PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

The dictionary defines political discourse this way: Communications of thought by words, talk, conversation, as in “earnest and intelligent discourse.”

Say what?

If that is the definition of political discourse, then it appears to be a lost art in today’s United States. At least that could be said about the presidential primary fights.

According to Kimberley Strassel, a Wall Street Journal columnist, in a piece entitled “No Political Guardrails,” she contends that President Obama has broken all boundaries and both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are following suit. [Earlier, taken with this piece, I reprinted it as part of my blog posts.]

She went on: “Twenty-two years ago, my esteemed colleague Dan Henninger wrote an editorial whose subject was people who don’t think that rules of personal or civil conduct apply to them, as well as the elites who excuse this lack of self-control and the birth of a less-civilized culture.”

That’s how to make sense, Strassel says, of a presidential race that grows more disconnected from normality.

She points first to Obama who, contrary to his assertions on the campaign trail before he was elected, has set about to destroy Washington’s guardrails. He wants what he wants and, if he can’t get what he wants through political negotiations, he just unilaterally alters – read breaks — the law.

If Congress won’t change the immigration system, Obama refuses to enforce it. If the nation won’t support laws to fight climate change, he creates one with regulation. If the Senate won’t confirm his nominees, he declares it in recess and installs them anyway.

Obama’s approach appears to have seeped into the national conscience. You see this in the ever-more-outrageous proposals from the presidential field, in particular frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, not to mention Ted Cruz.

Clinton routinely vows to govern by dictate. Recently, she unveiled a raft of proposals to punish companies that flee the punitive U.S. tax system. She may ask Congress to support her plan, but if Congress won’t act, she says she will direct the Treasury Department to use its regulatory authority.

For his part, Trump sent the nation into an uproar with his call for an outright ban on Muslims entering the United States. Trump doesn’t care whether his call is legally or morally sound? He specializes in disdain for the law, the Constitution, and any code of civilized conduct.

Here’s the way Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer put it in a recent piece:

“So how exactly does this work, Donald Trump’s plan to keep America safe from Islamic terrorism by barring entry to all Muslims? He explained it Tuesday on TV. The immigration official will ask the foreigner if he’s a Muslim.

“And if they said, ‘yes,’ they would not be allowed in the country?”

“Trump: “That’s correct.”

“Brilliant. And very economical. That is, if you think that bloodthirsty terrorists — “people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,” as Trump describes them — will feel honor-bound to tell the truth to an infidel customs officer. They kill wantonly but, like George Washington, cannot tell a lie. On this logic hinges the great Maginot Line with which Trump will protect America from jihad.

“I decline to join the chorus denouncing the Trump proposal as offensive and un-American. That’s too obvious. What I can’t get over is its sheer absurdity.”

Ditto.

Does this lack of reasoned political discourse occur in Oregon, as well as nationally? Well, the answer is yes, but not usually in a way that generates headlines. More detail in a future post.