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Posts published in June 2023

At the Stanley Redfish trail

At the Stanley Redfish trail

June 19, 2023

Two recent news reports brought back memories of a time when important figures of both political parties could work together to achieve important public objectives. In the summer of 1966, Idaho’s two U.S. Senators, Len Jordan (R) and Frank Church (D), were working on the language of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The legislation was intended to protect pristine river stretches from development and degradation, including some on the Salmon and Clearwater Rivers.

I was doing my second summer internship in Jordan’s office, mentored by a fine Boise lawyer, Norm Halliday. The original bill called for condemning private property along the course of the rivers, which minority Republican staffers on the Senate Interior Committee opposed. Norm invited me to join him at a minority staff meeting to consider how to break the impasse. Also present were Ed Woozley, Jordan’s natural resources expert who had previously served as Director of the BLM from 1953 to 1961, and James Watt, who worked for Senator Milward Simpson (R-Wyo). A June 8 news report, announcing Watt’s recent passing, was a reminder of that meeting.

Watt was belligerent in the meeting, spoiling for a fight. He did not offer anything in a positive vein. Nevertheless, there was legitimate concern that ranchers along the rivers could lose the use of some of their land. I suggested they consider using scenic easements, instead of taking the land. I’d just written a paper for one of my law classes about the use of easements to protect scenic values in an urban setting. Nobody else had ever heard about that kind of easement, but they agreed it was the right way to go.

The Act, which was signed into law in 1968, described a scenic easement as “the right to control the use of land…for the purpose of protecting the natural qualities” of a designated river area. The idea was to keep the aesthetic values of the easement area basically the same as when the government purchased the easement. If it was a rustic ranch setting, that visual effect would have to be maintained.

From that time forward, scenic easements became a regular feature of wilderness and recreational area legislation, including Church and Jordan’s bill creating the Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA) in 1972. As Jordan’s Legislative Assistant at that time, I felt I’d had a hand in developing a valuable tool for protecting unique properties.

The other recent news report dealt with litigation to prevent the Forest Service from using a scenic/conservation easement it purchased in 2005 for $1.8 million on land located in the SNRA. The easement land is now owned by David Boren, a resident of Boise. The easement was acquired for use as a non-motorized public trail between the City of Stanley and Redfish Lake. The easement traverses Boren’s property for about 1.5 miles. It will allow the public to enjoy breath-taking views of the Sawtooth Mountains and Stanley Basin while traveling the 4.5 miles between Stanley and the lake.

Boren launched a federal lawsuit against the trail in 2019, throwing a kitchen-sink worth of claims against the Forest Service, all of which were easily disposed of by the federal judge in a well-crafted decision in February of last year. The news report indicates that the Stanley Redfish Trail is scheduled to open this summer, but that Boren’s ill-fated suit is still pending on appeal to the federal circuit court. The appeal is without merit and will likely be dismissed. The legal structure put in place by our two Senators held firm against this latest effort to deprive Idahoans of the enjoyment of this scenic treasure.

Thinking back to this simpler time, it was a rare privilege to have a front-row seat to observe public figures with differing political views working in tandem to protect Idaho’s important natural resources from self-interested individuals and developers. This example provides hope that we can get back to those better times. In the meantime, Idahoans must all do their part to ensure protection of these special areas.

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Toward a constitutional solution

June 18, 2023

It’s time to acknowledge, after watching this year’s Oregon legislative session, that Plan B didn’t work, and Oregon needs to try Plan A.

Both plans concern the same problem: Just over a third of the state’s legislators in the House or Senate can prevent that chamber from assembling a quorum, without which it can conduct no business.

In recent years, and at present, the minority keeping the state from doing its job has been Republican. Further in the past, that has been, and possibly at some point in the future could be, Democrats. Either way, there now is no reason to believe that any discontented group amounting to slightly more than a third of the seats of either legislative chamber has any incentive to allow the state’s business to be conducted if it wants to block a proposal it opposes.

This happens because Article 4, Section 12 of the Oregon constitution says, “Two thirds of each house shall constitute a quorum to do business, but a smaller number may meet; adjourn from day to day, and compel the attendance of absent members.”

That part about compelling hasn’t worked very well.

The current setup is a recipe for destruction of a third of Oregon’s state government, since one party or the other will always be in the minority. The quorum-denying tactic now is being used so regularly – over simple differences of policy or philosophy – that it is eroding the ability of the state to operate.

An overwhelming majority of Oregon’s voters appear to see it that way. Last November, after a string of quorum-killing walkouts in recent years, a group of petitioners offered Measure 113 in an effort to end the practice. It amends the state constitution so that any legislator who racks up 10 or more unexcused absences in a session is disqualified from serving in the Legislature in the following term. The measure got approval from 68.3% of the voters.

Probably most of those voters, and apparently most political watchers around the state, thought the penalty would be strong enough to end the walkouts. It wasn’t, as Oregonians now know: 10 senators (nine Republicans and one independent) have stayed away more than 10 working days, without excuse, thereby triggering last year’s penalty against them, barring them from serving as a legislator after their current term.

That done, there’s no more penalty to impose. The striking legislators say they are unbowed and will allow no work this session (including on bills they themselves support) except for the state budget, and no path if the Democrats insist on maintaining certain bills, including House Bill 2002 on abortion rights and gender-affirming care, as they are now.

That so many Republicans (and one aligned Independent) proved so willing to give up their seats was widely unexpected and also remarkable. It provides the clear evidence that Measure 113 has failed.

The good news is that, all along, it was Plan B. Time has come now to take another crack at Plan A.

The right way to approach the two-thirds quorum problem from the beginning would have involved a constitutional amendment, but more directly: Change the two third requirement in the constitution section quoted above, to a simple majority (50% plus one). That would allow just over half of either chamber to conduct business.

It’s easy to understand, clear and would solve the problem.

It’s also been discussed before, at length.

In 2019, amid another walkout, then-state Senator Ginny Burdick said she would promote a proposed constitutional amendment to set the Legislature’s quorums – for each body – at a simple majority for each chamber (16 members of the Senate or 31 members of the House). Just such a resolution to amend the constitution with a popular vote was introduced early in 2020 and progressed through a public hearing and work session. Then steam seemed to run out of the effort, and it died in committee without reaching the Senate floor.

Another bill is now being proposed by Reps. Khanh Pham of Portland and David Gomberg of Otis.

The idea is not radical. Oregon currently is an outlier when it comes to the quorum numbers. Among the 50 states, only four states – Oregon, Indiana, Tennessee and Texas – mandate two thirds. (Is it coincidental that all four have experienced troubled legislative sessions this year?)

The Oregon Legislature this year probably won’t be able to act to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot, but the same forces that developed the petition campaign for Measure 113 last year, and pushed through its approval, probably could. Or someone else could step forward.

Either way, if Oregonians expect to have their ballot-expressed will carried out at the statehouse, the next step is obvious.

This article originally appeared on the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Dialing it down

Dialing it down

June 16, 2023

People have argued for decades about whether deterrence - enforcement and punishment - work as a way of tamping down crime and disorder.

Now we may have some evidence that it does, at least in some cases, courtesy of our uproarious politics.

The idea here comes from a recent posting by Josh Marshall, the editor of Talking Points Memo website. He was remarking on the reaction by Donald Trump supporters to the recent indictments of the former president in Miami and before that in New York. In both places, Trump supporters turned up (condemning the legal action, of course) as expected. But their numbers in both places were not large. Only a few scattered supporters showed in New York, and an estimated couple hundred in Miami. One woman who had driven from Texas to Florida said she was concerned and disappointed by the low turnout.

Maybe more significant, those who did show up (almost all) remained law-abiding and non-violent. It was a calmer and more peaceful scene than many in law enforcement had been sensibly preparing for; memories of the January 6 riot at the Capital remain vivid in memories on all sides.

Marshall quoted a correspondent who asked: “Could it be that perhaps the reason that only a few people showed up to protest the Manhattan indictment and this latest one seems to be producing a lot of Tweets and little action is because ... the justice system prosecuted the perpetrators of January 6th, causing a deterrent effect?”

That prompted Marshall to reflect back on incidents related to the Bundy family, which includes Ammon Bundy, the recent gubernatorial candidate, the onetime leader of a takeover of a wildlife reserve in Oregon and the current holdout at his ranch near Emmett, avoiding service in a civil case.

Marshall suggested, “the upshot of the [earlier] Bundy standoffs was to send a message that far-right extremists could defy federal law and law enforcement with impunity and essentially make a mockery of federal authority. I have little doubt that a significant backdrop to the events of Jan. 6 was the assumption that a similar set of rules would apply: that militia cosplay, LARPing and right-wing performance art generally get a pass. The fact that it didn't on Jan. 6 is likely having an impact today.”

Think about conditions around Idaho this season, and in the last few months: Does it seem a little more peaceful, a little less threateningly violent, around the state today than it did a year ago? And even since the indictments of Donald Trump?

Despite the apocalyptic talk surrounding the most recent Bundy standoff, conditions generally have been non-violent (so far), and regional discussion about it seems to have taken a muted tone.

And maybe it has something to do with the emerging idea that violent and disruptive behavior has consequences.

On a smaller scale, you may have seen recent headlines from Coeur d’Alene about an annual Pride in the Park event being held again this year. At last year’s event, the activity was nearly disrupted, and might have been the scene of violence, had 31 people associated with the Patriot Front from all over the country, who were suspected of planning to riot, showed up. Instead, they were arrested and legal proceedings against them have been underway since.

This year? The pride event had its largest ever turnout, with no indication of any disruption, no prospective rioters in sight

Worried about an increasingly politically violent society?

There may be a way out of this: Pushing back against extremism and taking legal action against disruption and violence. There are at least some indications so far that it’s working.

(image/Wikimedia Commons)

Reruns

Reruns

June 14, 2023

Occasionally in the many news stories previewing the 2024 presidential election you’ll see a reference to the fact that, if the polls and trend lines hold, we will see a rematch between the two major party contenders from 2020, Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump.

There’s been little discussion about the history of presidential rematches.

That may be because of a lack of interest in history, or may be because there haven’t been many such circumstances. Either way, the few such occasions are worth a review as a way of framing what’s ahead.

There are only five such rematches in our nation’s history, and not all of them fit the criteria easily.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were the first of them, more or less. In the elections of 1796 and 1800 they were the top contenders for president facing most voters, legislators and electors - the rules for voting being a lot different then. Loosely, Adams was the candidate of the federalists and Jefferson of what was then called the republicans (or “democratic-republicans”), except that neither of those groups was organized anything like what we’re been accustomed to for the last couple of centuries. Adams didn’t really consider himself a federalist, and the de facto heads of the federalists, Alexander Hamilton, wasn’t a fan of either candidate.

But it’s worth noting that the result was a reversal of fortunes: Adams won the first time, Jefferson the second, though both races were relatively close.

The second double faceoff involved the elections of 1824 and 1828, and the contenders John Quincy Adams, who prevailed the first time, and Andrew Jackson, who won the second. The verb choice was deliberate. Jackson decisively led the polling, in popular vote and electoral college, in 1824, but he lacked the majority of electoral votes needed to win outright, mainly because there were really no organized parties then and four serious candidates were in the race. One of them was the speaker of the House, Henry Clay, and Adams was chosen as president by the House because Clay threw his support to him (“bargain and corruption,” the Jackson forces complained). Four years later, Jackson challenged Adams in a true head to head contest and won decisively.

This is a bit of a split decision: Adams prevailed the first time but lost the popular votes. Jackson was the electoral winner, really, both times.

The third case of a rerun was in the period just after Jackson’s presidency, when his vice president, Martin Van Buren, won election in 1836 and lost in 1840. By this time the pro-Jackson party had solidified as the Democrats, but the opposition, which became the Whigs, still was trying to pull itself together. While the Democrats were united for Van Buren, the Whigs in 1836 unwisely put up four candidates, splitting the vote; the top vote-getter was William Henry Harrison, a former general and territorial governor. Four years later the Whigs corrected their error, united behind Harrison, and beat Van Buren.

Was this really a rematch? Only in the loosest sense. It may be worth noting that In 1840 Van Buren, coming off three years of economic hard times and other troubles, might have lost to any credible Whig.

The other two rerun campaigns were unambiguous.

Democrat Grover Cleveland, first elected president in 1884, ran for a second term in 1888 against Republican Benjamin Harrison, and lost the electoral college, though he narrowly won the popular vote. Four years later they opposed each other again, and this time Harrison lost, decisively in both the popular vote and electoral college.

There have been only two occasions in the nation’s history, by the way, when presidential incumbents were ousted two elections in a row - that case and later in 1976 and 1980 (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter).

The usual rule is that once you’ve lost a presidential general election, your party doesn’t give you another shot. The last time that did happen (in consecutive elections) was in 1952 and 1956, when Republican Dwight Eisenhower beat Democrat Adlai Stevenson, strongly each time.

Are there any through lines to be pulled from all this?

Maybe only the old truism that every election is its own creature. As 2024 - comparisons to 2020 notwithstanding - is likely to be.

(image/Wikimedia Commons)

 

Minority rule, meh

June 13, 2023
We're living with a societal problem that needs to be killed.  Quickly.
 
The problem: minority rule.  Read again.  Minority rule.
 
The most extreme example came up several weeks ago.  In the Miami-Dade school district.  In one school.  By one parent.
 
At issue: the poem written by a very talented young woman for the occasion of the inauguration of President Joe Biden.  A Black Woman.
 
That poem was filled with uplifting thoughts and phrases. The words carefully chosen to speak of a bright picture for America.
 
But.  But, one parent of one student, in one grade school in one city, in one school district with millions of students didn't like it.  So, a single complaint was filed and the poem was deemed "inappropriate" for all students in all grade schools in the whole district.
 
One parent.  In a very large school district of thousands upon thousands of students.  One bitcher. 
 
AND, she admitted later, she had not even read this "work of the Devil."
 
That "one parent" had previously objected to two books about Black Americans and two others on Cuba.  All were pulled.  One voice.
 
In Montana, the Governor has signed into law a bill forbidding drag queens from reading to kids in school, in libraries, in public.  Eight bitchers.
 
At one Target store, a display of clothing, with a rainbow at the center, honoring the local LGBTQ community.  Three bitchers and the display was moved to the back of the store.
 
We see this egregious "minority rule"activity in school districts.  In library after library regarding books in their collections.  In city councils and county commissions and the boards and committees under them.  In Congress.  Yes, in our national Congress.
 
Somewhere - somehow - the old principle of "majority rule" has been turned on its head.  In state after state, laws are being put on the books allowing individuals power over local boards and commissions.  And, SCOTUS has confirmed a few.
 
The heckling "minority voice" is changing our way of life.  And, there's a downside to reacting to it.
 
Take the Target case.  By bowing to an acknowledged minority, (three complainers) the store can never claim to be inclusive.  A minority was appeased while the majority was silent.  For fearing to lose a few shoppers, that store lost me.
 
Take the issue of abortion.  Poll after poll shows a 70-85% of us believe abortion should be retained as a woman's medical option.  Again, legislative and congressional efforts to ban abortion ignore the proven majority that wants to retain it.  Political majority voices going unheard.  National sentiment be damned.  The minority are driving the issue.  They're "owning" it.
 
There are many examples of "minority rule" in our lives.  Examples that challenge the very basics of our democracy.  
 
Look at Congress.  Sorry.
 
Same story.  The so-called "Freedom Caucus" of about 40 far right GOP souls in a House of 222.  So, about 18-percent bitch from the right, giving leadership of their own Party apoplexy - 40 out of 222 GOP members.
 
Speaker McCarthy can't control his own Caucus.  Because he's got about 18-percent of his members gumming up the procedural works for the other 82-percent.  Minority rule at its loudest.
 
It matters not which minority is "calling-the-shots" in any board, commission, city/county/state politics, school district - even Congress.
 
Somebody, majority somebodies, majority church Deacons, county commissioners, city councils, legislatures - even Congress.  Maybe, especially Congress!  Majorities need to take control.  Regardless of Party or no Party.  Majorities have got to tell those 18-percenters to take a seat and speak when called upon.
 
Minority rule seldom works.  Minority rule simply disrupts, confuses, stops meaningful progress and nearly always results in chaos.  Majorities need to "kick some butt," take control and run things according to the rules.  Yes, even Congress.

On open primaries

June 12, 2023

Anyone who expected Attorney General Raul Labrador’s review of Reclaim Idaho’s “Open Primaries” initiative to be a political hatchet job, would not have been disappointed. The AG’s review, released on May 31, made any number of legally faulty claims about the initiative. Labrador set the stage with a May 2 tweet about the initiative, saying, “Let’s defeat these bad ideas coming from liberal outside groups.” His chief political operative, Theo Wold, has been doing his best to paint the initiative as an evil liberal plot, designed to subvert the Republican Party.

They ignore the fact that many traditional Idaho Republicans, like former House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, strongly support the initiative. Newcomb calls it “a simple, common-sense reform that will give us better elections and better leadership.” Hyrum Erickson, an elected Republican precinct committeeman for Madison County, backs the initiative because “our current primary system incentivizes candidates to demonize people who disagree with them rather than focus on solving problems.”

In fact, a broad coalition of home-grown Idaho Republicans, Independents and Democrats believe the plan will allow all Idahoans to participate in selecting our political leaders. They want to break the monopoly that the Dorothy Moon extremist branch of the GOP has had over Idaho elections since the Republican primary was closed in 2012, keeping a majority of Idahoans from having a say in choosing elected leaders.

The Attorney General has a legal duty to review initiatives before they are circulated for signature. Idaho law requires the Attorney General to “recommend to the petitioner such revision or alteration of the measure as may be deemed necessary and appropriate.”

Labrador violated this statutory duty by stating his political views about the initiative, rather than performing an impartial legal analysis. But, this is in keeping with his promise to run a political office, rather than a law office providing sound legal advice.

Labrador’s review asserts the initiative is constitutionally infirm, based upon a 2017 advisory opinion of the Maine Supreme Court. However, the initiative is fashioned after the “Alaska Better Elections Initiative” that was found to be constitutional by the Alaska Supreme Court in 2022.

Labrador takes the absurd position that the right of political parties to control who can vote in primary elections takes priority over the right of voters to vote for the candidates of their choice in those elections. The Idaho Constitution does not grant political parties the right to control who votes in our elections, but our Supreme Court has held the right of citizens to elect their leaders is an inviolable constitutional right.

The AG’s review is a collection of contrived arguments designed to sabotage the initiative. Labrador fears the initiative because it would allow all Idaho voters to have a voice in our elections, rather than the small clique that has driven Idaho politics toward the outer bounds of extremism in recent years.

The “Open Primaries” initiative would establish a primary election where all candidates run on a single ticket, allowing every voter to select from the entire field. The four top vote-getters will be placed on the general election ballot, where all voters can vote for the candidates in their order of preference.

A candidate who receives an outright majority of the vote in the initial vote count wins the office. If there is no majority winner, the candidate receiving the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated and the votes of those who made that candidate their first choice then go to their second-choice candidate in a second count. If a candidate gets a majority in the second count, they win. If not, the process repeats until a candidate gets a majority. The beauty of this system is that every voter has a better chance of influencing the election–if their first choice does not win, their second choice might. The system is often called ranked choice voting.

Alaska’s new election system received plaudits from voters in the 2022 election. Voters surveyed said it was easy to use. It gave them more choices in the election and more influence in selecting their leaders. It has reportedly had the effect of making elected leaders more pragmatic and more responsive to the will of the majority. Idaho desperately needs this type of election reform.

 

Simpler, simpler

June 11, 2023

Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, and leader of the Oregon Senate Republicans who in effect have staged another quorum-denying walkout, has acknowledged the obvious: The walkout was about the content of a group of bills, about policy choices, not a technical issue of whether their summaries met legal requirements.

Before moving on from what clearly was a pretext for a walkout, however, we should ask: Was the complaint about hard-to-read summaries grounded in fact? There is something meaningful at stake here, which is our ability to understand what our legislators are working on.

And the issue is not dead. Two Republican lawmakers along with an anti-abortion organization are suing over the contention that the summaries on at least certain legislation is unclear, and Republican legislators reportedly are at work on recrafting summaries of their own.

Like most other states, Oregon’s Legislature produces summaries of the bills which are introduced. Those summaries exist because the text of many bills, which in theory should be understandable for an average reader, often is not because of the need for cross-references through the state code, legal boilerplate and other technical limitations. The bill summaries are supposed to be written plainly enough that most Oregonians can easily understand what the bill is intended to do.

A specific legal requirement is built into state law with the intent of assuring this: Hitting the mark of 60 (readability at about the eighth-grade level) on the Flesch test. This column has a Flesch reading ease score of 45.7, falling short of the state’s bill summary requirement.

Former Republican state Rep. Michael McLane has pointed out that online calculators can be used to test readability of any text passage, and he said in a legal opinion solicited by GOP senators, “I have done that for quite a few bills and must report that I have yet to find a measure summary that complies with the law.”

Putting aside the results of readability tests: Not all but many of the summaries actually are hard for average readers, or really almost anyone, to properly understand.

Oregon’s legislation can be found on the Legislature’s website under “bills,” along with lots of information about them, including their progress through the chambers, their financial impact and more. Summaries for each bill can be found under the heading “catchline/summary.”

Coming from many sources – both parties, agencies, interest groups and more – they vary widely. Many are clear. Many others are confusing or simply incomprehensible.

To take one example, the summary for Senate Bill 5 says, “Restores corporate excise tax credit allowed for qualified research activities and sets increased maximum credit amount.” That gives you a reasonable idea of what the bill is intended to do.

Similarly with Senate Bill 11, which, “Requires state boards or commissions that conduct public meetings through electronic means to record and promptly publish recording on website or hosting service so that public may observe or listen to meetings free of charge.”

Some summaries are not exactly unclear but raise more questions than they answer. Take for example the apparently quixotic Senate Bill 20: “Requires Public Utility Commission to study feasibility of converting Portland General Electric into a people’s utility district. Directs commission to submit findings to interim committees of Legislative Assembly related to utilities no later than September 1, 2024.”

Other summaries are simply head-scratching. The most-discussed recent example, House Bill 2002, clearly relates to abortion, but after that comprehension is elusive. Here’s the first few sentences from its bill summary:

“Modifies provisions relating to reproductive health rights. Modifies provisions relating to access to reproductive health care and gender-affirming treatment. Modifies provisions relating to protections for providers of and individuals receiving reproductive and gender-affirming health care services. Creates crime of interfering with a health care facility. Punishes by maximum of 364 days’ imprisonment, $6,250 fine, or both. Creates right of action for person or health care provider aggrieved by interference with health care facility. ”

Things are being modified and a crime is created, evidently, but that’s about as much as you can tell from this summary, and the rest of the text, which runs for about a page, is no better.

That example is not unique.

Senate Bill 3 has this: “Requires students to complete [one credit of future planning as requirement] one half-credit of higher education and career path skills and one half-credit of personal financial education as requirements for high school diploma. Directs State Board of Education to adopt academic content standards for [future planning and] higher education and career path skills and for personal financial education. Requires school districts and public charter schools to provide instruction in [future planning] higher education and career path skills and personal financial education. Applies to high school diplomas awarded on or after [July 1, 2025] January 1, 2027. Allows waiver of one year if certain conditions met.” Got that? (Some of the text is in bold and some in italics, without explanation; the brackets are as they appear in the original.)

There’s room for confusion on Senate Bill 2 as well: “Creates Oregon personal income tax subtraction for amounts received for renting out room in taxpayer’s home.”

More instances abound.

Many of these problems are not about grade-level comprehension so much as they are about jargon and inside-the statehouse language; the holder of a doctorate could not follow some of these summaries without a jargon dictionary handy. Better than feeding text to a reading-level calculator would be a process for submitting it to people outside state government (and government-influencing) circles, inquiring whether people not in the know would clearly understand what it says and intends.

This is a fixable problem. And there’s still time in this legislative session to take a serious crack at solving it. Public confidence in the Legislature, never at a great high in the best of times, is being undermined. This is a fix that requires no money or even any change on policy, just a little more sunlight and honesty.

Originally in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

Old-fashioned bipartisanship

Old-fashioned bipartisanship

June 10, 2023

Bipartisanship in American politics has become such a stretch, such a rare occurrence that when it does occasionally break out – the recent bipartisan debt ceiling agreement, for instance – the notion that competing ideologies can compromise in support of the broad national interest becomes a “man bites dog” story.

Here’s National Public Radio White House correspondent Tamara Keith analyzing the deal Democratic president Joe Biden cut with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“This idea of bipartisanship is something that President Biden ran on in 2020,” Keith observed a week ago. “It is certainly something that he is running on again in 2024. It does at times feel a bit antiquated in this time of partisan polarization, like pining for a time when Elvis was still the king. But Biden actually does have a stack of bipartisan accomplishments to point to.”

Elvis has left the building and lo and behold there is a president in the White House who can cut a deal with the same people who have spent years demonizing him as a shambling old fool.

In truth, the old guy provided a graduate level course in how to work across the partisan divide. The debt deal required effort, good faith, persistence and a belief that failure was not an option. Having ended a standoff that had it not been resolved might well have tanked the world economy, Biden lavished praise. “Both sides operated in good faith. Both sides kept their word,” Biden said.

And McCarthy, who faced revolt from the fringes of his own party, had to admit that talking directly with Biden had not been all that bad an experience, and as Biden noted “the American people got what they needed.”

Ms. Keith is an excellent reporter, among the best at defining and deconstructing the often devious and destructive partisanship of our nation’s capital. Yet, as good as she is, Tamara Keith, like most political reporters now laboring in the toxic Trump Era, came of age during a generation of political dysfunction – “this time of partisan polarization,” as she correctly describes our times.

Keith was born in 1979, seven years after Joe Biden took his seat in the United States Senate.

Biden was 30 years old when he took his first oath. The Senate was a different place then. Both parties had conservatives and liberals. The chairs of important committees were really important, much more important than they are today. And a laconic, principled advocate of bipartisanship, Mike Mansfield of Montana, a Democrat, was the Senate majority leader. Mansfield, who left the Senate in 1977 after 16 years as majority leader, defined his era.

Mansfield made his career working across that center aisle in the Senate. He had an almost religious devotion to fairness. You can search the archives and find no more than a handful of times when Mansfield criticized a Republican by name. He literally bent over backwards to treat his colleagues with respect and deference.

Just to put a fine point on his spectacular career, Mike was no Mitch McConnell.

The ”antiquated” approach Joe Biden took to the debt ceiling negotiation was pure Mike Mansfield.

In our dysfunctional era when character in political actors is as old fashioned as a 78 rpm record, Mansfield knew that honesty, both with your side and the opposition, was the coin of political capital. If you can’t trust, you can’t negotiate.

Joe Biden has often acknowledged the mentorship role Mansfield played in his early career, particularly after Biden’s first wife and daughter were killed, and his two sons injured, in a tragic automobile accident shortly after Biden won an upset first election to the Senate in 1972.

By all accounts Biden was devastated by the tragedy and had made up his mind not to assume the Senate seat he had just won in Delaware. Mansfield talked him out of that decision, helped engineer a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee for the inexperienced politician and counseled the grieving father about his obligation to serve.

Biden was there when Mansfield, in one of his many great decisions, selected a North Carolina segregationist, Sam Ervin, who also happened to be a worshiper of the Constitution to chair what became the Watergate Committee. The Montanan knew that a partisan investigation of the potential wrongdoing of a sitting president would not be credible if the investigative committee was packed with high profile partisans. The committee Mansfield appointed contained no Democrat with any real national profile and certainly no aspirations beyond the Senate.

Mansfield knew that the Watergate scandal held the potential to tarnish the Republican Party for a generation, so he preemptively exonerated the party of any corruption, while letting Ervin’s investigation reveal the facts about burglars and hush money and political cover ups.

Biden was in Mansfield’s Senate when the majority leader went every week to breakfast at the White House with Richard Nixon, who never completely trusted anyone. Nixon, savoring the prospect of his long sought diplomatic opening to China, was afraid that Mansfield – a scholar of Asian history – would find a way to show up the White House and undercut his accomplishment.

Mansfield didn’t do that, of course, and after Nixon opened the door to China, Mansfield went with his Senate Republican counterpart, Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, on a good will mission to Beijing sanctioned by Nixon.

Like Mansfield Biden seems to know when to stay quiet. During the tense debt ceiling negotiations, he wasn’t, in contrast to McCarthy, on television every day. He judged the rhythm of the talks, read the room, kept his word and cut a deal. The president said his negotiating team and McCarthy’s “were straightforward with one another, completely honest with one another, respectful of one another.”

That was once the way politics could work.

The partisan fight over the debt ceiling, a fight over whether to pay the bills already rung up on the national credit card, is as fundamentally silly as it was dangerous. The deal Biden and McCarthy made solved no spending or revenue problem. It did avoid economic calamity, a reality one prays we have learned once again, and finally.

At the same time the compromise solution serves to underscore the stark truth that if this messy, contentious democracy is ever to deal effectively with its seemingly intractable problems – immigration, climate change, the debt – it will only happen with politicians who are straightforward with each other, completely honest and respectful. Those characteristics aren’t antiquated. We’ve just gotten used to pretending they don’t really matter.

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Local vigilance too

Local vigilance too

June 9, 2023

Not Thomas Jefferson but rather the abolitionist Wendell Phillips originated the quote, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.” That applies not only in the case of national and regional concerns but local as well - as in the election of school trustees and administrators.

Consider this week’s hiring of a school superintendent at West Bonner School District, number 83, based at Priest River.

This may seem obscure if you live far away from there, as most Idahoans do. But stay with me.

The superintendency opened in March with the resignation of Jackie Branum, who was replaced on an interim basis by a long-time area resident and elementary school principal, Susie Luckey. The search effort yielded two finalists for the position. One is Luckey, who has a conventional and evidently uncontroversial background as an experienced public school administrator locally for two decades.

The other finalist is Brandon Durst, on whom hangs our tale.

Durst should be a moderately familiar name elsewhere around the state. He was a state legislator (a Democrat then, though he’s decisively switched parties since) and last year was a candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, polling second in the Republican primary behind now-incumbent Debbie Critchfield. He also finished fifth of six candidates in 2018 for the Boise School District board. Those efforts weren’t helped by reports about his background.

In last year’s primary he positioned himself as well to the ideological right of the other two contenders (the then-incumbent and the now-incumbent) and talked in large part about parental rights and school choice, with a culture war edge. He has been a “senior analyst - education policy research” for the ideological Idaho Freedom Foundation, whose leadership has expressed sharp opposition to public school education, period.

After last year’s primary election Durst took a job with the Idaho Family Policy Center, which is self-described as “the only conservative Christian think tank in the state” and which said of its new hire, “An ordained pastor and member of Cloverdale Church of God, Branden cares deeply about promoting biblical values in government and culture.” And he noted on Facebook that he’s been working “to establish Idaho's, and possibly the Nation's, first ever Christian public charter school.” (Oklahoma recently got there first on the national front.) Durst has had academic classwork in education but has never led or managed or professionally taught in a public school.

You get the drift.

The contest for superintendent - this is about the West Bonner superintendency, remember? - has become a hot topic online, notably on the district’s Facebook page. One post backing him refers to criticism from “Good Government Bulldogs against Branden Durst who is interviewing for Superintendent, please note that this is yet another leftist/RINO group attempting to attack yet another excellent conservative candidate #VoteBrandenDurst and loosen the chokehold of the leftist regime on our tax funded schools.” You can take that as an indicator of who’s backing him: Republican Party organization people like (and probably including) those supporting the governing board at North Idaho College at Coeur d’Alene.

The anti-Durst side focused its message on a Don’t Do Durst page. The most striking piece on it may be tweets showing Durst’s enthusiastic support for Todd Banducci, who led that North Idaho College board over many of the months it has steadily demolished the institution and dragged it to the edge of losing its accreditation. Banducci and his allies were elected in large part through the help of local Republican leaders who also happen to be leaders in the Idaho Freedom Foundation.

So, what kind of superintendent - and what kind of a school district - does West Bonner want?

On a 3-2 vote behind closed doors, the trustees at West Bonner decided against the veteran local educator who already had been serving as interim superintendent, and instead chose Durst.

Prepare to be surprised if the West Bonner district doesn’t generate some really newsy headlines in the months to come. You might get a feel for that an hour south at North Idaho College, and ponder what can result when we’re insufficiently vigilant as we fill our public offices.

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