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 use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as 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, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), 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.

One test of every election, including the stunning one that just occurred in this country, is whether those who won can get about the business of governing.

Apparently, it’s not easy because, too often, the end of one campaign simply signals the start of another.  Those who won immediately begin planning for the next campaign, including trying to generate positive headlines — either in the mass or social media — or working to put their potential opponents in a bad light.

There has been talk of a “continual campaign” for a long time, evidenced, for one thing, by a book in 2012 by two professors, Amy Gutmann, then president of the University of Pennsylvania, and Dennis Thompson, a professor of philosophy at Harvard.

Their contention:

“The problem of compromise in American democracy has always been challenging.  It becomes harder still with the rise of the permanent campaign.  The relentless pressures of campaigning, which call for an uncompromising mindset, are overtaking the demands of governing, which depend on a compromising mindset.

Given the most unpredictable of results — Donald Trump is the president-elect — most eyes are on Washington, D.C. as Trump prepares to assume power in the nation’s highest political office. Will he in his ascension to the top job, as has been the case over the last several days or will he revert to his over-the-top campaign style

There are issues, as well, in Oregon where most election results were predictable.

Here are questions for Oregon’s current political leaders — Governor Kate Brown, who won her own two-years in office after taking over from John Kitzhaber; Representative Tina Kotek, D-Portland, who very likely will remain as House Speaker; and Senator Peter Courtney, D-Salem, who was not up for election this time, but is looking ahead to what might be his last two years in office:

*  How will these leaders navigate the shoals of the major defeat for Ballot Measure 97, which, by taxing business, would have produced $3 billion a year for state government?  Brown and Kotek endorsed the measure; Courtney did not.  But all three, with their allies, will have to figure out how to balance the budget for 2017-19, a tall task politically with risks for K-12, higher education, cops and prisons, health care and the elephant in the room — a major funding gap for the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS).

*  When and, if so how, will these and other leaders reach out to the business community in Oregon, a typically disparate group which came together to raise almost $30 million to kill Measure 97?  Some business leaders want to respond immediately with potential compromise tax increases that could pass muster in the legislature and, if necessary, at the polls.  Others want to bide their time until legislators reach out to them to ask for participation in finding a middle ground solution.

*   Democrats retained control of both the House and Senate in Salem, but not with super-majorities, and the question is how those in charge will play their leadership hand.  Will they reach out to Republicans to find middle ground?  Will they try to entice one Republican in each chamber to sign up for tax increases if, that is, the leaders can keep all Democrats in line in favor of taxes?

*  How will Republicans continue to play their minority role?  In the recent past, they appear to have been mostly content to oppose Democrats.  In the 2017 session, will they work across party lines to forge compromise?

No one yet knows the answers to these and other questions. Legislators don’t return to Salem until January when they will hold opening ceremonies before beginning to meet in earnest as of February 1.

There are huge issues on the horizon — balancing the state budget, dealing with a big hole in the state’s Medicaid budget, honing a transportation funding package, dealing with the PERS funding gap, finding a way to boost funding for higher education (as advocated last week in a letter signed by 18 legislators). Most of them, if they are solved at all, will be solved somewhere in the middle.

As Gutmann and Thompson contend, such compromise will require laying down the cudgels of campaigning to get about the business of governing.

We’ll see whether this occurs in Oregon in the new year.