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East Oregonian
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OTHER VIEWS
John McCain’s parting message:
Our greatness
is in peril
J
ohn McCain was no moderate. He won
Barry Goldwater’s Arizona seat in 1986
and was, for the most part, a fitting heir
to Goldwater. McCain supported a smaller
federal government, a hawkish foreign
policy and the typical Republican positions
on abortion, guns and
other issues.
But McCain pursued
his conservative ends
through means that
are depressingly rare
in today’s Republican
Party. McCain believed
in the American ideals of
David
Leonhardt pluralistic democracy.
He despised autocracy.
Comment
He was willing to accept
defeat when his side lost
a political battle. He pushed for an election
system not dominated by the wealthy. He
came to reject racism as a political strategy.
And in his dying months, McCain was one
of the only Republicans to oppose President
Donald Trump not just with his words, but
also with his vote.
In a recent New Yorker essay about
Charles de Gaulle, Adam Gopnik described
the French leader in ways that left me
thinking about McCain’s legacy. “His life is
proof that unapologetic right-wing politics
do not necessarily bend toward absolutism,”
Gopnik wrote. “They can also sometimes
stiffen the spine of liberal democracy.”
The absolutism and radicalism of today’s
Republican Party is the biggest threat to the
country that McCain served and loved. It
has left the United States impotent to deal
with our greatest challenges — inequality,
alienation, climate change and a global drift
toward autocracy. Congress, as McCain
said last year, is “getting nothing done.”
Meanwhile, threats to American power and
interests grow.
I expect the Trump presidency to
end poorly for Republicans, in some
combination of disgrace, unpopularity and
defeat. If it does, at least some Republicans
will be looking for ways to reinvent
their party. They will want an antidote to
Trumpism, a set of ideas that manage to be
conservative and anti-Trump.
They could do a lot worse than a
version of McCainism. I’m well aware that
McCain could be maddeningly inconsistent
and flawed. He equivocated about the
Confederate battle flag in 2000. He too
often acquiesced to Mitch McConnell’s
torching of Senate norms.For goodness
sake, McCain decided Sarah Palin should
be vice president. As he himself admitted,
he should have done much more to fight
Republican extremism.
But the sum total of his career still
represents a meaningful alternative to
Trump, McConnell and the rest of today’s
Republican leadership. At McCain’s best,
as Barack Obama said this weekend, he
displayed “a fidelity to something higher
— the ideals for which generations of
Americans and immigrants alike have
fought, marched and sacrificed.”
What would a Republican Party more in
the mold of John McCain look like?
It would, for starters, stop cowing to
Trump and stand up for U.S. national
security. It would investigate Russian
cyberattacks and the possibility, as McCain
put it, “that the president of the United
States might be vulnerable to Russian
extortion.” Many of McCain’s colleagues
remembering him as a brave patriot are
proving themselves to be neither.
Second, a more McCain-like Republican
Party would understand that racism is both
immoral and, in the long term, politically
ruinous. McCain had a multiracial family
— the kind that is increasingly America’s
future. Rather than scapegoat immigrants,
he took risks to pass immigration reform.
After Charlottesville, he declared, “White
supremacists aren’t patriots, they’re
traitors.”
Third, McCain believed in democracy
and its vital, fragile institutions. He
accepted his two haunting presidential
defeats honorably. He has reportedly chosen
the victors in those campaigns — Obama
and George W. Bush — to deliver eulogies
at his funeral. Most significantly, McCain
fought for campaign-finance laws to reduce
the influence of plutocrats.
Fourth, McCain understood that
democracy sometimes means moving on.
He voted against Obamacare — a reflection
of his small-government conservatism. But
he also voted, crucially, against its repeal
— a reflection of his small-c conservatism.
In doing so, he acted as a modern-day
Eisenhower, a Republican willing to accept
an expansion of the safety net for the good
of the country.
Finally, McCain recognized that
the military wasn’t the only way that
Washington could use its awesome
power for good. When I interviewed him
during the 2008 presidential campaign, he
described his economic hero as Theodore
Roosevelt — a “free-enterprise, capitalist,
full-bore guy” who realized that prosperity
depended on government agencies “that
need to do their job as well.” The outlook
led him to favor policies (albeit too
sporadically) to fight climate change and
expand community colleges.
Imagine how different our politics could
be if even some Republicans — à la T.R.
— occasionally took the side of the little
guy against corporate behemoths. And even
if you disagreed with McCain on as many
issues as I did, imagine if the Republican
Party ultimately came to resemble him
more than Trump.
Above all, McCain believed in American
greatness — as a reality, not a slogan. He
knew that the United States could play a
unique role in the world, as a defender of
freedom and human dignity. He also knew
that the role was anything but assured.
It required hard work, good choices,
compromise and sacrifice.
McCain’s final message for his country
was a warning: Our greatness is in peril.
———
David Leonhardt is a columnist for the
New York Times.
OTHER VIEWS
PERS debate essential
The Eugene Register-Guard
I
YOUR VIEWS
Developer offers a pipe
dream with airport hotel
Here we go again: Flim-Flam Sam arrives
in Pendleton. Seems that the mayor and
city manager believe leopards can change
their spots. The city council is approached
by the same developer who sold a bill of
goods, i.e. data center — a great idea but
no financial backing. The city, by its own
account, spent $300,000 on sewer upgrades
for a pipe dream. Now this developer wants
to build a hotel at the airport. They want a
50-year lease, and what other concessions
(giveaways) are we being asked for? This
same developer failed to get financing for
projects at the Port of Morrow.
Money people do not buy pipe dreams;
why should Pendleton taxpayers? No hotel
for the airport!
Larry Platek
Pendleton
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES
U.S. SENATORS
Ron Wyden
221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-5244
La Grande office: 541-962-7691
Jeff Merkley
313 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-3753
Pendleton office: 541-278-1129
REPRESENTATIVES
Greg Barreto, District 58
900 Court St. NE, H-38
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.
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1458
Rep.GregBarreto@state.or.us
Greg Smith, District 57
900 Court St. NE, H-482
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1457
Rep.GregSmith@state.or.us
SENATOR
Bill Hansell, District 29
900 Court St. NE, S-423
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1729
Sen.BillHansell@state.or.us
n this fall’s gubernatorial campaign,
the candidates, and Oregonians, have
an ideal chance to debate in detail
the hugely expensive Public Employees
Retirement System that is one of the root
causes of Oregon’s protracted crisis over
taxes and public services.
PERS is complex and the sums of
money are so large — and pose such a
staggering burden to taxpayers — that they
boggle the mind.
Many PERS beneficiaries are defensive.
Many critics are vitriolic.
Plus, legal decisions shield current
retirees in PERS from virtually all
clawbacks or cuts, so any cost-paring must
come at the expense of current and future
government employees.
One thing is clear: Without PERS
reform, public services in the state will
spiral downwards, in the classrooms, on
the streets, in the parks, as tax dollars
continue to be channeled into PERS when
they could be better spent hiring more
teachers and police.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Knute
Buehler has issued an ambitious PERS
reform plan. Incumbent Gov. Kate Brown
has pooh-poohed it. Her PERS plans
amount to minor tweaks.
Buehler’s plan might prove unfair to
current government employees, or might
not even save much money. Brown’s
campaign has said overall government-
employee compensation — pay, retirement
and health benefits — is reasonable and
should not be cut. The important element
now is to have a full public airing.
Oregon’s Democratic leadership has
been maddeningly slippery about curbing
the costs of the retirement system. That’s
no surprise given how heavily funded
Democrats are by campaign dollars from
public employee unions.
Democrats have offered some
modest reforms, some overturned by the
courts. And with a strong hold on the
governor’s office and both chambers of the
Legislature, they’ve declared there’s little
else to be done about PERS.
Buehler challenges that assertion.
It may take a Republican to get the
message across to Oregon’s Democratic
establishment that public disillusion over
PERS, taxes and public services is heading
toward a tipping point.
Oregon state agencies, school districts
and local governments — all taxpayers —
are pumping an estimated $2.9 billion into
PERS in the current biennium, which ends
next June 30. In the subsequent biennium,
PERS will demand a total of $4 billion.
That’s $707 per Oregon resident in the
current biennium, and $976 per resident in
the next.
The crux of Buehler’s plan is to move
all current state employees, and as many
local government and school district
employees as legally possible, into a new
401k-type system, as soon as feasible.
Current government employees’ PERS
pension accruals for time served would
be honored. But for employment going
forward, government workers would
probably have only a 401k plan, with
the state providing a perhaps 6 percent
match, Buehler said in an interview with
The Register-Guard’s editorial board. The
exact scope and details of the transition
from PERS pension to 401k remain fuzzy.
Buehler also would cap at $100,000
the salary amount used to calculate PERS
benefits. That would close the door on new
retirees getting six-figure annual PERS
pensions. He would also eliminate the use
of accumulated vacation and sick leave to
push up final salaries, which PERS uses to
calculate pensions.
The departing chairman of the PERS
board, Eugene financial consultant John
Thomas, pointed out in a recent interview
that new government employees covered by
PERS under the existing program will, after
30 years of service, get an annual pension
payment from the system that is equal to
about 60 percent of their final salary. On top
of that they get Social Security.
Is preserving of that level of PERS
benefit more important than putting more
teachers in classrooms and cops on the
beat? This fall’s campaign should help
voters answer that question.
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
services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Letters must be signed by the author and include the
city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published.
Send letters to managing editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.