Page 4A
East Oregonian
Thursday, June 7, 2018
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OTHER VIEWS
Associated Press
AP Photo/Bob Daugherty
A U.S. Coast Guard landing barge, tightly packed with helmeted
soldiers, approaches the shore at Normandy, France, during initial
Allied landing operations, June 6, 1944.
President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan walk through
the thousands of graves in the American Cemetery in Omaha Beach,
Normandy in France on June 6, 1984.
Honoring D-Day, now 74 years ago
The men were all looking up at me on
the wall, waiting. I was at a loss for words.
Finally I pointed at the ocean and swung my
arm in a wide arc.
“Try to imagine yourself as a German
soldier that morning, looking out there
and seeing the largest invasion fleet in the
history of the world — almost 7,000 ships,”
I said. “And many of them were headed this
way.”
Then, reaching into my pocket, I pulled
a copy of the Presidential Unit Citation the
regiment had earned that day, and began to
read it aloud.
Indescribable carnage
The landing was utter chaos. The landing
craft began to take artillery, mortar and
machine gun fire 300 yards offshore.
They landed far from their assigned
sectors, and scores of men were killed or
wounded as the landing craft dropped their
ramps. Others were hit as they slogged
through the surf or tried to run across the
sand.
I had been researching the battle
for several days. I was able to point to
approximately where each company landed,
and describe the number of casualties each
suffered. All of us tried to envision, without
much success, how much courage it must
By JIM VAN NOSTRAND
EO Media Group
O
n June 7, 1984, I stood atop a low
stone wall on a bluff overlooking the
Normandy coast at Colleville-sur-
Mer, France.
Behind me waited several dozen
soldiers of Echo Company, 1st Battalion,
16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry
Division (Big Red One). They had served
the day before as President Reagan’s
honor guard for international ceremonies
commemorating the anniversary of the
D-Day landings.
In front of me lay Omaha Beach at low
tide, a vast expanse of sand where 40 years
before, the regiment had stormed ashore in
the first wave of Operation Overlord. That
invasion was now 74 years ago.
I was a second lieutenant in Charlie
Company, chosen to accompany the honor
guard to Normandy because I was also
the unofficial battalion historian. The men
were worn out from several days of drilling
and marching on parade. The battalion
commander asked me to take them on a
private tour of the American cemetery at
Omaha Beach before heading back to our
post near Stuttgart, Germany.
YOUR VIEWS
Congress can ease
cancer patients’
pain
While Congress works
to address opioid abuse,
it’s important they consider
patients with daily pain.
Congress can reduce opioid
abuse and help ensure
people with pain have
access to care they need by
passing a popular, bipartisan
bill to increase access to and
awareness of palliative care.
This bill would
complement numerous
legislation on opioid abuse
in Congress by expanding
pain and symptom
management training for
doctors, nurses, pharmacists
and others who treat serious
illnesses, like cancer, that
cause chronic or acute pain.
It would boost the National
Institutes of Health’s pain
research funding. Less than
one percent of NIH funding
goes to pain.
More pain research could
improve pain management
best practices – helping ease
suffering of cancer patients
while curbing opioid
misuse.
Palliative care provides
patients and families with
extra support during a
serious disease like cancer.
As an American Cancer
Society Cancer Action
Network volunteer, I’m
urging Representative
Greg Walden to seize this
opportunity to move this
bill. Passing this legislation
alongside numerous bills
have taken to cross that beach.
The breakout came when Echo Company
men managed to cross a minefield and
breach the enemy wire, allowing the
regiment to fight its way up the bluff.
The regimental commander, Col. George
Taylor, famously exhorted his soldiers
through the gap, yelling “The only men who
remain on this beach are the dead and those
who are about to die! Let’s get moving!”
The moment has been immortalized in
many movies, most notably “The Longest
Day.”
Awe-inspiring experience
My little speech lasted only about 10
minutes. The men scattered afterwards
to explore the beach and the cemetery,
which contains the graves of 9,385 soldiers
killed in the D-Day landings and ensuing
operations.
The Normandy American Cemetery
and Memorial covers 172 acres and is
technically American soil, granted in
perpetuity to the United States by the French
government as a small thank you for the
liberation of their nation.
It is an imposing and awe-inspiring
experience. Many of the crosses bear the
inscription “Here rests in honored glory a
comrade in arms, known but to God.”
Two days before on June 5, while
reconnoitering the memorial grounds in
uniform in advance of President Reagan’s
visit, I found myself suddenly ambushed by
a phalanx of television cameras.
One reporter was particularly aggressive,
asking me the difference between fighting in
a popular war, such as World War II, and an
unpopular war, such as Vietnam.
I considered my response carefully,
fearing the end of my nascent military
career if I screwed this up.
“The American soldier of today is no
different than soldiers of any other war,
including World War II and Vietnam,” I
said. “They will do what it takes to survive
on the battlefield. The tactics you use when
you’re being shot at haven’t changed much
in 40 years.”
The battalion commander and sergeant
major quickly sought me out after the
television cameras departed, wondering
what in the world their foolish young
lieutenant was talking to the media about.
“That was a very good answer,” the
sergeant major said, with a knowing nod.
■
Jim Van Nostrand is editor of The
Daily Astorian, sister paper of the East
Oregonian.
OTHER VIEWS
in Congress to address
opioid abuse will help
appropriately ease pain and
suffering.
Karen Malcolm
Pendleton
Gun restrictions
leave victims
vulnerable
You may be voting in
November to lose some
of your rights to defend
yourself, family and
community, because of
what I have heard a rabbi
and two Christian ministers
are doing. All due to boys
who were (are) possibly
on drugs, mentally off,
“abused,” and then we must
all pay for it — becoming
guilty before proved
innocent.
If you think mass murder
cannot happen here, then
think again. We in the U.S.
are made up of peoples
from the whole world. Mass
murder has happened in
Germany, Russia, Rwanda,
China, Cambodia, some
of our Native population,
etc. The ones targeted for
death were disarmed so they
could not resist, as sheep to
the slaughter.
When the Second
Amendment is lessened or
destroyed, then for sure the
First [Amendment] is next.
It seems that our men and
women who fought and
died for our freedoms did it
for nothing.
Raymond Reeder
Pendleton
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.
What does it mean to ‘approve’ of Trump?
D
onald Trump is riding
45.4 percent job approval,
a wave of popularity,
the damage was even worse:
at least by Trump
Democrats lost a devastating 63
standards.
seats in the House.
The president’s job approval
But then, in 2014, with
rating hit 44.6 percent this
Obama at 42 percent job
week in the RealClearPolitics
approval — below where
average of polls. That is the
Trump is today — House
Byron
highest it has been since March
Democrats, already in the
York
2017. And while that is not
minority, lost a modest 13 seats.
Comment
high by any measure, it is good
Does any of that experience
for Trump, who has never
help predict what will happen
been higher than 46 percent in the poll
under Trump? On the one hand, it’s
average. (That was in early February
easy just to say a president at his level
2017, his third week in office.)
of popularity will lose a bunch of
The question is what effect Trump’s seats. On the other hand, remember
improved ratings — should they last
that Trump’s personal approval rating
until November — will have on the
was 37.5 percent, with a disapproval
midterm elections.
rating near 60, on the day he won the
There is a traditional relationship
presidency.
between presidential job approval
“These are certainly different
and midterm results. But it’s not clear
times,” says Curt Anderson, a GOP
whether that relationship will hold up
strategist whose firm is involved in a
when Trump is involved.
lot of House races this year. One reason
“When a president has job approval for Republican caution, Anderson
ratings of 50 percent or higher, his
explains, is that this year it will be
party tends to keep its losses fairly
easier for moderates to cast an anti-
low,” political analyst Charlie Cook
Trump vote than it was in 2016.
wrote last year. “But in six of the seven
“In 2016, people who for whatever
midterm elections since 1966, when
reason didn’t like Trump had to
presidential approval ratings hovered
swallow hard and vote for Hillary to
below 50 percent, his party has lost
show their displeasure,” Anderson
two dozen or more seats in the House,
explains. “That’s some nasty castor oil
giving the opposition party a majority
right there, and many refused to take it.
the next year.”
The fear in 2018 for Republicans is that
If that holds, and Trump remains
voters who don’t like Trump can send
below 50 percent, it’s a reasonable
him a message — by voting against his
guess the GOP will lose enough seats
party — and this time they don’t have
to give Democrats control of the
to vote for Hillary in order to punish
House.
Trump.”
The last dozen years have seen
Given that, Anderson says, “I do
extremes in midterms. In 2006, with
think Trump’s approval numbers will
George W. Bush at 39 percent job
matter this fall ... [and] already this year
approval, Republicans got clobbered,
we have seen small shifts that have
losing 30 seats.
pretty dramatic consequences.”
In 2010, with Barack Obama at
On the other hand, another GOP
strategist working on multiple races,
who asked to remain anonymous, takes
a more nuanced, and ultimately more
optimistic, position.
“Of course there’s a correlation,”
he says. “The more popular [Trump]
is, the easier it is to keep the House.”
Right now, things are going reasonably
well, because there has been “an
undeniable positive change” since
December in Trump’s standing in
many key districts.
But the strategist notes that with
Trump, not everything can be measured
by job approval. “What does it mean to
approve of Trump?” he asks. “You can
love everything that is happening and
not approve of him.”
For the midterms, the strategist
suggests, a better predictor might be the
traditional polling question of whether
the country is on the right track or the
wrong track. “In our data, we have
right track at 40 percent,” the strategist
notes, meaning that 40 percent of those
surveyed say the country is going in
the right direction. “If you look back,
there’s never been a wave election with
right track at 40.”
Indeed, back in November 2010 the
right track number was 31 percent. In
November 2006, it was around 30.
None of that tells what will happen
in November 2018. But it’s simply not
enough to say that Trump is unpopular,
and therefore Republicans will lose.
Given the nation’s experience in 2016,
the presence of Trump, even though he
is not on the ballot, makes the coming
midterms more complex than midterms
in the past, and extremely hard to
predict.
■
Byron York is chief political
correspondent for The Washington
Examiner.
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newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual
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