The Daily Sentinel from Grand Junction, Colorado • 10

1 IJitW I I Commentary 10A The Daily Sentinel Sunday, October 6, 196 THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES WITHOUT ROX PAWL THE I Jj DAILY Sentinel A Cox Newspaper Founded in 1893 George Orbanek, Editor and Publisher Larry J. DeGolyer, General Manager Dennis M. Herzog, Managing Editor Bob Silbemagel, Editorial Page Editor Gary Hannon, City Editor Sharyn Wizda, Editonal Board Teddy Roosevelt was first modem president WILL governments actions. Cooper, writing in The Virginia Quarterly Review, notes that the emergence of FDRs fullblown heroic leadership under wartime conditions was presaged by the prewar revival of interest in the Civil War, exemplified by the book and movie Gone with the Wind, and interest in Lincoln, as exemplified by Carl Sandburgs immensely popular biography-cum-fairy tale, and the Broadway play Abe Lincoln in Illinois by Robert E. Sherwood, who in 1940 became an FDR speechwriter.

What began under TR as a serious attempt to make the presidency as large as the problems posed by industrialism and urbanism, reached both an apotheosis and a distinct silliness in the national swooning about President Kennedys manufactured glamour and patina of high culture. Richard Reeves, a Kennedy biographer, says watching the Kennedys was self-improvement for Americans," teaching them how to act and spend all the new money coming their way, giving the newly prosperous some polish. Cooper correctly believes that overreliance on the presidency, and longings for heroism, denote political immaturity among Americans. Furthermore, by inflating the publics sense of politi-cal possibilities, and encouraging childish faith that complex problems will yield to charismatic executive leadership, the heroic presidency encourages passivity in the citizenry at local levels, and has the anti-constitutional effect of subverting limited government. Todays president, unrestrained by any sense of the ridiculous, and promising to feel our pain and raise our children, may make one lasting contribution to the nations health by rendering the idea of the heroic presidency laughable.

Washington Post Writers Group I was a steam engine in trtmsers, this patrician cowboy from Manhattan who galloped into the Dakota Badlands wearing spurs and a pearl-handled revolver from Tiffany, and charged up San Juan Hill in a uniform from Brooks Brothers. He was the first president bom in a big city, and the first known to the nation as an intimate by his initials. The toothy grin that crinkled his entire face masked an unassuageable grief that he kept at bay only by action, by living life as one long campaign. Author of 36 books and 100,000 letters, the first intellectual president since John Quincy Adams, he sometimes read two books a day some in Italian, Portuguese, Latin, Greek or other languages he knew and could recite the Song of Roland. And just as he transformed himself from a frail asthmatic child too starved for breath to blow out his bedside candle, he transformed the presidency.

Tune into public television tonight and Monday evenings for a four-hour profile of Theodore Roosevelt that to use words he favored splendid, delightful, bully. It will leave you both inspirited and melancholy inspirited by the possibilities of human grandeur illuminated by this blast furnace personality; melancholy about the fact that the modem presidency he pioneered he set out to improve everything from freight rates to college football presupposes big people but usually is occupied, certainly not filled, by little ones. He worshiped his father, a noble reformer in whose arms the infant Theodore was cradled during long nocturnal carriage rides that eased Theodores asthmatic suffocation, akin to GEORGE drowning on dry land. His father died suddenly of stomach cancer at 46. Rushing from the state legislature at Albany to his home where his wife Alice, 22, had given birth to a daughter, Theodore was greeted at the door by a sister who said, "Mother is dying and your wife is, too.

His mother died of typhoid fever at 48, and his wife died of kidney failure, hours apart. He wrote, Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough. A theme of the television biography, elegantly written by David Grubin and Geoffrey Ward, is that grief was the spur to TRs hyperkinetic life that gave the a decidedly mixed blessing a hankering for heroic presidencies. This century began for America with the bang of the assassms bullet that put the boisterous TR, just 42, in the chair that had been occupied by a notably sedentary president, McKinley, who had campaigned seated on his front porch in Canton, Ohio. The century has been what John Milton Cooper, University of Wisconsin historian, calls an era of great presidential expectations.

And therefore also of chronic disappointment. Such expectations have resisted banishment. Hardings promise of normalcy, and the rhetorical minimalism of his successor, Coolidge, ran counter to the drift toward the omnipresent presidency, which was intensified first by newsreel cameras, then radio, then television. After Coolidge came Hoover, an engineer cultivating the aura of dynamic modernity. Next came TRs distant cousin, master of national media at a moment when the Depression nationalized a sense of dependence on the national Three who serve justice In addition to the federal and state candidates and more than a dozen ballot issues that will face Mesa County voters at the polls this year, they will also have to vote on the retention of three local judges.

We recommend the retention of all three County Court Judge Tom Deister and District Court Judges Nicholas Massaro and David Bottger. Under Colorado law, judges are appointed by the governor but must stand for retention after specified terms. Voters are asked to decide whether a judge should remain in office, or whether he or she should be removed and anothei judge appointed. All three of the Mesa County judges have demonstrated their abilities as thoughtful jurists and are therefore deserving of retention. Deister was appointed to the county bench in October 1994.

Like all county judges, he is on the front line of the judicial system, handling dozens of first appearances each month for people accused of crimes, preliminary hearings for those accused of felonies, and taking misdemeanor cases through to their Conclusions. The 21st Judicial District Commission of Judicial Perfor-mancev'a group of attorneys and laymen who studied the three judges and surveyed those who deal with them regularly, found only one criticism of Deister: that he sometimes is not punctual in beginning and ending court proceedings. The review group said that is in part due to his inexperience as a judge, and in part because he works hard to make sure all those in his court fully understand the legal matters involving them. Deister is extremely careful to explain legalities to those before him, but thats important when so many people are having their first-ever experience with the judicial system. Massaro has been an even-handed jurist since he was, appointed to the district court in 1988.

The judicial review commission said Massaro is a fair and knowledgeable judge who rules promptly and clearly. The only criticism it listed for Massaro was occasional moodiness, adding that Certain attorneys may bear the brunt of this moodiness. The fact that a judge may some-timesbe grumpy toward attorneys is not likely to diminish him in the eyes of most voters, as long as he is doing his job well Massaro is obviously doing that. Bottger has been a district court judge since 1987. The review commission described him as intelligent, articulate, hard-working, fair and creative.

It added: Judge Bottger is highly rated for his sense of justice, knowledge of the law, courtroom control diligence, fairness and compassion. The review commissions assessment of Bottger is accurate, even though this comer has been critical of the judge on a couple of occasions, such as when he lowered the bond of a man convicted of sexual assault who was suspected of violating probation and disappearing for 10 months, and when Bottger came to the defense of three Colorado appellate court judges who overturned the conviction of a Rifle man who killed three people while driving drunk. But a close look at Bottgers overall judicial record shows he is not soft on those who are guilty of crimes. When it came to sentencing Shannon Bear Smith after he violated his probation for sexual assault, Bottger not only gave him six years in prison, but made it clear he wasnt buying Smiths claims that he was a victim himself. I truly feel sorry for Mr.

Smith, but I could not possibly feel as sorry for him as he does for himself," Bottger said during the sentencing hearing. And, when he sentenced Nathan Lucero as an accomplice for the 1994 murder of Mack resident David White, Bottger gave the teen-ager not the minimum 42 years, but twice that long. Bottger said it more closely approached justice for the years Lucero took from his victim. We know Bottger as someone who brooks no shenanigans from lawyers appearing before him and he is one of the best judges when it comes to instructing and working with juries. For the above reasons we hope Mesa County residents will vote to retain the three local judges on this years ballot Voters arent hung up on some campaign issues CARL HILLIARD hen Congressman Wayne Allard and his Democratic rival for the U.S.

Senate, Tom Strickland, debated before television cameras on Sept. 29, the moderator offered one of those what if questions. It was, in effect: What if it were scientifically proven public hangings at high noon in the public square were a deterrent to murder and rape? Would you endorse them? It was clearly a gotcha question candidates hate, but Allard promptly said yes and Strickland said no and that was that. Allards answer lay there for a couple of days until somebody in the Strickland campaign apparently had a large light bulb and exclamation points appear above his head. Say, he must have thought to himself.

We can make a big deal out of this. And so on Tuesday, the Strickland campaign did. It faxed Stricklands formal statement on the issue: While I have always supported the death penalty, I am appalled by Wayne Allards extreme position in favor of public hangmgs in town squares. It's barbaric and uncivilized and I don't want my children, or anybodys children, to witness such a disturbing sight. This goes too far.

Its out of touch with mainstream Colorados values. and suddenly encountering a public hanging. Strickland had a few more words to say, of course, dramatically noting that This is one of' the many windows into the soul of Wayne Allard. Allard followed with his own news conference. He disavowed public hangings, but didnt repudiate his answer.

He summoned State Treasurer Bill Owens to point to the Allard record on crime. And an uncomfortable Attorney General Gale Norton, who lost to Allard in the Republican primary, was there to compliment Allard on a fine job in Congress. Allards honest but dumb mistake has done its damage and the public hanging issue is hanging out there for him to defend and Strickland to attack until election day. Even reporters who attended Stricklands news conference at Civic Center Park on Wednesday felt it was a non-issue, raised almost as an afterthought at the tag end of the debate. Several thought Clifford May, the moderator who offered the question, should be dragged out by the ear and made to explain why he asked it.

Katie Kerwin, Rocky Mountain News political reporter, characterized the issue mid the two news conferences as like a bad Fellini movie. The Strickland-Allard race hasnt been too shiny-bright to this point. The newest flap has added as much dignity as, say, a public hanging Associated Press Why Strickland wasnt immediately appalled Sunday night while on camera isnt known. But his campaign later made up for it with overkill. It flailed Allard from all sides on his answer: labeled him extreme; said he wasnt the kind of person who should represent Colorado in the U.S.

Senate; pointed to his conservative voting record and called it extreme, arid on Wednesday did what all good campaigns do. It called a news conference. It was at Civic Center Park on a fine, warm, fall day, with a plethora of flowers and a paucity ofwinos. Strickland campaign signs, properly authorized, were stuck in the ground around the sidewalk and a scattering of Strickland supporters stood in the background, looking appropriately somber. Gov.

Roy Romer delivered a thoughtful colloquy about Allards answer and what it all means and how he couldnt imagine anyone seeking public office in Colorado who would take that position. It is, he said, a yery, very serious revelation of how Mr. Allard thinks. Barbara O'Brien of the Colorado Childrens Campaign envisioned an awful tableaux of children going to the park to enjoy a peaceful outing Proponents misleading words to obscure nature of affirmative action SOWELL What we do in real life is try to get the most bang for the buck. That means you compare one individual with another, not with some will the wisp standard in which all qualified people are equally eligible.

That is not a standard, that is the pretense of a standard, a phony. It is a way of hiding double standards by camouflaging them as a single standard qualified. The other great pretense of affirmative action is that it is somehow making up for the past. Lets talk sense, like adults. Whatever you or I may think about the past, it is gone.

Nothing you do is going to make up for it. Whatever was wrong in the past will remain wrong forever. It will deserve to be condemned a thousand years from now. Nothing you do today is going to change that, though it may create new problems. If we are going to talk about history, the least we can do is to learn something from it If discrimination was THOMAS different cast of characters changes nothmg about the past and poisons the present and future.

Then there is the notion that a quota isnt really a quota if it is called a goal or diversity. Someone once asked Abraham Lincoln how many legs a dog has, if you count the tail as a leg Lincoln said four because your calling the tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. If it looks like a quota and acts like a quota, it's a quota. The phrase affirmative action itself has become slippery. Some say that it is very complex concept and includes such things as outreacl programs to make minority peoples aware of what opportunities are available in institutions from which they may once have been excluded.

If this were a serious argument, then there would be no need for the advocates of affirmative action to be going ballistic over such things as the California Civil Rights Initiative, which would just ban preferences and quotas. if the California voters enact the Civil Rights Initiative into law. All these insults to our intelligence hide the greatest insult of all that there are some morally anointed people who should be prescribing end results for all the rest of us. This is the truly dangerous mmdset, which goes beyond affirmative action. Back in the days of the Woodrow Wilson administration, when blacks were being systematically displaced from whatever modest positions they had once been permitted to reach in the federal bureaucracy, a federal official said that blacks did not belong in postmasters Jobs, they belonged in the cornfields.

The racism of this remark was only part of the dangers it represented. The danger still with us today is the notion that some people think it is their anointed role to decide where other people belong whether that is the cornfields or in the corporate suites. Affirmative action is only the latest example of this arrogance. The dishonesty ith which it is discussed is only another aspect of that arrogance. Creator Syndicate, Inc.

One of the sure signs of a bad policy is that it is impossible to defend it honestly in plain English. Affirmative action is a classic example. From the president of Stanford University to the President of the United States, defenders of affirmative action have said that they do not mean to accept unqualified people. Just what does that mean if anything7 You can set the qualifications level anywhere you want to. You can set it so high that only Einstein could quality or so low that Forrest Gump would sail through with flying colors.

Saying that you will take only qualified people is saying nothing while pretending to say something Even if the term had some real meaning the principle is ridiculous If you were running a baseball team that was behind in the bottom of the ninth inning would you be just as riling to send a "qualified batter up to the plate as to send Mark McGw ire? When you need a new car, are you just as filing to buy any qualified car or do you want the best you can get for vour money? wrong then, it is wrong now Repeating the same wrong You can still do all the outreach your heart desires.