RtOW: Chapter 3 - The difference between Wisconsin and Montana
The ties connecting the people, the University, and the state were to be "without partisanship, without bias, with no personal end, but with the sole idea of finding the truth..."
*Editor’s Note* For the next several Saturdays, I will be posting an excerpt from my book, “Rediscovering the Oregon Way.” This effort started two years ago in the middle of my current role as a graduate school student. I spent weekend mornings doing research, late nights conducting interviews, and spare moments looking for typos.
The Oregon Way and Wisconsin Idea launched at similar times for similar reasons and in similar fashions. These similarities perhaps come from a strong demographic match between the two states. Turns out many Wisconsinites became the first Oregonians. Resettlers from Wisconsin brought their rural way of life (and its corresponding norms, values, social institutions, and democratic processes) as well as their general demographic homogeneity with them along the Oregon Trail. Once having resettled, Wisconsinites and other Midwesterners (now Oregonians) became fixtures of Oregon’s demography for decades. Consider that by 1900 upwards of 26 percent of all Oregon residents were born in Midwest states. So it comes as no surprise that both Wisconsin and Oregon developed similar political cultures.
Learning more about the Idea that took root in Wisconsin and how that Idea relates to the Oregon Way reveals that political cultures are driven by people and can form because of as well as in spite of geographic characteristics; this inquiry also highlights why the demographics of early Oregon were integral to the creation of the state’s Way.
In 1905, the President of the University of Wisconsin delivered a speech that called for the creation of a distinct political culture; President Charles Van Hise envisioned the University forging a tight relationship with the State government in addition to the state’s broader network of communities. The Idea had a simple principle—reciprocity. The University would provide expertise and energy to fuel positive action by the State government. The State government would support the University and leverage its academic assistance to help all Wisconsinites. Reciprocity, though, should not be mistaken for a repeated exchange of obligations.
The ties connecting the people, the University, and the state were to be "without partisanship, without bias, with no personal end, but with the sole idea of finding the truth, the path which leads to peace and prosperity for the people." By removing specific ideological and demographic indicators from this Idea, President Van Hise maximized the possibility of identifying shared values across a larger swath of Wisconsinites. He also indicated a willingness to share power with myriad stakeholders, showing others in the state that the University sought not to step on others’ feet but to complement ongoing treks.
On the surface, the relationship described by President Van Hise could be characterized as somewhat limited in its reach; after all, he merely called for two very large institutions to collaborate on a common goal. And the reach of his address may have indeed been small had the UW community not responded so fervently to his call for focused collaboration. But they did respond…President Van Hise quickly shared his vision with then-Governor of Wisconsin Robert La Follette. Governor La Follette turned the Idea into action and helped create the conditions required for the perpetuation of a Way. Soon UW professors were working in the halls of the State Capital, sharing their expertise, learning the priorities of legislators, and establishing a culture with specific values and norms.
Indeed, the Wisconsin Idea, even in its earliest conception by President Van Hise, was never intended to be confined to just two institutions. The professor-legislator relationship was just one of the means through which the UW system shaped the state. A comprehensive survey of the Idea’s impact would require tracing the careers and community engagement of every UW graduate. When students received a diploma, they also received a responsibility to steward the Idea as graduates. A census of how graduates performed that stewardship lies beyond the scope of this book. Even without that work, though, it is possible to spot trends in the prevalence and potency of the Idea. For example, though the UW system has struggled in recent times, an atmosphere of reciprocity still remains in the state, just at a lower concentration.
When then-Governor Scott Walker challenged the Idea by rushing Republican right-to-work legislation through the State Legislature, protestors cited the Idea and its founding fathers, including President Van Hise and Senator Robert La Follette, as guiding principals and principles for their rage and resentment.
More than a century since the first expression of the Idea, it was still reinforcing a culture that motivated a closer relationship between academics, political actors, and average Joes and Janes. The staying power of the Idea spawns from the power of the vision shared by President Van Hise and Senator La Follette. Just as Mayor Croker’s specific values drove action in Chattanooga, the positive associations tied to Van Hise and La Follette present Wisconsinites with a story to believe in and follow. This story has a clear in-group that residents want to join—there’s a lot of good that can come from being a member of a community in which reciprocity is a norm. The Idea binds contemporary Wisconsinites to their state and commits them to action. It still serves as the impetus for the creation of new programs. Case in point, UW-Madison cited the Idea when it launched UniverCity Year—a three-year program that connects members of the UW-Madison learning community with local governments around the state—in 2016.
What is unclear is the extent to which being a member of this in-group requires being a Democrat or a Republican, based on which party has political power at the time. Governor Walker tried to fundamentally alter the Idea to align with partisan priorities in 2015. Perhaps in response to Governor Walker’s attempts to assign the Idea a political affiliation, members of the media have increasingly looped the notion of the Idea into election news and to associate it with particular candidates. The Idea as a party device robs it of its potential to be a unifying, statewide Way. Officials from both parties have tried to claim the principals and principles of the Idea as their own. They have attempted to label certain values, norms, processes, and institutions as parts of their narrower Idea. Case in point, democratic processes have been challenged and manipulated to foster partisan wins instead of public participation. Social institutions have also experienced a decrease in their capacity to maintain the Idea; too few seem wholly focused on reciprocity and, accordingly, have lost some of their ability to facilitate the kind of nonpartisan, pragmatic direction set forth more than a century ago by President Van Hise. Values and norms seem less universally shared. Governor Walker and others have gone to unprecedented steps to limit participation, collaboration, and positive reciprocity.
Modern Wisconsinites may not see the Idea as originally conceived as shaping their politics today. They may doubt that Senator Robert La Follette’s memories still steer social institutions, norms, values, and democratic processes. These skeptics are right to say that the tenor of the state’s politics have drifted almost beyond the reach of the original Idea. However, the fact that Governor Walker moved his inauguration address as far from the Senator’s bust as possible suggests that even Walker knows that the specter of La Follette can bring life to the Idea in modern times.
Skeptics are right to point out that Wisconsin’s Way has seen healthier days. Similarly, they rightfully point out that this Idea is exclusionary. The Idea is not explicitly for the benefit of the nation nor the benefit of a specific community within the state, it is for the entire state; this was President Van Hise’s intent. President Van Hise based his Idea on what he saw take place in Japan and Germany, which he characterized as the respective governments heavily investing in the education of its people for the betterment of the nation, not the European continent nor the biggest areas within each respective country.
In focusing solely on Wisconsin, the President set boundaries around his Idea—he created an in-group. The reciprocal relationships he supported would have been insincere ones if they were nationwide and too insular if confined to one Wisconsin community. Perhaps President Van Hise was aware of Dunbar’s number—a recognition that humans have a ceiling on the number of tight social relationships they can form. The President chose not to challenge his number but to embrace it. In doing so, he encouraged Wisconsinites to focus on what they could do for their brothers and sisters within the state’s lines. The tradeoffs associated with the narrow scope of Ways in general, the Wisconsin Idea in particular, and other finer conceptions of political culture will become clearer via the ensuing analysis of the Oregon Way.
Opposition to Labeling “Ways” a la the “Montana Way”
Vermont, Chattanooga, and Wisconsin claim to have distinct political cultures. The Oregon Way is predicated on the eponymous state having one as well. Even if this book successfully introduces you, the reader, to the distinctiveness and durability (through occasionally strained) of the Oregon Way, some folks will outrightly disagree with any efforts to differentiate one area’s political culture from another. Those opposed to the concept of Ways cite one of three arguments: one, Ways are not unique but simply slightly more localized versions of national trends; two, Ways cannot be sustained because of the ever-shifting nature of politics; and, three, Ways are attempts to brand politics and idealize history.
Each of these critiques holds weight. Any attempt to label a style and system of governance as a Way requires addressing these critiques (and others). The Oregon Way weathered and continues to weather these criticisms as evidenced in the following chapters. But the distinctiveness, strength, and accuracy of the Oregon Way are not guaranteed. A case study of Montana’s political culture—one that lacks a catchy name like “the Wisconsin Idea” and has shifted regularly throughout its history—proves that Ways can fade and that attempts to define a Way in a broad, disparate area can belie the real political heterogeneity that exists in that area. The example of Montana as a detraction from the idea of a Way lends credence to skeptics’ views and establishes a burden of proof to continually apply to the vibrancy and existence of the Oregon Way.
An effort to define a Montana Way would immediately struggle to locate the four attributes of a Way—shared values, enforced norms, social institutions, and democratic processes—across the entire state. According to Michael Malone and Dianne Doughtery, “Neither [Montana’s] boundaries nor its history and its politics follows the patterns of any particular logic. Rather, like most, if not all its sister states, Montana is the product of a long succession of historic occurrences, many of which have been random and undirected.” Though Malone and Doughtery outlined their thoughts on Montana’s political culture decades ago, their comprehensive review of the state’s history remains relevant to a contemporary examination of the state’s Way or lack thereof. Successful Ways tend to have deep historical roots; the absence of those roots, based on the analysis of Malone and Doughtery, is telling. The inability to lace a thread through the aforementioned criteria and across Montana’s stochastic history shows the limits of forcing the notion of Ways upon any jurisdiction. A functioning Way has a sort of logic to solving problems—a solution is evaluated against each of the four tenets of that Way and if it falls outside the bounds of any tenet, then it is rejected—but that logic only develops with time and in certain settings.
The nature of Montana's vast geography fosters idiosyncratic values and norms in various regions. Montana’s politics are "small, wide-open, and highly personalized," rendering the state a difficult place for a Way to form. There appears to be a certain degree of proximity and density required to build the four legs of a Way. If the Wisconsin Idea found its strength in shunning nationwide connections to prioritize statewide relationships, then Montana’s potential for Way development came from the limited opportunities for equivalent statewide social connections. “[C]onfused, labyrinthine politics,” a descriptor for at least some periods of Montana’s political history, unsurprisingly made Way formation difficult. Whereas urban and rural areas in Oregon formed relationships around exporting natural resources, no equally strong dynamic existed between Montana’s urban centers and rural outposts. And, in contrast to the Wisconsin Idea in which a statewide institution was able to carry tenets of that Way to myriad communities, Montana lacked and lacks such an institution. Absent a narrative to guide the hyper-local, personal politics of the state across its expansive geography, pockets of political activity had no common North Star to drive toward.
Consider that political parties in Montana even struggled to remain cohesive for much of its history. No state is immune to periods of political evolution, but Montana’s parties seemed particularly susceptible to fracture and realignment. Neither party wrested control of the state for long periods—a sign of healthy political competition. Health in that aspect though perhaps undermined a chance for a more distinct political culture to develop. Flashes of party unity and electoral dominance in the Treasure State were as short as a shooting star, brilliant but then broken up by isolated clusters of communities with disparate interests and provincial cultures. No sort of long-term vision was established by parties simply trying to get over the next electoral challenge. In the same way, this perpetual tug-of-war reduced incentives for officials to legislate innovative democratic processes, likely deemed less important than priorities that could grab the attention of voters.
The small economic footprint of the state also made its politics susceptible to outsized influence from corporate behemoths such as Anaconda Mining. As Anaconda’s fortunes and interests shifted southward to South America, the political culture of Montana radically swayed rendering the continuity of a specific Way (if it existed at all) difficult. As removing an outlier strengthens a statistical correlation, the wane of Anaconda’s influence briefly allowed the state to develop a more narrow political culture. A “convergence upon the center” took place as social, political, and community institutions freed themselves from Anaconda’s dominant shadow.
That convergence toward a uniquely Montanan center only lasted for so long. Untimely political deaths, demographic shifts, and economic developments pushed the state’s political culture more in line with regional and national trends more so than a “Montana Way.” To paraphrase Malone and Dougherty, Montana’s local peculiarities gave way to trends and norms influenced largely by actors and actions beyond Montana’s borders. It is true that Montanans as a whole still produce some Montana-specific political outcomes but those outcomes do not sum to a cohesive political culture.
The Montana example illustrates that forcing a Way label on a state or city does not mean that specific political culture is truly distinct or even in existence. Yet, even when there is a distinct Way, some folks may simply not know about it. Even the strongest Ways may be unknown as such to their followers. Imagine a young student walking the same streets home everyday...they would not bother labeling each alley, would not identify peculiar plants, and would struggle to tell others about the specifics of their routine. They may even miss small changes—trimmed grass, a new car in a neighbor’s driveway, flowers in bloom. People in places with strong Ways may not bother to label something that feels as natural as walking home and may not observe when aspects of the Way slightly vary; people in these places have grown accustomed to what would feel foreign and perhaps novel to others. As will become clear later, insufficient celebration and reference to a Way can become a threat to its continuation. Another threat comes from losing its distinctiveness.
Not every aspect of a Way is distinct. The most successful attributes of a Way may become less unique over time as other places adopt these attributes as a best practice. The spread of initiative and referendum processes testifies to how novel attributes of a Way can become a nationwide norm. South Dakota instituted a statewide initiative and popular referendum in 1898; Utah came next in 1900; Oregon followed in 1902. These states gleaned these processes from a rich lineage of other places examining how to improve their democracy. Nebraska allowed cities to host initiatives and referendums through state legislation enacted in 1897. Massachusetts held a statewide legislative referendum back in 1778. Thomas Jefferson pushed for a referendum process in Virginia's state constitution in 1775. The transmission of the initiative and popular referendum reveals two facts: the best Ways spark changes in other places and certain features of a Way may become less notable over time. This latter fact challenges the longevity of a Way as it starts to simply track the evolution of good governance.
So has Oregon’s Way remained identifiable? Has it withstood the adoption of some of its better ideas? If so, how has the Oregon Way been updated over time and by whom? These questions will get answered in due time. But first, it is important to establish a clearer picture of Ways in general as well as a framework with which to assess the health of a Way over time.
Clearer Definition of Ways
Ways can be thought of as bumpers on political discourse and decision making. If bowlers with bumpers always strike a couple of pins, then locations with Ways have a knack for hitting politically sensible targets—enacting reasonable policies and electing sensible officials. When a politician or piece of legislation tries to venture beyond the Way, bumpers serve as a boundary that forces them back into the socially agreed upon track for governance. Hence, bumpers lead to a higher score at the alley as well as in the political arena.
Imagine a five-year old’s birthday party. A quick review of participants reveals a range in skill, interest, and comfort. By way of example, you have little Ava, a sweet girl that has never been to the bowling alley, cannot lift an eight-pound ball, and requires a ramp to get the ball going in even remotely in the correct direction. Then, there is Grandma Jean, she has seen the bowling alley grow from a four-lane community center to a fourteen-lane entertainment zone, has a few 300s in her ledger, and is here strictly to bowl...and briefly celebrate with some cake. For a seasoned veteran like Jean, the bumpers fade into the background. Her ball smoothly arcs the oiled lane and most frequently knocks over all ten pins. For Ava, the ramp and bumper combo is the difference between a score of zero and 75. Ava’s not the only winner from bumpers. Jean benefits when Ava-esque bowlers have resources to comfortably bowl and bowl moderately well (in terms of score). The game moves faster absent incessant gutter balls, everyone celebrates better scores, and all bowlers leave with an interest in returning.
The ideal Way facilitates everyone getting an invite to the party. In the political sense, this requires lowering de jure and de facto barriers to participation; in Oregon, this looks like mailing ballots to every voter and social institutions like the Bus Project that make voting cool. A defined Way encourages residents of all backgrounds, inclinations, and ideologies to participate. The Town Meeting in Vermont evidences this feature: no matter the strength of your political passion, you can come down to your community hall and hear the latest news, voice your opinion, and learn from your neighbors.
Once everyone is involved and participating, the bumpers finally come into play. Folks familiar with the Way easily follow well-worn paths to Way-aligned outcomes. Their comments on the news of the day almost naturally evoke shared values and adhere to norms. Attendees with less awareness have their ideas redirected by the bumpers. Finding the well-worn paths of the Way comes with experience and education. In Chattanooga, new residents have access to strong social institutions that quickly bring them into the fold and help them identify the unique contours of Chattanooga’s political culture. Organizations like the River City Co. and Venture introduce new residents to the history of the city, how to engage with its visioning process, and where/when to get involved.
Ways break down when not everyone gets an invite, when participation is predicated on expertise, and when the bumpers are unevenly used, come into disrepair, or too narrowly set.
The rigidity of these bumpers depends on the aforementioned factors: shared values, enforced norms, and commitment to participatory processes. Each of these factors represents necessary but not sufficient conditions for a Way to develop and be followed.
Distinct democratic processes and practices allow residents of a place to participate in specific ways. “Good design and planning do not happen simply because they are good ideas,” according to Carl Abbott, Professor Emeritus of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University. “They happen,” the professor asserts, “because a community talks itself into putting ideas into action, and because that same community creates an infrastructure of governmental systems and civic institutions to support and implement those decisions.” The professor’s comments validate that realizing certain values through policy requires specific processes. The community he references has an “infrastructure of governmental systems,” which can be translated to mean processes that solicit and incorporate community feedback and participation.
Even with the proper processes in place, if a community lacks similar values than those processes will render few good outcomes. For example, a city government may host town halls and send out numerous opinion polls to bring the government’s actions closer to the will of the people, but those processes will fail if political participation and community engagement do not rank highly as common values. Open, conversational processes provide the forum for turning shared values into actual policies but that transformation only takes place if a broad spectrum of community members feel an internal tug to show up and speak up. Residents of places with strong Ways have a deep desire to protect and preserve the place they call home. They may disagree on the policies to ensure the perpetuation of what makes their home so special but they see a common endpoint—the maintenance or improvement of that area’s quality of life.
Social institutions move places closer to that endpoint as well. These institutions spread community values and norms as if they were butter knives. A city with strong, independent social institutions looks like a piece of sourdough bread with a thick layer of peanut butter: every hole is filled and every inch is covered. In such a city, common values reach even those in the holey parts of the bread. Nonprofits, small businesses, and other organizations grounded in the well-being of the local community act as value-reinforcement mechanisms. By way of example, a resident may reach out to a nonprofit for a specific service and through that interaction become more aware of the needs and priorities of others in their community. The nonprofit can then in turn “activate” this resident to get more involved and facilitate that engagement by notifying them of opportunities to speak up and out. This virtuous process ties an individual to their community and imbues them with the values and habits of others like them. To continue with the town hall example, the event is the democratic process, social institutions have mobilized individuals with shared concerns and values, but the efficacy of that town hall depends on the norms of the community.
The final condition—enforced norms—acts as the glue that builds a Way from the other conditions. A city or state can host all of the democratic processes it wants and social institutions may help community members identify and advance shared values but absent enforced norms that fortify the aforementioned conditions a Way will not form. Norms set the dynamic between official and community member, community member and community member, and community member and outsider. Can community members expect officials to actually listen? Are officials correct in assuming that community members will respect their role and acknowledge their often competing priorities? Will community members respect divergent policy positions of other members? May outsiders come into the space and feel welcomed? In short, is there a general norm of communication and collaboration that guides all parties toward self-reinforcing behavior, i.e. speaking and actually being heard, attending and actually contributing, meeting new people instead of remaining in isolated social and political clichés.
The Vermont and Chattanooga examples illustrated that when a place meets each of the four aforementioned criteria, a Way can lead to unexpected, progressive outcomes. It follows that everyday Oregonians bear responsibility for keeping bumpers up and sufficiently firm. They likewise bear a responsibility for not trying to narrow the bumpers. At the bowling alley, bumpers are purposefully placed at the edge of the lane to allow for several styles of play. A healthy way keeps the bumpers up but far enough out to respect divergent opinions.
What Ways Aren’t
No specific thresholds exist for checking off compliance with the four conditions of a Way. The process of elimination, though, helps narrow the factors that ought to undergo consideration when attempting to assess if a condition has been met.
A Way is not a path for pursuing partisan aims nor is it a path for forcing conformity. The divisive thinking endogenous to party politics violates the first condition for a healthy Way—shared values. Even the assumption of partisan influence on an idea or article skews how someone will interpret that information. So if a Way starts to overlap with a partisan identity, as it has in Wisconsin, then the odds of it fostering shared values drops. That is why a Way must remain nonpartisan to truly bring in the full scope of residents.
Research conducted by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba on nations’ civic cultures reinforces that Ways do not compel or steer speech nor command or force views. Instead a Way keeps political activity within certain boundaries. The duo found that Ways and other civic cultures come about “based on communication and persuasion, a culture of consensus and diversity, a culture that [permits] change but [moderates] it.” Ways guide political discourse and ongoings while keeping that progress within certain bounds so as not to leave behind a large segment of the population.
To keep the earlier bowling analogy rolling, a Way—like a lane—is also broad enough to accommodate many styles of involvement and a panoply of ideologies. Grandma Jean opts for a shallow arc to the right. Ava, once she’s graduated from the ramp, may develop a broader arc that extends far to the left. A bumpered lane would let both Grandma and Ava get a strike. A Way should accommodate both approaches: narrowing the bumpers too much forces players like Jean to alter their style, which leads to poorer frames and a lower overall team score. Hence, Ways tend to fade as partisanship increases. Partisanship reduces the number of folks willing to engage with the political process as well as the range of ideas actively considered in the political sphere.
And just as Ava’s birthday party seeks participation from all participants for the whole event, a Way is not structured around a single election nor a one-off issue such as a proposed development in a community. No one would want to attend a party that had intervals of entertainment. A Way must transcend electoral cycles to engender participation and collaboration even during lulls in the political calendar. Vermonters ensured this sort of regular participation by creating a new date in the political calendar as well as in the community calendar. Town Meeting Day is not about getting people to vote nor is it centered on selling potential voters on a specific idea or candidate. Instead, the holiday celebrates engagement for the sake for engagement; attendance is driven by a desire to improve community well-being rather than a desire to “win” at the polls. These sorts of events reinforce the strength of a Way by dissociating them with formal politics and tying them to the broader notion of problem solving and community building.
Ways also do not prescribe specific policy solutions. Instead the values, norms, processes and institutions underlying the Way produce different solutions based on the unique characteristics of the moment. That feature explains why one could argue that two actions with seemingly contradictory policy goals such as the 2017 transportation package passed in Oregon, which included funds to expand Interstate 5 in the Rose Quarter in Portland, and Governor McCall’s push in the 1970s to remove Harbor Drive through Portland to reduce the number of cars in the city both took place on the Oregon Way. Both policies reflected a value of compromise, a norm of participation, social institution-driven feedback, and democratic processes to air that feedback. The lack of specific policy aspirations is what distinguishes the Oregon Way and others like it from the Nordic Model, an example of a policy-based framework for governing common to the Nordic countries.
The Nordic Model specifically calls for a comprehensive welfare state built on large amounts of income and wealth redistribution, high degrees of public and private spending on sources of human capital such as education and supports for young families, and strong labor unions and employer associations that actively shape the labor markets of the involved countries and of the region as a whole. The Oregon Way may result in these same outcomes (it is likely that many Oregonians would find them quite agreeable), but it may also direct the state toward entirely different policy outcomes. In general, "[p]olitical culture conditions a state's response [to national trends, economic shifts, and regional policy developments]. In particular, it seems to act as a filter that lets certain policies become adopted, while holding others back."
Identifying Ways and Understanding Oregon’s Way
Political cultures exist. Narrower conceptions of political cultures, referred to as Ways, allow for a deeper understanding of political cultures on a smaller geographic level. Ways have formed in a variety of settings such as Vermont and Chattanooga. Other places such as Montana have developed political cultures less amenable to categorization as a Way. Even where Ways seem the strongest, some residents may detract from the idea of defining a place’s political culture so narrowly. After all, some residents of the places purported to have Ways may not even know they are following such a distinctive political path.
The preceding chapter set forth a new approach to evaluating the existence and strength of a Way—consideration of the values, norms, social institutions, and demographic processes at a given point in time in a specific place. But this methodology requires a bit more detail.
Ways can be viewed in snapshots or longer timeframes. It is possible to analyze the state of a bowling lane and its bumpers for just one party—like Ava’s—as well as to look at it over the course of generations—Who even built the bowling alley? How has the length of the lanes, oil patterns, and average scores varied over time? Is the alley facing any threats to its long-term viability?
The following chapters will trace the Oregon Way from its inception to present. After a summary of the emergence of Oregon’s Way, the strength of the Way will be assessed over various political eras. These eras will be roughly delineated by the political tenures of some of the state’s most well-known leaders as well as by some of the state’s most transformative policies. Each era will be examined with an explicit focus on the four legs of the Way—the vitality of social institutions, the cohesiveness and enforcement of norms, the identification of and action taken on shared values, and the evolution and use of processes that facilitate the continuation of the Way. Then a final assessment of the strength of the Way in that era will be made.
After the era-by-era examination, the Oregon Way’s influence on local and national politics will undergo an investigation to get a better sense of how Ways can affect the whole spectrum of governments (i.e. local, state, national). Next, this examination will pivot to a review of theories of the Oregon Way’s demise. Specific episodes in Oregon’s recent political history will shine a light on the veracity of claims that the Way has faded into meaninglessness as people of different political persuasions follow more and more distinct, separate paths.
With the Oregon Way’s history, features, and flaws laid bare, the final section of the book will forecast the future of the Way as well as put forth suggestions for how to improve the Way going forward.