Christopher Sandford

The long-serving New York Times opinion writer Nick Kristof apparently now wants to be governor of Oregon. The 62-year-old media superstar seems to be a rather changeable sort of chap. It might almost seem he’s one of the many New York-area residents to have had their identities stolen. Perhaps it was an old platinum credit card, carelessly tossed in a Midtown trash can, which allowed the criminals to strike, or perhaps the purchase over the phone of a first-class air ticket to one of the exotic locales his business frequently takes him. Whatever it was, it’s difficult to reconcile the superbly cerebral, crusading double Pulitzer Prize-winner and regular CNN contributor with the self-styled ‘Oregon farmboy’ with his finger firmly on the Beaver State’s troubled pulse.

A nonbinding, off-season ballot initiative in rural Oregon isn’t normally the most viscerally exciting of events, couched as they generally are in terms agonizing over whether to ‘note’ or ‘reaffirm’ a past proposal, or to ‘endorse’ or ‘refer’ a more recent one for further consideration. But just the other day, out of the tepid depths of yet more interminable debate on local timber-harvest regulations, or supplemental sport-fishing laws, something of genuine significance happened. The voters of five Oregon counties let it be known that they would like to secede from their state and join Idaho instead. ‘This election proves that rural Oregon wants out of Oregon,’ Mike McCarter, spokesman for the Greater Idaho movement, said in a statement.

When you’re averse to the administration’s ‘zero-tolerance’ policy on illegal immigration and are invited to occupy the Senate Office Building to signify your displeasure, do you, as an elected US representative, agree to do so? When asked to join 398 of your House colleagues in passing a motion decrying any prejudicial treatment of Israel, specifically affirming the right of all US citizens to free speech, do you boldly side with the 16 dissidents who oppose this ideal?

If you were called upon to invent the human antithesis of rock and roll, you couldn’t do better than our nation’s 37th president, Richard Nixon. Habitually clad in a funereally dark suit and dress shoes, even when strolling on the beach, Nixon’s tastes in music ran to the semi-classical strains of Mantovani and the Boston Pops, and a penchant for sitting alone at night brooding to Wagner. I once asked the legendary White House fixer Gordon Liddy what his chief thought, if anything, about pop music. ‘Crap,’ Liddy replied succinctly. In late 1970, the 57-year-old Nixon was at something of a low point. A combination of the continuing war in Vietnam and domestic economic woes proved disastrous for the GOP in that November’s midterm elections.

It is two o’clock on an unusually mild December afternoon here in suburban Seattle, and I’m sitting on my back porch smoking marijuana.Passively smoking, I should add, lest I shock any reader by this lapse, but smoking nonetheless. Since 2012, when the voters of Washington State chose to decriminalize it, my part of town has been especially fragrant with the acrid smell of pot. A thick haze of the stuff lingers long in the air these quiet lockdown days.

SeattleI have seen the future, and it looks much like Washington State.But let’s get there by steps. The Pacific Northwest, for much of its history dominated by the logging and fishing industries, has an aggressive blue-collar tradition. Radical groups like the Industrial Workers of the World — or so-called Wobblies — used to congregate there. Sometimes on a Saturday night in downtown Seattle old anarchists can still be found singing their ballads of longshoremen’s revolts. The place has been called 'the hideout capital of the USA’, a far-flung outpost where generations of the nation’s failed, fed-up, and felonious have gone to disappear.

‘You gotta swallow this one, they stole it fair and square.’ That’s a Republican hack speaking to Richard Nixon, as fabricated in Oliver Stone’s 1995 biopic about our nation’s 37th president. The reference is to the 1960 election, in which Nixon’s opponent John F. Kennedy prevailed by 303 electoral votes to his opponent’s 219, although the popular margin was a scant 113,000, or about 0.16 percent, out of 68,837,000 ballots cast.

SeattleWhen the time comes to consider the question of America’s worst governors, it seems we’re somewhat spoilt for choice. From the swivel-eyed Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan to New York’s ubiquitous Andrew Cuomo and his never-ending victory lap for having overseen just 33,000 deaths — a reported 6,692 of them in his state’s nursing homes — media posturing would seem to be the rule, and sustained periods of selfless public duty the exception. But for sheer myopic self-regard, it would be hard to top 69-year-old Jay Inslee, the Democratic governor of Washington since 2013, who barring a political earthquake is almost certain to be reelected in next month’s election.

Seattle My local post office in suburban Seattle seems to be rigged to obstruct customers these days. After standing motionless for half an hour awaiting my turn, I find that I've lost the will to live even before the inevitable altercation with the masked clerk squinting back at me through a sheet of plastic. When you ask for the slightest bit of 'consumer assistance' — as their cheerful mission statement on the wall promises they’re only too happy to provide — they seem to get ferociously cross. Not long ago I was read the Riot Act by a young USPS employee because I politely asked if I might be allowed an inch or two of Scotch tape from one of the dozen or so open rolls of it I could see on the shelf behind her.

SeattleSo the revolution devours its children. On Tuesday, Seattle’s police chief Carmen Best announced her retirement just hours after the city council had voted to strip her department of roughly 130 of its 1,400 officers, with more such cuts promised in the future. Best, 54, was Seattle’s first black police chief. She had served in the department for 28 years. Announcing her departure, Best remarked: ‘It’s not about the money. And it’s not about the demonstrations in our city. Be real. I have a lot thicker skin than that.’‘It’s really about the overreaching lack of respect for the men and women who work so hard, day in and day out,’ Best added.