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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.
Scott Elliott is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He writes about education, city and suburban issues, politics, business, workforce and consumer issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > October > 10
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Editorial: Fisher closer to right on big issues; Portman wants to refight Obama wars
2010 ELECTION
Ohio’s election for the U.S. Senate comes at time when a Republican candidate has great advantages. President Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress have failed to turn the economy around or to tamp down the hyper-partisan atmosphere in Washington — that is, to unite the country.
Moreover, Republicans in politics and the media have made a coherent, anti-government case against the president, whereas he has not come up with a theme other than “change,” which isn’t resonating anymore.
And yet the mess he has failed to clean up was largely left to him by a Republican president. And the Republicans who now want back in office are basically the same people who supported that president’s policies.
In Ohio, both Senate candidates are highly capable, perhaps the best their parties can offer. Democrat Lee Fisher was tapped to be lieutenant governor because Ted Strickland needed somebody who knew the state and Columbus. Mr. Strickland was widely judged to have found the right person.
Republican Rob Portman has bipartisan respect and an admirable way of finding issues on which he can work with Democrats while keeping his conservative base happy. One was reform of Internal Revenue Service practices when he was last in Congress in the 1990s.
But on the big controversies, he is a loyal, staunchly conservative Republican. He can’t be confused with the likes of retiring Sen. George Voinovich, former Sen. Mike DeWine or former Gov. Bob Taft, all of whom have paid a price with the extreme voices in their party for occasionally straying from the party line. Their relative independence has been courageous and right for Ohio and the country.
Mr. Portman, who believes the Obama administration is consciously out to expand government’s size and power, wants to “repeal” the Obama health care plan. He also talks about “replacing” it. But this amounts to repeal. He simply is not on board for the strong measures that result in dramatic progress toward universal coverage.
Mr. Portman, who is significantly ahead in the polls, also wants to end the Obama stimulus plan, and, in fact, to reverse it, to go in the opposite direction on spending. Instead, he would stimulate the economy with a payroll tax holiday. But to end the Obama stimulus — which Mr. Portman admits has had impact — while trying another kind of stimulus would be self-defeating.
He blithely insists that the original stimulus would have had twice the impact if it were half the size and had bigger tax cuts. That’s the Republican line. Such a stimulus would have been only about twice the size of the now-forgotten one of 2008 (wherein taxpayers were sent rebates). That effort had no important impact on a much smaller economic downtown.
Mr. Portman and other Republican leaders are eager to refight the ugly fights of the last two years even if they can’t prevail. Better to move on. Better to not deliver the message to business people, Wall Street and the world that the United States might make U-turns on fundamental policy after every election.
Mr. Portman was rising in the House of Representatives when he was appointed to the Bush cabinet. He could rise to party leadership in the Senate, too. But to do so, he’d have to play to the Republican mood.
That’s not what the swing state of Ohio needs. It needs focus on the nation’s needs.
Mr. Fisher has not generally aligned himself with the party’s vocal liberal wing. When he ran for governor in 1998, he called for a tax cut. Before that, he was associated with the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization set up to keep the party from drifting too far left. (Bill Clinton came out of it.)
This year Mr. Fisher is fuzzing up his old image especially on trade, highlighting free-trade agreements as bad for Ohio. On the other hand, though, he has joined the political right in opposing “cap and trade,” which would cut carbon emissions with a system of rewards and penalties. His position is a concession to being from coal-dependent Ohio.
He supports President Obama on health care and the stimulus. President Obama has proceeded on the premise that if he was going to achieve dramatic legislation, it would be in his first two years. He was right. The next Congress will have more Republicans, and the scarred Democrats will move to the center. Mr. Fisher and his fellow Democrats know they have stretched to the limit whatever mandate the party had after 2008.
Meanwhile, though, all the pressure on Mr. Portman will be to stick to his promise to refight the old fights, especially with Republicans being pushed away from the political center by the Tea Party.
At a time when both parties should be trying to find common ground — and when both parties have much to be humble and chastened about — Mr. Portman is the one with the ideological head of steam. Mr. Fisher is the better choice.
(A letter in support of each candidate is here.)
Permalink | Comments (32) | Post your comment | Categories: 2010 endorsements, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio politics
TweetEllen Belcher: We grilled them, now you get to vote
2010 Election
A reader who is voting early called this week to say he didn’t know anything about the candidates running for the state board of education. Could I help him, he asked.
As it happened, we hadn’t published our recommendation in that race yet. I did some quick searching on the web for the caller, but indeed there isn’t much information out there about the candidates in this low-profile race.
The plea was a reminder of why many newspapers — not just the Dayton Daily News — spend so much time and energy asking candidates about their views and looking into their backgrounds.
Last week the Dayton Daily News editorial board finished up more than three dozen interviews with candidates, and proponents and opponents of tax issues.
Most of those interviews lasted an hour. In some cases, the grillings ran longer. Usually the candidates faced each other.
It’s a fact — not a boast — that the discussions were far more substantive than any candidates’ night or debate can ever be. Unlike at those events, we got to ask unlimited follow-up questions and interrupt when someone wasn’t answering a question or was serving up platitudes.
While not an election season goes by where we don’t get calls from candidates, or people who are for or against levies, asking us to make a recommendation, other people think it’s arrogant for newspapers to make this effort. Critics say that they don’t want to be told what to think.
Of course, we want to be persuasive. Who wants to have an unpersuasive opinion? But we’re a newspaper, not a political party. Nobody gets a free pass from hard questions here.
What we mainly want to do is give people information, to stoke debate. If, come Election Day, the majority of voters agrees with our point of view, great. If they see things differently, that’s OK, too. People can disagree and still find worth in the other side’s argument. Debate forces all of us to think harder.
Another criticism we get is that the newspaper has an agenda and that it favors Democrats. In presidential contests, it’s a fact that the Daily News has always recommended the Democratic candidate, except in 1972 when Richard Nixon was challenged by George McGovern.
Take a look, though, at the lists below. The record is indisputable that we’ve encouraged readers to support Republicans in marquee contests. If we only had recommended Republicans when there was no real contest, or only in unimportant contests, then we’d be guilty of just jerking our knees.
This year, we recommended four Democrats and four Republicans who are running statewide; we did recommend the Democrat in the big races for the U.S. Senate and governor. We picked the three Republicans for the nearby congressional races. For local Statehouse and county races, we went with seven Democrats and six Republicans.
Here’s a caution, though: it’s dangerous to look at aggregate score cards for this sort of thing. You need to look at election contests one at a time.
Legislative districts are created by partisans trying to maximize the number of contests their political party can win. (They admit this; it’s not just an accusation.) If a district (or county) is overwhelmingly Democratic, it’s hard to get a good Republican candidate to run and vice versa. If a candidate’s competence, not just his party, matters to you (and it does to us), there really may be no choice about who is the better candidate.
That reality can skew the numbers, making any organization that’s recommending candidates look more partisan or more balanced than it really might be.
What do we care about when we’re sizing up candidates? The exercise is inherently subjective; it’s not a math problem with a right or wrong answer. That said, what the person wants to do and how he says he’ll vote is significant. So is experience in public and private life.
Familiarity with the work of the office and the controversies the officeholder would face counts. A person’s reputation and record of involvement is important. Political ideology is significant, but more so, say, for the U.S. Senate, than a county commission seat. Temperament is also a factor.
You shouldn’t just blindly take our word on how to vote. Of course, talk to others, read up on the people and issues. But we’re also hoping that we’ve culled some valuable information for you from the individuals who will be making decisions that affect your lives.
DDN recommendations for U.S. Senate
1982 Howard Metzenbaum (D) over Paul Pfeifer (R)
1986 John Glenn (D) over Thomas Kindness (R)
1988 Howard Metzenbaum (D) over George Voinovich (R)
1992 John Glenn (D) over Mike DeWine (R)
1994 Mike DeWine (R) over Joel Hyatt (D)
1998 George Voinovich (R) over Mary Boyle (D)
2000 Mike DeWine (R) over Ted Celeste (D)
2004 George Voinovich (R) over Eric Fingerhut (D)
2006 Mike DeWine (R) over Sherrod Brown (D)
DDN recommendations for governor
1982 Richard Celeste (D) over Clarence “Bud” Brown (R)
1986 Richard Celeste (D) over James Rhodes (R)
1990 George Voinovich (R) over Anthony Celebrezze (D)
1994 George Voinovich (R) over Rob Burch (D)
1998 Robert Taft (R) over Lee Fisher (D)
2002 Robert Taft (R) over Tim Hagan (D)
2006 Ted Strickland (D) over J. Kenneth Blackwell (R)
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Elections, Ellen Belcher, Montgomery County, Ohio government, Ohio politics
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