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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > March > 11
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Editorial: Air Force under gun as Northrop exits tanker fight
A new generation of flying gas stations has been described for years as the biggest pending Air Force acquisition.
Incredibly, airplanes — known as tankers — that refuel other planes in flight have existed for many decades. More incredibly, the tankers that the U.S. military now use are from the 1950s and 1960s.
The process of getting them replaced has been, shall we say, a bit troubled.
Not for many years has there been any controversy about whether the tankers should be replaced.
When the Air Force moved to update the fleet in 2001, Boeing was the sole bidder. But the company was eventually stripped of the deal after a scandal that resulted in people going to jail. Sen. John McCain was instrumental in bringing the scandal to light.
Later in the decade, Boeing bid against Northrop Grumman, which was in a partnership with a European firm. The bids were handled at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where the later stages of the acquisition process will also be managed.
Northrop won the bid, but Boeing appealed, and an independent government investigation found that the Air Force didn’t follow its own rules in awarding the bid, changed the rules in midgame and gave more information to one side than the other. (Definitely not a shining moment for Wright-Patterson.)
Perhaps the Air Force was bending over backward not to be accused of favoring Boeing.
So the bidding process was restarted. This time, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has taken responsibility for running it.
But now Northrop has pulled out. It says the Pentagon’s specifications favor the smaller Boeing plane.
This is not good, because it eliminates competition, which tends to drive costs down.
Some people are enraged over the government’s posture. European officials see protectionism at play. The president of France has promised to take up the issue with President Barack Obama. And Alabama, where much of the work on the Northrop plane was to be done, is ready for a Franco-Bama alliance, not withstanding any lingering hard feelings about France’s view on the Iraq war.
But Northrop says it won’t push the fight anymore, given how long American troops have had to wait for a modern tanker. That’s good.
In truth, the Pentagon’s position looks pretty solid. Secretary Gates has long emphasized that the Pentagon shouldn’t always buy the most expensive systems available. The Northrop plane could carry more fuel than the Air Force requested. More is nice, but there were reasons behind the Air Force request. And the Boeing plane is smaller, so it can land in more places.
At any rate, the upshot of Northrop’s decision was not only to make Boeing’s day. (A contract for $40 billion, with the possibility for more later, up to $100 billion, can do that.) The upshot was to put the Pentagon and the Air Force under more public scrutiny than ever.
And Boeing. If Boeing gets arrogant — feeling it can’t lose — that could still derail the process again.
Secretary Gates is out to save money. He can’t allow his decisions about the bid specifications to backfire by virtrue of eliminating competition. He will need help from the Air Force in keeping Boeing under control — not only in awarding the enormously complex, long-term contract, but in carrying it out.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
Martin Gottlieb: Linking Portman to birthers gets Democrats noplace
When Rob Portman was in the Miami Valley to campaign for the U.S. Senate recently, he was preceded on the program by two — count them — local Republican politicians who, in the process, cracked birther jokes.
Not jokes about birthers — the people who somehow manage to believe that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in this country and isn’t a citizen; but jokes proceeding on the premise that Obama was, in fact, not born in this country.
This campaign event really did happen. There’s audio and video.
Ever since, Ohio Democrats have been having a blast. They’re e-mailing links to the audio and video. They’re calling on Portman to denounce the birthers. They’re counting the days during which he has not done so to their satisfaction. They’re reporting about how many blogs have picked up the story. (See talkingpointsmemo.com, for example, and search for Rob Portman to hear the audios.)
They’re milking the thing for all it’s worth.
But, really, it’s not worth much.
Portman was in Darke County for a Lincoln Day Dinner, a fundraising event. Introducing him was state Rep. James Zehringer. He said that Wikipedia, an online source, offers a biography of Portman that starts with he’s “an American lawyer.”
Said Zehringer, “That’s something our president can’t say.”
You probably had to be there. (Actually, though, the audio raises questions about whether even those who were present were amused.)
Before Zehringer, Jim Buchy (pronounced Beeky) spoke. He was a state legislator for many years. An assistant House Republican leader, he was known as among the most conservative people in Columbus.
He delivered a recitation that was apparently already going around in right-wing circles. It entails a comparison of Abraham Lincoln and Obama, both, after all, being lawyers and legislators from Illinois who reached the White House without great prior experience in office. It ends, as Buchy offered it:
“Lincoln was a skinny lawyer. Obama is a skinny lawyer. Lincoln was a Republican. Obama is a skinny lawyer. Lincoln was born in the United States. Obama is a skinny lawyer.”
Defenders of Buchy and Zehringer say they were just joking around, however badly. Still, one might expect experienced politicians to know it’s not a great idea to tie your guy to the birthers. Maybe what they didn’t count on was the Internet.
Portman didn’t say anything about the birther jokes at the event. But he has, upon being pressed, called the remarks “inappropriate,” before changing the subject to how the Democrats can’t do anything but take cheap shots.
The whole thing looks to reasonable people like one of those political flaps that warriors and journalists love but have no real meaning, being only diversions from serious talk about complex issues. (And you know how much people love serious talk about complex issues.)
In fact, though, there’s a legitimate, relevant issue. Portman has somehow developed a reputation for level-headedness and a kind of gentility, even while keeping the fire-breathing conservatives happy. This bugs the Democrats. They want to paint him as afraid to take on the party’s fringes. They want to undercut his reputation among independents.
They point, among other things, to a John McCain campaign event in 2008 when radio flamer Bill Cunningham carried on in a way that led McCain to explicitly “repudiate” Cunningham. Portman, another speaker at the event, kind of laughed it off, in the name of party unity.
“Willie, you’re out of control again,” he said on stage. “So, what else is new? But we love him. … I’ve got to tell you, Bill Cunningham lending his voice to this campaign is extremely important.”
Some might reasonably be put off.
Thing is, though, politically speaking, Portman probably doesn’t need to establish credentials as a moderate. If swing voters are inclined to think that the president they elected in 2008 needs to be balanced off with Republicans in Congress — as such voters often seem to think in midterm elections — they’re likely to be little concerned about varying degrees of conservatism among Republicans. They’re not electing a president, after all, just balancing the parties.
Speaking of presidents, though, look at how the Republicans did in 2008, when they pointed to Barack Obama’s embarrassing affiliations: his minister, an associate with an extremist background, ACORN.
The voters who were up for grabs just didn’t care. They judged the individual and the circumstances of the election.
For some reason, up-for-grabs voters seem to assume that everybody in politics has embarrassing friends.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, Ohio politics
Editorial: Construction fight a study in dysfunction
The latest obstacle to Beavercreek school district’s long-running quest to build two new schools couldn’t be more bizarre.
What should have been a breezy meeting last month with the Beavercreek Twp. Zoning Commission to approve a zoning change for the new schools got unexpectedly testy as commission members questioned school officials’ construction plan.
After the board put off a decision, questions by a Dayton Daily News reporter revealed an even bigger problem: half of the zoning commission’s members were serving though their terms had expired.
The district now must wait for the mess to get cleared up, further delaying its plan for new schools next to the Stonehill Village housing development.
The whole affair calls into question the ability of key leaders — at the township, the city and the school district — to solve problems. These processes must become more cooperative.
The school construction saga has been a study in dysfunction. Stonehill’s developer, Robert Nutter, initially offered to sell some and donate other land to the district if it placed schools there. But Mr. Nutter asked for oversight over the building design, which nearly scuttled the deal. The school board was so close to giving up on the Stonehill plan that it turned its attention to a different property it already owned and began planning a school there.
However, that dispute is now over. Mr. Nutter and the school board came to the zoning commission on the same page, wanting to remove the land from Stonehill’s planned development to allow for both schools to be built there.
Zoning commission members not only balked, they demanded that the school board explain its choice in a discussion that went well beyond their purview.
At one point, commission member Charles Brackenhoff told school board member Peg Arnold, who was there just to observe, she “really needs to sway the zoning commission” that the board’s site for the schools made sense.
Choosing school sites is not the commission’s job; it’s the school board’s. The only legitimate question for the commission was whether the school board’s zoning request makes sense under township law, which it does.
The commission’s behavior seems even more out of line now, given that half of its members continued to make zoning decisions for the township up to 18 months after their terms expired.
The township trustees are clinging to a passage in the rules that says a commission member can continue to serve after a term expires until a successor is named. Obviously, though, that was intended to serve as an occasional short-term fix, not a license for members to serve indefinitely.
On Monday, the township trustees formally reappointed the necessary members, hoping to resolve any uncertainty.
Growth in Beavercreek and the township has reached the point at which a high degree of coordination is needed for effective governance. The question of whether a merger of the two would better serve the larger community simmers in the background.
Regardless of how that is resolved, Beaverceek exists as one community. The city, township and schools — and zoning commission — all must be working in partnership, and each must have a grip on its own responsibilities. In this case, the township didn’t have its act together.
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