stepped down
in 2014 he was the longest serving
member of the body. He was respected
on both sides of the aisle, in part
because the aisle didn’t mean much to
him.
When Jenson first won the seat in
1997, he ran as a Democrat and retired
Blue Mountain Community College
professor. Soon disillusioned by the
party, he became an Independent in
1998 and then a Republican in 1999.
The label didn’t define him, though,
and the educator who made Pendleton
his home instead focused on ways to
make peoples’ lives better.
His philosophy on the environment,
shaped by his upbringing on a Montana
ranch, drove him to sponsor a wolf
compensation bill as the predators
moved into northeastern Oregon. His
background as a teacher pushed him
to approve a corporate tax increase to
help fund Oregon schools and promote
mental health coverage in rural Oregon.
He developed the habit of bringing
west-end legislators out east to see his
district and better understand his point
of view.
He was ambitious, but not in a
political sense. He wasn’t interested
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Rep. Bob Jenson signs paperwork on the first day of the legislative session
Monday, Feb. 4, 2013 at the state capitol in Salem.
in higher office, and keeping his seat
longer and longer into his retirement
was his way of putting his experience to
good use.
Jenson’s death this week has brought
both condolences and praise from all
over, from Gov. Kate Brown and Rep.
Greg Walden to State Sen. Bill Hansell
and State Rep. Greg Barreto.
It should serve as a reminder to
everyone in politics that a life well-
lived is one grounded in character and
compromise. Jenson understood both,
and we’re proud that he represented us.
OTHER VIEWS
Trump’s petticoat government
I
YOUR VIEWS
Vote on Walden’s record,
not his promises
Our elected representative, Greg
Walden, toured Eastern Oregon talking
to his constituents and intimating that
the new tax bill was the best thing since
sliced bread. Several independent studies
have shown that is not true. The burden
imposed by the new law falls almost
exclusively on the working poor, the
middle class and rural citizens.
These studies show that hundreds of
rural hospitals will be forced to close their
doors. Hundreds of rural schools will be
forced to consolidate, with communities
losing their identities and the closeness
and solidarity that a local school
provides. Tax breaks for homeowners will
disappear and health care costs that are
not lost entirely will go up for everyone
(estimated 10 percent the first year). The
cost of going to college will increase as
will the burden of student loans.
Representative Walden slavishly
followed the line given out by the
Republican Party and disregarded the
consequences to be suffered by his
constituents. At every stop on his tour
he assured listeners that the middle class
was going to see huge tax reductions, and
jobs and prosperity were on the way. This
based on the failed trickle down theory
practiced in bankrupt Kansas. Small
tax breaks are going to occur for some
middle class citizens, but only for two to
three years. These small reductions are
offset by the additional burdens imposed
by health costs and other taxes. The tax
breaks for corporations are permanent.
The wealthy and corporations
(whose total wealth increased in 2017
by one trillion dollars) will receive 99
percent of the tax windfall. Walden was
elected to look after the interests of his
own constituents. In this he has failed
miserably and does not deserve to hold
his office.
Do not take my word, I admit a bias
towards lies and misdirection. Look at
the facts. All of the information available
on both conservative outlets and more
traditional sites. Don’t live in a bubble.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the
East Oregonian editorial board. Other
columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and
not necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
I urge well informed voters to base future
votes on Walden’s record — on what he
has done, not on what he has said.
Terry Andersen
Pendleton
———
Contact your representative
Greg Walden
185 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-6730
La Grande office: 541-624-2400
———
Vote to repeal health care tax
Measure 101 is much worse than a
sales tax to fund Medicaid. It is much
worse than an inequitable, unsustainable
and patently unfair tax on the backs of
some Oregonians but not all, including
those struggling to pay for their own
health care premiums.
Measure 101 taxes are not
constitutionally protected to fund only
health care in Oregon. That means those
that vote in favor of Measure 101 are
trusting the same politicians that gave us
Cover Oregon that according to the U. S.
House Oversight Committee “squandered
$305 million federal taxpayer dollars.”
That means we must trust Gov. Kate
Brown instead of ourselves with our
health care dollars. According to the May
17 Oregonian, Gov. Brown dispensed
millions of dollars in Medicaid to 55,000
Oregonians “who were later deemed
ineligible,” at a cost of over $280 million.
The funds were never recovered.
The government always wants more
money to cover its excessive appetite
and — in the case of Obamacare,
Cover Oregon, and Medicaid — its
incompetence; its fraudulent waste of
taxpayer funds.
That is why the Democrats have
labeled Measure 101 an assessment,
because they lack the integrity to tell their
constituency they will tax more of your
hard-earned money in an effort to cover
up their waste and infidelity.
Stuart Dick
Irrigon
ncapacity in the chief executive
legislative and executive branches
is not a new thing in American
and could easily fail ... with
history. James Garfield spent half
God-only-knows what kind of
his short presidency dying slowly
consequences.
from a gunshot wound. Richard
So unless Robert Mueller has
Nixon’s condition in his final days
more goods than I expect, we
was dire enough that his secretary
are going to live for the next few
of defense effectively cut him out
years in the way that America
of the nuclear chain of command.
lived during the waning days
Ross
Woodrow Wilson’s stroke and his
Douthat of Nixon, the end of the Wilson
wife’s influence thereafter produced
administration, and perhaps at
Comment
the immortal — if, of course, highly
other moments known only to
problematic — complaint from one
presidential inner circles — with
of Wilson’s senatorial critics that “we have
our own equivalent of the petticoat
a petticoat government! ... Mrs. Wilson is
government, which in this case includes
military uniforms, dress suits and whatever
president!”
What’s different about Donald Trump is outfits Ivanka and Kellyanne Conway
favor (but not, any longer, the layering of
that his inability to handle the weight and
collared shirts perfected by
responsibility of his office
Steve Bannon).
is not something that crept
Which means the
up gradually, not something
Can the people
central question of these
imposed by an assassin’s
who surround
years is not a normal
bullet or a stroke or a
policy question, or even
late-in-the-presidency crisis.
Donald Trump
the abnormal sort that
Instead it’s been a defining
the Resistance and other
feature of his administration
work around
fascism-fearers expect
from Day 1 — and indeed
his incapacity
to face. The idea of a
was obvious during the
right-populist agenda died
campaign that elected him.
successfully
with Bannon’s exit from the
This means that the
enough to keep White House, the standard-
president’s unfitness is not
issue GOP agenda has
really a Harvey Weinstein-
style “open secret,” an awful his unfitness from little left after the tax cuts,
and Trump’s authoritarian
reality known to insiders
producing a
impulses, while genuine,
but kept from hoi polloi,
historic calamity? seem unlikely to produce
as The Atlantic’s James
even aggrandizement on
Fallows suggested this
the scale of past presidents
week amid the mania over
from FDR to Nixon, because he has no
Michael Wolff’s gonzo inside-the-White-
competence to execute on them.
House book. Indeed, it’s not any kind of
Rather, the big question is organizational,
secret: Even if it’s considered politically
managerial, and psychological: Can the
unwise for prominent Republicans to
people who surround Donald Trump work
mention it, anyone who reads the papers
(the New York Times especially) knows that around his incapacity successfully enough
to keep his unfitness from producing a
some combination of Trump’s personality
historic calamity?
and temperament and advancing age leave
They have done so for a year, with
him constantly undone by the obligations
some debacles (Puerto Rico) but also
of the presidency.
some genuine successes (the defeat of the
In a column early in his tempestuous
Islamic State). People may laugh at Wolff’s
first year, I suggested that this obvious
assertion that “the men and women of
fact potentially justified the invocation
the West Wing, for all that the media was
of the 25th Amendment, which permits a
president’s Cabinet in consultation with the ridiculing them, actually felt they had a
responsibility to the country,” and for some
legislative branch to remove him from the
figures (perhaps especially in the press
White House.
office) the laughter will be justified. But
The material in Wolff’s book provides
more grist for that argument; the book may for others the work has been necessary and
important, and the achievement of relative
be dubious in some particulars but as the
stability a genuine service to the United
consummate insiders Jim VandeHei and
Mike Allen wrote Thursday, the parts about States.
Can it continue in the face of
Trump’s capabilities and mental state “ring
some greater crisis than Trump has
unambiguously true.” (And again, one
yet confronted? Can it continue if the
does not need to be a well-sourced insider
Democrats take a share of power or if
to recognize this fact; one need only have
access to the president’s own Twitter feed.) the president’s own family faces legal
jeopardy? Is the American system more
But Op-Ed provocations
able to correct for presidential incapacity
notwithstanding, the 25th Amendment
option isn’t happening — not without some than some of us have feared?
The past year has given us some reason
major presidential deterioration in the midst
to think the answer to the last question
of a major crisis, and probably not even
might be “yes.” May the new year give us
then. And while I blame Republicans for
more, because our president’s chaotic mind
a thousand things that brought us to this
isn’t going anywhere.
pass, it’s too extreme to blame them for
■
not pursuing an option that’s never been
Ross Douthat joined The New York
tried before, against a president who was
Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April
recently and (yes) legitimately elected,
2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at
especially when that option requires
The Atlantic.
extraordinary coordination across the
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 reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual
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