Keep Malice At Bay

Barely a week after it was unveiled, Keith McMas­ter's statue of the stationmaster near the historic train depot in Dayton was desecrated. An acidic liquid, perhaps Coke or Pepsi, was dumped over it leaving splotches on the statue's head, and the carefully crafted, bronze eyeglasses were twisted and cracked.

During the same week, someone went through a lot trou­ble to release a seed-laden boxcar that thundered through the Touchet Valley and could have cost someone's life.

Columbia County Sheriff Walt Hessler and a citizens group in Waitsburg reached out to local media to get help in fending off burglaries at backcountry cabins and downtown businesses.

The sky isn't falling by any means. Many good things are in the air, particularly last week's news of an imminent purchase of Ski Bluewood, which has helped rally the com­munity around the prospective new owners. But there is an energy of malice in our midst that we hope will soon recede and not spill over into other aspects of our lives, particularly the current local elections.

Obviously, we cannot control the intentions of others, and it's not the purpose of this editorial to suggest that crimes and political exchanges are analogous. It's more about the damage intentions, if verbalized or acted on, can do.

In a small community where we have to live and work together, we should resist sacrificing long-term relations for short-term political gain. We should avoid making state­ments we might later regret. In the past few weeks, we have received numerous letters to the editor, most them commenting on local campaigns. Hopefully, their publication in the Times has contributed to a healthy and constructive debate. But we have not published every letter we have received. Some we did not run because they were near duplicates of previous letters. Some were from writers too far from our community.

We also left some out of the paper because they con­tained unnecessarily provocative language or unsubstanti­ated claims.

We realize that the traditional role newspapers have as­sumed is the endorsement of political candidates. We main­tain the right to do so but may not exercise it unless we see a glaring detriment to the public good from the election of a particular candidate or a candidate is so obviously superior in their qualificationsfor the officethey seek. Otherwise, we'll resist the self-important presumption that readers rely - in whole or in part - on the opinion of their community newspapers to make political choices. Instead, we recommend voters regard the elections as the public's collective "job interview" of the candidates, a process that involves information gathering, question-and-answer sessions and background screenings.

With the current slate of candidates, the extent to which they are qualified for public office is a matter of degree that need not be overly politicized.

The destructive spirit of seemingly irreversibly en­trenched nationwide partisanship can easily be kept from races where it matters little if a candidate is a Republican, Democrat or Independent. What's much more relevant is the candidate's interest in the protection of and service to their community. Is the can­didate sensitive to community needs, interested in selflessservice of its members and careful with the fiscal resources allocated to his or her office?

Does the candidate have the professional qualificationsfor the "position"? Does their past activities show this? Do they have the energy to put in the many extra hours their officewill require to get the job done with ever shrinking budgets?

We urge voters to screen their local candidates based on these kinds of questions rather than get swept up in this country's aimless discontent with incumbents. Voters may still draw the same conclusion based on their personal pref­erences

for candidates' qualifications and administration of office, but at least they will not simply shop for a nationally recognized brand.

Lastly, we hope local voters will see through the distrac­tion of personal attacks, predictable "October surprises" and other political gimmicks designed to create a climate of fear and doubt based on perception instead of substance.