The BulleTin • SaTurday, auguST 6, 2022 B5
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Help pick next Bend
roundabout art
W
e love Bend’s roundabout art. Some pieces,
perhaps, get more love.
You can help choose what round-
about art should be next. And time
is running out to give your input.
What art should be put in place
at the Brookswood/Powers round-
about? And what art should go into
the Empire/Butler Market/27th
roundabout?
You can go to the Art in Public
Places website, see the art choices,
and say what you think. Models
of the art are also on display at the
Downtown Bend Public Library
through Tuesday.
The art is donated. Art in Public
Places is a nonprofit organization
that brings permanent art instal-
lations to Bend. Its money comes
from the Bend Foundation, the Be
Part of Art Campaign and private
donations. You could donate, too.
We know not everybody likes
all the roundabout art. Too ab-
stract, too whatever. The interior of
roundabouts could just be some na-
tive plants or rocks. Less potential
for controversy. Simpler. Cheaper.
Easier for the city to maintain if
somebody drives into it.
Also, though, that would be
boring.
Having public art in roundabouts
says something about Bend. Even
Defeat in November would help Democrats
BY CLIVE CROOK
Bloomberg
I
our traffic devices have ambition to
be something more.
So go to artinpublicplaces.org
and give them your input. The Bul-
letin’s David Jasper wrote an article
about this recently, which has more
information.
Submitted photos
Several artists have submitted proposals for pieces to be placed in roundabouts
in Bend. Among them are Fallbrook, California, artist Michael Stutz (top), for the
Empire Avenue roundabout; Jessica Bodner (middle) of Emigrant, Montana, for
the future installation at Powers Road and Brookswood Boulevard; Jodie Bliss
(above, left), of Colorado, for the Empire roundabout; and San Francisco artist
Michael Szabo (above, right), for the Powers Road roundabout.
█
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor Gerry O’Brien
and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
f you dread the possibility of a
second Trump administration,
you should ask whether the Dem-
ocrats’ improving prospects in the
midterm elections are an entirely
good thing. The party is much less
popular than it should be, given the
quality of its opponents — and it
needs to ask why. A brutal beating
this November would force the con-
versation. Anything that can be spun
as a qualified success will allow the
question to be shelved.
Three main factors are currently
helping the party: the overturning of
Roe v. Wade, the flow of new infor-
mation about the Jan. 6 attack on the
Capitol, and renewed hope of a pro-
ductive budget-reconciliation pack-
age. But Democrats seem determined
to misread these developments —
bending them to fit the ill-conceived
theory of unbridled ambition and
transformative change that’s guided
them since the outset of Joe Biden’s
presidency.
The Supreme Court’s decision
overturning Roe v. Wade is unpop-
ular, with 57% of Americans disap-
proving. Even better for electoral
purposes, moderate Democrats op-
pose the ruling by a very wide mar-
gin (74% to 25%), whereas moderate
Republicans are about evenly split
(50% support it, 49% oppose).
To underline the point, in a refer-
endum this week, voters in Kansas
rejected an amendment to the state’s
constitution that would have erased
the right to abortion affirmed by its
highest court in 2019. In effect, the
Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs
was on the ballot; voters in a conser-
vative state rejected it by a margin of
59% to 41%.
Yet this doesn’t show that most
voters favor completely unrestricted
access to abortion. It shows they
don’t trust Republican legislatures to
stop at the kind of limited regulation
most voters actually support. A plu-
rality of Americans favor a Roe-like
guarantee of access to abortion up
to 15 weeks’ gestation — the middle
way that Chief Justice John Roberts
proposed in Dobbs. But on this issue,
as on every other, committed Demo-
crats and Republicans are reflexively
opposed to compromise. Democrats
could have owned the moderate mid-
dle. Instead, they greeted the back-
lash against Dobbs as vindicating
their recently adopted fundamental-
ism.
The House of Representatives’ Jan.
6 Committee has supplied a steady
flow of information showing former
President Donald Trump’s unfit-
ness for office. Nobody should have
needed the committee’s work to real-
ize this. But the torrent of defamatory
details surely makes that conclusion
harder to evade. Trump’s strongest
supporters can’t admit it, but even
many of them must be embarrassed.
It’s another boost for Democrats.
Here was an opportunity to open
the minds of wavering Republi-
cans to Trump’s pathologies. Some
of that happened, no doubt — but
the impact on the median voter was
likely diminished by the committee’s
theatrically partisan spin. The ten-
dency to refer to the events of that
day not as a riot, for example, but as
an insurrection — that is, a conspir-
acy to violently overthrow the gov-
ernment — implies that anybody
who fails to oppose Trump now is a
putative traitor. Such overkill repels
the moderate voter.
Lately, the idea that Democrats
in Congress are incapable of getting
anything done has abruptly given
way to a new and more encourag-
ing narrative. The Senate’s radically
scaled-down Build Back Better plan,
now called the Inflation Reduction
Act, has been widely — and rightly
— applauded for its measures to pro-
mote clean energy, curb prescription
drug costs and trim the 10-year bud-
get deficit.
The deal still isn’t done and, as it
stands, some of the details are ques-
tionable. It’s a shame, as well, that the
Inflation Reduction Act won’t reduce
inflation, though by now voters are
surely inured to the absurd names
that Congress attaches to its legisla-
tion. The measure is a good one on
balance, representing the kind of sen-
sible compromise that centrists like
to advocate, combining smart public
investments and incentives with fis-
cal discipline.
Yet it is important to remember
that this agreement happened despite
Biden’s protracted efforts to advance
a far more ambitious agenda. His de-
fenders will say that if he’d pushed
from the outset for compromise,
he’d have achieved much less. That’s
doubtful, in my view. Even if it’s true,
something like the budget agree-
ment is best described not as a “his-
toric achievement” — assuming that
something is actually achieved — but
simply as government working as it
should.
If Trump does run in 2024, the
alternative that the middle of the
electorate will want is not wholesale
reinvention of a fundamentally bro-
ken nation but the prospect of calm,
deliberate, incremental improvement
by minimally competent elected of-
ficials. You might call it “normal pol-
itics,” except that in the U.S. it would
be anything but normal. Republicans
under Trump’s sway cannot hope to
make any such offer. Democrats —
once they ask themselves why they’re
failing to persuade half the country
— could.
█
Clive Crook is a Bloomberg columnist and
member of the editorial board covering
economics.
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Leaving my party hat behind to vote for Chris Piper
BY NICOLE MOORE PERULLO
T
he Bend City Council is sup-
posed to represent all of our
community members; after all,
it says on the city website: “As stew-
ards of the city, we are accountable to
the people of Bend and are respon-
sible for delivering excellent city ser-
vices. We are committed to serving
everyone equitably, creating a more
connected community, and preserv-
ing Bend’s spirit as we grow. We will
strive to achieve equity and justice for
everyone in Bend.”
These days, I am certainly not
feeling like the Bend City Council is
aligning with this statement. It seems
as though councilors have their own
agenda and are not listening to their
constituents and/or the community
members of Bend. This was proven
when they passed the “Shelter Code
Amendments” despite a majority of
Bend residents’ disapproval provided
through a survey as well as numer-
ous public comments at City Council
meetings and letters written by resi-
dents and neighborhood association
boards on behalf of the neighbor-
hood association members.
Back in April, I met with Chris
Piper for the first time. He had re-
cently announced his candidacy
for the Bend mayor position. Upon
meeting him, I found him to be very
down to earth, surprisingly like-
minded, and I got the sense that he
really loved his family and was proud
to be a Bend resident.
He was a great listener and gen-
uinely appeared to care about my
thoughts. And to be honest, I was
quite surprised and taken aback
about this as I actually voted for his
opponent in the last election, as he
has an (R) next to his name. I was up
GUEST COLUMN
front with him that I didn’t vote for
him and he demonstrated grace by
saying, “That is OK Nicole, how can I
help you?” still wanting to hear what
I had to say.
In retrospect, I think my votes
were based on being so traumatized
by the Trump presidency and how
the Republican Party of late does not
look like the Republican Party that I
grew up knowing and that my fam-
ily aligned with. And perhaps many
independents and Democrats like
myself may have voted for a slate of
Democrats not really vetting them,
although they ran on platforms that
I/we resonated with.
Affordable housing … sounds
great, diversity, equity and inclu-
sion … sound great, but as a chair of
the Southwest Bend Neighborhood
Association and resident of Bend, I
don’t see the work being done on the
platforms they ran on.
I feel the trajectory and direction
the City Council and city manager
are taking our city in is not positive
for Bend, including creating a lot of
division with the decisions they are
making in regards to the houseless
issue, affordability with continuing
to issue short-term rentals despite lo-
cal workers in Bend not being able to
find housing, not holding developers
accountable in regards to middle in-
come housing and not adopting an
extensive tree preservation code pro-
vided to them by a local attorney —
and clear cuts are continuing to hap-
pen all over Bend. It’s disappointing
to say the least.
Surprisingly I felt Chris Piper ac-
tually represented a lot of the same
values, beliefs and ideas on current
issues that I hold, and I will support
him as mayor for the city of Bend,
even with an (R) behind his name!
The one thing that stuck with me
from our conversation is that he
stressed how important it is to leave
your party hat and agenda at the
door and represent the community at
large as serving as mayor or as a city
councilor.
He stated that you are advocating
for and representing your commu-
nity and that one must be a good lis-
tener and not have a personal agenda
when dealing with community is-
sues. It certainly gave me food for
thought for the next time I vote. It is
really important to vet the candidates
running and not just vote party line.
I will certainly leave my party hat at
the mailbox when I cast my vote.
█
Nicole Moore Perullo lives in Bend.