Opinion: In today’s pages: Villaraigosa, and Iran -- again
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The editorial board applauds Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s decision to stay in Los Angeles and forfeit a gubernatorial run (in 2010, at least), calling the decision a second chance for both the newly re-elected mayor and the city of Los Angeles to ‘prove they were right for each other’:
Voters elected Villaraigosa in 2005 in the belief that he would do that. They reelected him -- a smattering of them did, anyway -- this year in part because their mayor was so skilled at getting the most viable challengers not to run. The city now wrestles with a palpable disappointment in Villaraigosa, not just because of budget woes or bad schools but because of his failure to live up to expectations that he helped to inflate. That’s a hard way for a mayor to enter a second term. Still, we credit him for deciding to enter it with both feet, instead of one pointed toward Sacramento.
The editorial board also supports President Barack Obama’s continued prudent response to the increasingly violent Iranian protests and his refusal to make any strong statements toward the government or the opposition:
A fraught U.S.-Iranian history argues against more direct intervention, starting with the U.S. role in overthrowing elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, and including U.S. support for the shah over the revolutionary forces that brought the Islamic government to power in 1979. Add in the subsequent hostage crisis, plus decades of mutual hostility over regional conflicts and nuclear weapons, and it becomes clear why more forceful action from Obama could backfire. He must continue to protest the bloodshed, but he cannot hand Iranian hard-liners a stick with which to beat the opposition.
And the board welcomes the U.S. Supreme Court’s upholding of a key provision in the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the notion of pre-clearance, meaning that states and localities with a history of abridging the right to vote must get clearance by the federal government before changing their election laws.
On the Op-Ed side of the fold, one finds a different take on many of the same issues. Politico-turned-academic Dan Schnur, while not surprised by Villaraigosa’s decision not to run in the governor’s race, said he expects the mayor to run for the U.S. Senate in 2012. Columnist Jonah Goldberg argues that Obama cannot win with his stance on Iran and must give up his ‘ideological’ approach:
As an unnamed Iran expert in contact with White House officials told Foreign Policy’s Laura Rozen, ‘Obama is dedicated to diplomacy in a manner that is almost ideological.... He wants to do some stuff in the Middle East over the next eight years. He may not be able to achieve half of them unless he gets this huge piece of the puzzle [Iran] right.’
Finally, author Greg Critser warns of the dangeous effects of air pollution not just on heart and lungs but also on brain and fetal development. A solution? Researchers are working on it, Critser writes, but in the meantime, government should enforce the new regulations on truck exhaust as well as those that require improved filtering systems in schools, and map ‘emissions hot spots’ in Los Angeles so people know which areas to avoid.