This blog is designed to give readers a glimpse of our editorial-page operation and how we make our decisions. We’ll let you know who we’re meeting with, what they’re telling us, what events and issues we’re looking at. We’ll also pass on information and observations that may not make our print editions. In addition to the editorial board members who post on this blog, the board includes Publisher David Zeeck, Executive Editor Karen Peterson and Managing Editor Dale Phelps.
Editorial board bloggers
Editorial page editor Patrick O’Callahan oversees the online and printed opinion sections of The News Tribune. He came to The News Tribune in 1987 and has worked at Washington newspapers since 1979. E-mail him at patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com
Editorial writer Cheryl Tucker, in addition to writing commentary, manages the daily production of the editorial and op-ed pages and edits letters to the editor. She began her journalism career in 1974 at a Virginia newspaper and came to The News Tribune in 1978. E-mail her at cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com.
Editorial writer Kim Bradford manages the online opinion section of The News Tribune and writes commentary. She joined The News Tribune in 2005 after working 11 years at newspapers in Washington and Maryland. E-mail her at kim.bradford@thenewstribune.com.
Guest bloggers
Editor emeritus David Seago retired from The News Tribune in 2008 after 41 years at The News Tribune. E-mail him at sds99@harbornet.com.
Richard Davis’ column on state politics frequently runs in the print edition of The News Tribune. He was president of the Washington Research Council, a statewide think tank, from 1986 through 2006. Currently, as a principal with The Simeon Partnership, Inc. he coordinates the activities of the Washington Alliance for a Competitive Economy, a business coalition founded by the Research Council, the Association of Washington Business and the Washington Roundtable.
Karen Irwin of University Place, a mother of four, has been a frequent contributor to The News Tribune's print editions. She has also written for Seattle's Child, Puget Sound Parent, the Tacoma Weekly, the Fayetteville Observer Times and the political blog Right Meets Left. She graduated from California Lutheran University with a degree in English literature and is currently working toward a history degree.
Michael Allen, professor of history at the University of Washington Tacoma, was born and raised in Ellensburg. He served with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam from 1969-70. He has written five books, including the prize-winning "Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus' Great Discovery to the War on Terror," "Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination" and "Western Rivermen, 1763-1861: Ohio and Mississippi Boatmen and the Myth of the Alligator Horse." Allen lives in Tacoma and Ellensburg and has three children.
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This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.
The audacious election of Barack Obama
The president-elect faces immense challenges – including a Congress tempted to overreach.
There’s little in the world more majestic than seeing this great democracy take executive power from one party and hand it to another without bloodshed or tanks in the streets.
The founders built peaceful revolutions into America’s constitutional order, and such a revolution has just bestowed the mantle of the presidency on Barack Obama.
American voters on Tuesday also left Democrats poised to dominate Congress. Obama today can claim a mandate to take the nation on a new course.
What course? The answer will be clear to the partisan Democrats who see Tuesday’s returns as the electorate’s endorsement of the full sweep of their policy goals.
It is all too easy to imagine House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulling out the wish lists of the Democratic Party’s various constituencies. Protectionist trade restrictions, for example, or a reckless withdrawal from Iraq that forfeits the hard-won gains in that country.
That way lies hubris.
Tuesday’s election was not a wholehearted embrace of the liberal Democratic agenda; it was a repudiation of the Bush administration – which is not the same thing.
I post here at the risk of reminding my colleagues that I am vacationing in Hawaii while they're slaving away...
David Gergen just noted on CNN that it would be particularly fitting if Hawaii put Obama over the 270 votes electoral votes needed to take the White House. I'm sure the state will go for its hometown boy when polls close in a few minutes here, but judging by the radio ads and yard signs around here, the presidential race is down-ballot for a lot of voters here.
Voters on the Big Island seem far more interested in the race between Billy Kenoi and Angel Pilago for mayor (my favorite campaign slogan: "One candidate is an Angel and the other is not") and a proposition to decriminalize marijuana.
Just goes to show... the politics that really matter to folks are the politics that are closest to home.
From an e-mail sent by editor emeritus Dave Seago:
Your correspondent happens to be observing Election Day New England-style in Rindge, N.H., today. Here, as in Massachusetts and Connecticut, schools close for the day to accommodate their use as polling places.
The main difference I found here in Rindge, about 70 miles northwest of Boston, was the politicking allowed outside the polling place.
Either way, two Tacoma wine bars have something for you tonight.
If your candidate fared well today, CORK! is pouring El Presidente malbec and The Victor shiraz. For those who need consolation, it has SUXX shiraz. The wine bar is at 3012 S. Sixth Ave. (between Alder and Oakes).
Over at Pour at 4 (3814 N. 26th in the Proctor District), host Mark Merrill will offer $2 glasses of French champagne so guests can either toast the winners or drown their sorrows.
I've been a permanent absentee voter for many years, but when I voted in person it was at Hudtloff Junior High School in Lakewood. I stopped in at my old precinct this morning on the way to work to see how things were going.
The small parking lot was full at 8:25 a.m. I decided to talk to the first people who came out the door – not a very scientific sampling, I know, but I had to get to work after all.
First out were mother-daughter Joyce and Aimee Marubayashi. They both voted for the same candidate: Barack Obama.
For Aimee, a 22-year-old senior at Pacific Lutheran University, the main reason was the war. "I think he'll bring the troops home," she said. "He's going to change what Bush did." She also thinks Obama "cares more about education than McCain."
For Joyce, the war used to be the top issue. Now it's the economy. She said they were told that Aimee's student loan would be cancelled, so they had to go to another bank.
Inside, about 25 people were in line waiting to vote. It would be hard to imagine a more diverse group: older retirees, a lot of young people, a soldier and people of many races. A 30ish white man in suit and tie was chatting amiably with an older black man in a flashy nylon jacket.
Poll worker Sandra Anderson says that about 100 people were waiting for the doors to open at 7 a.m. in a precinct that is heavily absentee. Turnout at the polling place so far is running "much higher" than for the 2004 presidential election, she said.
