SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2020
Baker City, Oregon
4A
Write a letter
news@bakercityherald.com
EDITORIAL
Vaccines
and politics
We’ve been waiting for vaccines.
“We” in this case being, in effect, the entire world.
And the vaccines, of course, are those that research-
ers have been working on — feverishly, it is fair, if
perhaps inelegant, to say — to give humans some
measure of protection against coronavirus.
And yet not even something as potentially benefi cial
as these vaccines is immune to the insidious infection
of politics.
Earlier this week there was a fl urry of media reports
about an Aug. 27 letter from Robert Redfi eld, director
of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) to governors that asked them to try to be ready
to distribute a coronavirus vaccine by Nov. 1.
Redfi eld’s letter did not state that a vaccine would
be widely available on that date. Another CDC docu-
ment noted that a limited number of doses might
be available by early November, with much larger
numbers of doses arriving in 2021.
But rather than modest optimism, which you
might reasonably have expected, this news also gen-
erated cynicism. An Associated Press story quoted
Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert, who
said he’s worried that the CDC letter constitutes an
“October surprise” — a term denoting an effort by a
presidential candidate to garner votes with a revela-
tion not long before the election. In this case the im-
plication is that President Trump is trying to hood-
wink voters with a hollow promise about a vaccine.
But let’s consider the alternatives. Would you
prefer that the CDC intentionally delay efforts to
prepare for vaccinations merely to avoid the ap-
pearance of political motivations? What might the
reaction be if it turned out that the Trump adminis-
tration dallied, and we weren’t prepared, as a nation,
to distribute the vaccine as rapidly as we could have?
Moreover, if a vaccine isn’t available, even in a very
limited way, by Nov. 1, then it seems likely that this
particular October surprise would help Joe Biden
more than it would Donald Trump.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
Suggestion for Trump’s next tweet
Editorial from The Dallas Morning
News:
We have reached a point of great
danger for our nation that threatens
the expansion of violence and the
engulfment of people of goodwill who
do not now and have never wanted
anything but the best for their fellow
citizens.
Throughout history, when radical
and violent people decide to ignite the
fuel of grievance and anger, outright
confl ict has often broken out in societ-
ies.
It is at such a moment that leader-
ship is most crucial, and we are at such
a moment.
Because of that, we call on the presi-
dent fi rst, but all other leaders as well,
to now set aside the language of incite-
ment, blame and partisanship and
instead loudly call for calm, peace and
a reduction in tensions on the streets of
the United States.
The president could begin by calling
on his supporters to stop engaging
with protesters against police violence.
There is no justifying the most violent
and destructive elements of protests
across the country. Nor is there any
good that can come from driving
through such protests with the inten-
tion to provoke confl ict.
The president has an opportunity to
demonstrate the sway of his leader-
ship over his supporters as well as his
larger concern for the country. Instead
of tweeting about law and order or
calling out the Democrats who lead the
cities where protests have gone on for
months, he could use his bully pulpit to
ask, at the very least, for those who fol-
low him not to be part of the confl ict.
At least three killings now can be
traced to the intersection of protesters
and counterprotesters in the country.
There is no reason why these lives
should have been lost. There is no justi-
fying these deaths in the name of some
other purpose.
If we engage in the game of who is to
blame for how we got to this point, we
will be trapped in the kind of impos-
sible cycle that keeps human beings in
perpetual confl ict.
What is important now is that people
step back and disengage from violence
and destruction.
Every leader with a voice that those
in the streets will hear must focus on
that message. Violence will only beget
more violence. The path to peace is
through dialogue and genuine engage-
ment.
Mr. President, make that your next
tweet and hope the country will hear it.
Letters to the editor
statements in letters to the editor.
• Writers are limited to one letter every 15
days.
• The writer must sign the letter and
include an address and phone number (for
verifi cation only). Letters that do not include
this information cannot be published.
• Letters will be edited for brevity,
grammar, taste and legal reasons.
• We welcome letters on any issue of
public interest. Customer complaints about
specifi c businesses will not be printed.
• The Baker City Herald will not knowingly
print false or misleading claims. However,
we cannot verify the accuracy of all
Mail: To the Editor, Baker City Herald,
P.O. Box 807, Baker City, OR 97814
Email: news@bakercityherald.com
Another election season of exaggerations
Presidential candidates always
exaggerate the importance of the
coming election.
They do this in part because
they’re arrogant, as seekers of that
highest of offi ces must be.
You have to think pretty highly
of yourself, certainly, to proffer the
claim that the fate of the nation
— and implicitly, of the world and
quite possibly the universe —
hinges on whether you, a singular
star among the millions of less
luminous lights, wins the Electoral
College.
But the hyperbole also is ground-
ed in simple salesmanship.
Candidates need to entice people
to vote, and fear, as anyone knows
who has ever been pursued by a
grizzly bear, is a powerful motiva-
tor.
The 2020 election, I’ll concede, co-
incides with an extraordinary era.
The coronavirus pandemic alone
would ensure that this campaign is
unlike any in our lifetimes.
But the persistent protests and
violent riots that have roiled dozens
of cities this summer have further
infl amed the dramatic proclama-
tions of the candidates and their
party apparatuses.
And then there is the Donald
Trump factor, the political equiva-
lent of busting up a pile of uranium
atoms.
No president in at least the
past century has prompted such
polarization.
Much of this is his own doing —
indeed, he seems to thrive on his
ability to infuriate his opponents
with his caustic, and almost always
sophomoric, jibes.
JAYSON
JACOBY
Reagan or Obama he is not.
The Democratic and Republican
national conventions in August
were quite different from their
usual spectacles due to pandemic
precautions. The rhetoric, however,
was entirely predictable.
Which is to say, predictably
hysterical.
Trump: “This is the most im-
portant election in the history of
our country. Our country can go in
a horrible direction or in an even
greater direction.”
Biden: “All elections are impor-
tant. But we know in our bones this
one is more consequential. America
is at an infl ection point. A time
of real peril, but of extraordinary
possibilities. This is a life-changing
election that will determine Ameri-
ca’s future for a very long time.”
The implication in both state-
ments is blatant. If you don’t vote
for me, your life and everything
you hold dear — kids, pets, internet
connection speed — will be in the
direst sort of jeopardy.
Well, no.
I refuse to succumb to these
scare tactics because to do so, it
seems to me, is tantamount to
admitting that America’s very
foundations are crumbling; and fur-
ther, that only one man is capable
of patching the cracks.
I have too much confi dence in the
essential solidity of this country’s
underpinnings than to surrender to
that sort of psychological blackmail.
Trump and Biden both want
us to believe that if we fi ll in the
“wrong” bubble on our ballot, then
come next January we will fi nd
ourselves living in a land we no
longer recognize, and one we don’t
much like.
Hogwash.
If the combination of COVID-19
and the most widespread racial
unrest in the nation in two genera-
tions can’t ruin America — and I
don’t believe it has, or will — then
whoever occupies the Oval Offi ce
for the next four years is unlikely to
pull off such a terrible feat.
Both Trump and Biden, in a rare
example of agreement, contend
that the dramatic events which
defi ne 2020 constitute the clearest
evidence that this election is an
epochal event.
But I think this year shows us
something quite different, if not the
complete opposite.
The historic happenings over the
past six months demonstrate not
the power of the presidency but
rather its relative impotence.
No rational person can believe
that the coronavirus would not
have arrived in America had
someone other than Trump been
president.
The same holds for the protests
and the riots.
A different president, having of
course no more control over the
Minneapolis Police offi cer Derek
Chauvin than Trump had, would
not have saved George Floyd.
Yet this is precisely the sort of
illogical conclusion that both the
Trump and Biden campaigns
encourage.
Both would have voters believe
that if they choose badly on Nov. 3,
then the future will be even more
bleak than the present and the
recent past have been.
This is not only implausible, it’s
terribly depressing.
“Elect me or suffer” as a slogan
doesn’t have quite the ring of
“Morning In America” or “Change
We Can Believe In.”
I don’t mean to suggest that
Biden ought not criticize Trump’s
handling of 2020’s crises, or that
Trump is trying to hoodwink voters
by pointing out potential pitfalls in
the Democrats’ platform.
This is standard political fodder,
and essential to the robust debate
that is a hallmark of America’s
electoral system.
And of course it’s to be expected
that the challenger would be espe-
cially aggressive in picking apart
the incumbent’s record.
From that perspective Trump is
the sort of opponent that political
operatives, at least until 2016, could
scarcely have conceived of.
The president’s greatest failure
during these trying times, it seems
to me, is his inability to muster
even a half-hearted attempt at try-
ing to unify America when so many
forces are pulling us apart.
I don’t mean that he should sur-
render principles, or mollycoddle
cretins who set buildings ablaze.
But 2020 provided that rare
opportunity when a president, by
sheer force of rhetoric and personal-
ity, could, however briefl y, become
a sort of benevolent symbol — akin
to the role a king or queen might
once have played, albeit in America,
whose existence stemmed largely
from its founders’ disdain for the
trappings of royalty.
Yet there is I think a great chasm
between chastising Trump for his
bellicose attitude, which he demon-
strates often both in person and on
Twitter, and in effect blaming him,
as Biden and his acolytes do, for
the worst effects on America of the
pandemic and the racial strife.
Conversely, I don’t fi nd at all
convincing the Trump campaign’s
implication that during a Biden ad-
ministration the trashing of parts of
Portland and other cities would not
only continue but would accelerate
and, even worse, would be encour-
aged by sinister Democrats.
Democratic politicians such
as Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler
haven’t been especially aggressive,
and certainly they haven’t been ef-
fective, in dealing with the troubles
in their cities.
But because they’ve failed to
quell the violence doesn’t mean
they condone, much less endorse, it.
I agree with Biden that “all elec-
tions are important.”
But I don’t believe that America’s
very survival hinges on the choice
between two men.
If our country depended so
completely on a single person — a
noxious idea we thoroughly dis-
missed when we broke out of our
monarchical shackles two and a
half centuries ago — could not have
survived as long as it has.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.