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.

If you read this blog, you know that, from time to time, I open the Department of Pet Peeves. I am the director and have full and absolute authority about how the department runs.

I also am in charge of one other department. It is the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering. Again based on my whim and caprice, I intend to include some of the best quotes I have read from columnists at the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times, all of which I read – at least skim – daily. I might include a good quote from the Oregonian if I can find one.

I don’t always agree with the quotes. I just find them to be thought-provoking.

So, here goes – the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering is now open.

Trump and the Media: Many of us have had just about enough of the squabble between the media and President Trump. For the media, they ought to focus on covering the president rather than fighting with him, which, when they do, just means they get deflected from reporting real news.

Here’s the way Daniel Henninger from the Wall Street Journal put it:

“…the press seems more interested in berating the president than in covering him. Mr. Trump’s thin skin and lack of self-discipline don’t help his cause. Nor does his rocky relationship with the truth. But Mr. Trump isn’t the first president to prevaricate; he’s just less polished than we’re accustomed to.”

Henninger gets both sides right. The media are at fault, but so is the president with a “thin skin and lack of self-discipline.

Congress and Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch: This confirmation donnybrook will begin occurring in earnest in a few weeks. Meanwhile, Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal suggests this approach for Democrats.

“If Democrats have a brain in their head, they’ll let Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch sail through the Senate. He’s too attractive. He has been frank and respectful in his meetings with them. He’s been candid about the man who nominated him, Donald Trump, to the reported irritation of the president. He is a thinker of clear conservative leanings who cannot be painted as radical because he’s radical as warm milk. His decisions tend to be plain, direct yet highly literate; in one he diagramed a sentence. He’s a friendly persuader with a serious intellectual background (Marshall Scholar at Oxford) and personal dignity.

“Sharp and uniform opposition to him would look radical.

“They should make critical or reserved speeches at the confirmation hearings next month and then softly vote yes. They should make a show of their desire to be fair, impartial, Constitution-minded. Then they should try to kill the next nomination as a bridge too far, while hiding behind the good faith they showed in accepting Judge Gorsuch.”

Politics and the Judiciary: Laurence Silberman, senior judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, got it right the other day in the Wall Street Journal when he said two elements of the judiciary had violated solid, independent traditions by becoming far too political.

His reference was to Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg and FBI Director James Comey. Here is the way he wrote it:

“Last year we experienced a rather spirited presidential election season. It was probably the fiercest of my lifetime. But we should not be troubled by heated political campaigns. They are the occasional episodes that mark a healthy democracy.

“In one respect, however, the 2016 election campaign was quite troubling. We saw two of our most important legal institutions—the Supreme Court and the Justice Department—bend in the political winds.

“The thrust of my speech (to the Federalist Society) was that the press swayed judicial decisions. But it never occurred to me that the pressures and inducements would lead to a justice’s open intervention in a political campaign. I refer to my onetime colleague Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. To be sure, she isn’t entirely alone. During the campaign, Justice Kennedy publicly lamented its divisive nature, as if he were speaking from Buckingham Palace. Although this is perhaps in bad form for a justice, it pales in comparison to recent statements of ‘The Notorious RBG.’”

Beyond Ginsburg, Comey’s political indiscretions during the Trump-Clinton are far too obvious to cite here, yet he still has his job.

The Permanent Political Campaigns: Also in the Wall Street Journal, Henninger bemoans the failure of campaigning to end and governing to begin. The first does not serve the second. Here is the way he wrote it:

“We could spend the next several years arguing whether Mr. Trump or the dishonest mainstream media started this, but a more productive question is, why is the mayhem happening?

“It is happening mainly because the presidential campaign didn’t end last November. The political culture of the 2017 campaign endures inside the White House and among the press and the Trump opposition.

“Presidential campaigns are an essential feature of the American political system—long, raucous, fiercely contested. But that glorious tumult is supposed to give way to the more substantial, harder politics of the presidency.

“The permanent campaign has been with us a long time, and Barack Obama was the first president who didn’t disband his campaign operation after winning. But we’re in a different dimension today.”

Again, Henninger is right. People on both sides in this country ought to get over campaigning and get about the business of governing, which is often a return to what I have called the “smart middle” where most pressing public policy problems are solved anyway.

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.

This is actually a brief addendum to my last blog, which outlined some of the steps in producing political leverage, a key to my long work as a lobbyist here in Oregon.

In that blog, I listed nine steps in producing leverage — nine options, not all of which would be every time in trying to produce a solid result for a client.

I forgot one.

Is in the “tinker bell” strategy, which I attribute to my partner and friend, a lobbying mentor for me, Pat McCormick.

This strategy worked as follows.  You stand in the back of the hearing room and, with eyes tight shut, HOPE for the best.

Actually, on occasion for me, this hopeful strategy worked more effectively than all others.

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.

A former associate of mine, still a friend, Beth Remley, now with the well-positioned Salem lobby firm, Thorn Run, asked me a very good question the other day.

It was this:

“How do you create political leverage in the Capitol? Sometimes, you can’t win by lobbying on merit alone. You need political leverage — that is, a hook to make people care enough to get to 36, 16 and 1 (the number or votes to win respectively in the House, the Senate and the Governor’s Office).

“You might have the best arguments, but if your opposition has greater political leverage, you won’t prevail.”

As Beth suspected, my attempt to answer her question prompted me to write this blog about the subject, which is written as if I were giving advice to associates in my firm.

I define political leverage as the ability to increase your chances of winning (or at least finding acceptable middle ground) by using various resources at your disposal, such as those listed below. To some, political leverage often means making campaign contributions and making them so high that they “buy” the day.

But, if that’s all it is, then those of us who don’t have huge dollar war chests ought to give up.

1. First, I have seen many issues decided at the Capitol in Salem on the basis of the hard work of lobbyists. Call this the difference between PERSEVERANCE and being a PEST.

I often walked that line and, on occasion, became nearly guilty of being a pest, which, if true, would work in my disfavor.  But perseverance is a form of political leverage.  Use it.  Be steady and always involved — early in the morning and late at night.  Show up first at the Capitol and stay late because you never know when you will find the 30 seconds of access to a key legislator that matters in producing an outcome you want.

One of the best examples from my long career relates to a senator whom I needed to influence on a technical, though important, change in assisted suicide law after the procedure passed for the second time at the polls.

I found out that the senator whom I knew well had been out of town and was coming back to the Portland airport. So, I offered to his staff that I would pick him up at the airport.

That meant I had at least an hour when he would be “trapped” in my car as we headed back to Salem.  I used the time to persevere in lobbying him on the assisted suicide law change, which, due to his leadership, eventually became part of Oregon Revised Statutes.

So PERSEVERE, don’t PESTER.  If you do this right, you’ll be better that your competitors.

2. As I did in the above example, count on the relationships you have built with legislators before you have to use those relationships.  In other words, relationships are not something you develop overnight; they require long-term investment, including on the campaign trail before any legislative session.

Timing here is key. To be successful in any legislative session in Oregon you have to be involved in cultivating honest, ethical relationships before a session starts. Get to know candidates in their campaigns. Learn what makes them tick. Express interest in their views honed on the basis of where they live and work.

3. At the right time — in order words, before an official legislative session — make political contributions designed to illustrate that you care about electing smart legislators who have the wherewithal to make good decisions when faced with tough issues.

I have seen many cases where small contributions can be used to express support for a legislator and help to build a relationship that enables you to lobby more effectively inside a session.

It should be added that ethical lobbyists expect no direct results in exchange for contributions. There is no quid pro quo.

4. Find legislative champions on whom you can rely to do what you cannot do, which is to lobby behind the scenes and on the floors of both chambers. I have seen many cases where a champion was able almost to dictate the outcome on an issue – not to dictate in the sense of giving orders, but rather, to dictate by achieving results by strength of character and position.

5. Try to use anecdotes to help make your point. I oppose legislative policy that is developed only in response to anecdotes. But, at the same time, I also believe anecdotes, if used properly, can help legislators understand what really is at stake even if they don’t know the in’s and out’s of complicated policy formulations.

6. Deploy grassroots resources to make your point.  Advocacy from local places throughout Oregon can help to produce solid outcomes at the Capitol. Encourage those you work for or who share your point of view to communicate directly with legislators. Often, the best way to do so is by asking these “grassroots recourses” to write personal letters in their own handwriting advocating a point of view. That personal touch will help to distinguish such communications from the raft of social media texts legislators receive every day.
7. Consider using the media to help make your point. This may be tough to do because no one controls what the media writes, nor should there be such control.  But, in the past, I have worked to generate editorials that I then used, if they made the right point, to help lobby an issue.  I also would tend to focus on editorials, not just daily news coverage; editorials can be more compelling.

9. Build coalitions in the knowledge that anything that happens at the Capitol is often the product of a team, not the “I.” Coalitions illustrate that a piece of legislation works for the good of many, not just one.

9. Use the CEOs for whom you work to meet personally with key legislators, thus capitalizing on their “power.”

In all of this, I believe GOOD IDEAS still matter in the formation of legislative policy.  If I didn’t believe that, then my fabled 25-year career as a lobbyist was worthless. So, with your clients, develop good ideas and then work to build support for them using the tactics outlined above.

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 of my favorite columnists, Peggy Noonan, got at least two things right this week in a piece she wrote for the Wall Street Journal.

The First Right: Trump said he would build something, do something.

Noonan reported that “in his morning Axios newsletter, Mike Allen said Capitol Hill is currently overstuffed with legislation, and GOP strategists say there’s a new plan to roll out a big program to rebuild roads and airports. They’ll push it off until next year. The thinking is that Democrats are likelier to back such a costly scheme closer to the midterm elections.

“That struck me as exactly wrong. The first year’s legislative agenda defines a new administration. Early programs stand out before everything, in the following three years, becomes a blur. Infrastructure is part of why Donald Trump was hired—he’s the builder, the magnate.

“It was for his supporters not a secondary but a primary issue—build something, do something. The unions and trade organizations back it, as would Americans who are nervous now whenever they go through a tunnel. Big endeavors can be promising in ways that aren’t always calculable. You can add a mentoring program to get teenagers, especially boys, off their couches and into the world of workers, especially men, who know how to do something and can teach it. That would be valuable to our culture.”

The Second Right: Trump announces and asserts. He doesn’t make a case for his proposals.

Noonan wrote: “An odd thing about the president—and this has contributed to the general lostness of Washington—is that he doesn’t perform a primary and obvious function of presidents, which is to argue for things. You make a decision, unveil a program, and make a case for its excellence. The other side then argues back. In the ensuing back-and-forth, voters get the contours of what’s being proposed.

“This president doesn’t argue, he only announces. He asserts. Previous presidents in their early speeches were always making the case for a certain advancement. Not to do so is a waste of the biggest mic in the world.”

Think of these two Noonan quotes:

• Trump got elected “to build something, to do something.” This is an obvious anti-thesis to the tendency in Washington, D.C to disagree and debate until it hurts, then not take any action, leaving stalemate in place.  Trump does the reverse.  He acts.

• Trump “doesn’t argue, he only announces. He asserts.” That’s not the traditional way of political figures who may announce and assert, but then go on to make a case for their position. Trump appears to feel that, when he says something, it is a true fact, without the need for argument.

My view is that all of us need to get used to this new presidential style. We don’t have to like it, but we should just get used to it. It may not be pretty or traditional and it won’t change.

But the Trump Administration should be judged, not on daily utterings or tweets, but on the longer-term challenges of getting a new job done in the bone-jarring back and forth of the Nation’s Capitol.

In politics, there are short-term and a long-term perspectives. The easy tendency is to look only at short-term considerations. I say take a long-term view.

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.

I have written about campaigning versus government before, mostly in relation to the problem of the continual campaign getting in the way of the real work of political governance, the art of compromise.

But, based on a piece by Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger, an additional perspective came home to me.

It is this: The campaigning style does not lend itself to the governing style.

It is more than just avoiding compromise. It is being always about the business of rallying troops, currying favor with them and getting on the nerves of opponents who lost the most recent election, but will be back for more in two or four years.

Here is way Henninger put it.

“Donald Trump is right that the media is making a mountain out of every Trump molehill. Despite the ‘resistance,’ it also remains true that most Americans want the Trump presidency to succeed.

“These Trump Hopefuls, whose number includes people who didn’t vote for him, want the presidency to succeed because they understand that, if it fails, the social and economic condition of their country will be in a bad place.

“Despite this reservoir of goodwill for the Trump presidency, the degree of anxiety about it is palpable. You have to be living in Net-flixed isolation not to have had conversations with people wondering what the hell is going on at this White House.

“Beyond the Beltway bubble, I think most people look upon the pitched battle between Mr. Trump and the news media as they would a playground fight between sixth-graders.

“He hit me first.

“You hit first.

“You’re a liar.

“No, you’re the liar.”

“It is happening mainly because the presidential campaign didn’t end last November. The political culture of the 2017 campaign endures inside the White House and among the press and the Trump opposition.

“Presidential campaigns are an essential feature of the American political system—long, raucous, fiercely contested. But that glorious tumult is supposed to give way to the more substantial, harder politics of the presidency.

“But Mr. Trump himself can revert in an instant to campaign mode—Hillary’s failures, voter fraud and past media transgressions. Or a Florida presidential rally that looks just like a Florida campaign rally…But are the tactics of a campaign transferrable to the daily life of a presidency?

“Some will say the political world underestimated Donald Trump from day one. That’s true—but as a candidate. The presidency, by contrast, is one part of a large and complicated political system, complicated because the Founders wanted the process to be difficult and to require getting buy-in from unavoidably divided factions.”

“The Trump margin for delivering victory to these hopeful Americans is narrower than it should be. The president’s goals could falter or fail if enough Republicans running for election in 2020 decide their own needs require putting distance between themselves and the permanent volcano of the Trump White House. There will be no moral victories for a presidency that cannot produce 50 votes in the Senate.”

Kudos to Henninger.

He is exactly on target when he says campaigning does not produce governing. They are very different. They should be. The major question before all of us in America is whether Trump can stop campaigning and start governing.

If he cannot, we’re all in trouble. If he can, we’ll all be better for it.

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.

The question in the headline has occurred to me several times over the last weeks as we have seen a new president, Donald Trump, take office and engage, like he did in the campaign, in an unpredictable array of fulminations and actions – fulminations and actions that may or may not be hinged to reality.

So, are we seeing facts or are we seeing developments made up, not just by the Administration, but by Democrat detractors, or the media, the latter of which has been labeled by the Administration as “the opposition party?”

In a piece in the Wall Street Journal, columnist Bret Stephens called Trump “our first post-rational president.”

The full quote from the Stephens piece:

“The United States has elected as president a man who has repeatedly voiced his disdain for NATO, the World Trade Organization and other institutions of the Western-led world order. He publicly calls the press “an enemy of the American people” and conjures conspiracy theories about voter fraud whose only purpose is to lend credence to his claim that the system is rigged. He is our first post-rational president, whose approach to questions of fact recalls the deconstructionism of the late Jacques Derrida: There are no truths; reality is negotiable.

In this quote, think about two phrases. One, Trump is “the post-rational president!” Some would argue with this label, of course, but, based on facts in recent days, it strikes me that it could be true.

The other phrase: “There are no truths; reality is negotiable.” If that is true, we, as a country or as a civilization, are in deep trouble.

I choose to believe that there is reality – underpinnings that provide a pivot for all of us as we live and act. We may not always agree with the reality, but there is one.

Those who were tired of the Obama Administration saw Trump as their savior, someone who would bring a new reality to Washington, D.C., one based on quick action to, as Trump would put, “make America great again.”

Those who opposed Trump saw him as either a buffoon or near-dictator who thought he always knew best about any issue – and clearly much better than either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, the latter of whom struck many as Obama 3.

Just rely on me, Trump would say – I’ll save you. His was a new kind of ego-centric reality.

For many, the Trump “make America again” quote conjured up images of what it must have been like in post-World War 1 Germany as Adolph Hitler rose to power by invigorating the masses to follow his lead no matter where it took Germany.

So, in this day and age, how are we to separate fact from fiction, how are we to decide if there is reality and, if so, what it is?

Without putting myself on any sort of pedestal, I follow these paths on a daily basis to try to find reality:

• First, I read several newspapers every day, often in my hands so I can touch the ink, which I like based on my past as a reporter for a daily newspaper. The alternative is to go on-line, which is second best, but still available.

• Second, the ones I read are designed to provide multiple sides of the public policy challenges we face – the Oregonian in my home state, the Washington Post (from the left) editorial columns, the entire Wall Street Journal (from the right) and an on-line version of the New York Times. Multiple sides. Multiple perspectives.

• Third, I try to communicate with a number of my friends, not because they agree with me, but because they have perspectives to contribute that very often are different than mine. There is a risk in talking only to those with whom you agree so that you think your way is the only right way.

• Fourth, I post my thoughts from time to time in this blog, Perspective from the 19^th Hole, and then read what reactors say about what I have written.

In these ways, I try to discern reality without some kind of haughty view that I have found IT. All of us should work to find it, not just hew to perspectives that mimic our own.

And this footnote, which probably should be higher in this blog, if not the lead.  My reality is formed by my conviction that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life.  As a follower of Jesus, I am able — again not in a haughty way — to put what I read and see about life and politics in a wider context.

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

…..Also, for me, this is the second in a series of blog on “the media then and now”…

Well, the answer to the proposition in the headline depends on who is speaking.

Several reporters were asked about the press conference last week in an interview piece in the Washington Post and they gave various answers, but the basic proposition was this: Trump managed to command the “news cycle,” if there is such a cycle any longer, at least for day.

The Trump Administration’s posture with Russia was pushed off most front pages or TV leads as the focus shifted to what Trump said in a press conference that was scheduled on the fly. In that venue, which he believes is made for him, he shifted the focus again and again to what he wanted to talk about, not about the previous day’s headlines, which he labeled “fake news.”

To his credit – if that is a word that can be applied to Trump after one month in office – he answered questions from reporters. Sort of. He bridged to the information he wanted to provide rather than dealing with the topics of the questions.

In that way, it reminded one reporter of a famous quote from Ronald Reagan: “Before I refuse to answer your questions, I have a statement to make.”

If all of this is a Trump strategy, even an ongoing one, you have to assume there is a strategy in the first place. Often, it just seems like a series of unconnected events, including when Trump presumes he is his best spokesman.

As one reporter put it: “Look, Trump will reserve the right to make game-day decisions every day of his presidency. If he feels that his narrative is unraveling, he will take the bully pulpit by the horns and self-correct. He does that because it works for him.”

To another reporter, Trump’s press conference was a great example of the difference between campaigning and governing. “During the campaign,” this reporter said, “he could go out, do this kind of press conference or event, say whatever he wanted, and the campaign and world moved on with little consequence.

“It’s different when you’re president, as Trump and his team are learning. When you say something, it is evaluated in the context of actual facts and real policy implications.”

From a communications standpoint, I don’t think it is a good idea to engage in non-stop warfare with the media as Trump is doing. Unlike in a political campaign, you cannot make the problems of government go away with a press event or a rally.

As I wrote earlier, I do not believe the Trump approach to the media – presidential counselor Steve Bannon likes to call the media “the opposition party” – will stand the test of time.

Better to engender credibility by being honest and straightforward. Provide the facts, not just “alternative facts.” Live with media coverage in the belief that, if you are honest, the programs and proposals that marked your campaign will resonate with the public which voted you into office in the first place.

Sadly, my view is that such a posture won’t happen. Trump continues to jeopardize his own by success by his bizarre behavior. To him, it will be simply another series of events or tweets – all, to me, without a solid political or public relations rationale.

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.

Marco Rubio, who sometimes comes across, at least to me, as someone full of himself, made a very thought-provoking speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate the other day.

Thought-provoking in the sense that he advocated for a renewed commitment to the idea of a stimulating, fact-filled debate on major public policy issues, but one that still preserved goodwill between competing debaters.

Rubio made his speech soon after Senator Elizabeth Warren was barred from speaking on the Senate floor because of her over-the-top diatribes against Senator Jeff Sessions, President Trump’s nominee for Attorney General.

Columnist Chris Cilliza captured the essence of Rubio’s statements in a piece that ran in New York Times on-line:

“We are becoming a society incapable of having a debate,” he quoted Rubio as saying.

Cilliza went on: “Rubio’s speech was a plea for civility in the Senate, a warning that, if civilized debate dies in the Senate, it will die in the broader society, too. A few lines that really stood out to me (Cilliza):

• “I don’t know of a civilization in the history of the world that’s been able to solve its problems when half the people in a country absolutely hate the other half of the people in that country.”

• “We are becoming a society incapable of having debate anymore.”

• “We are reaching a point in this republic where we are not going to be able to solve the simplest of issues because everyone is putting themselves in a corner where everyone hates everybody.”

• What’s at stake here tonight … is not simply some rule but the ability of the most important nation on earth to debate in a productive and respectful way the pressing issues before it.”

Cilliza adds: “When did ‘reasonable people can disagree’ stop being something we believed in? Why can’t genuine debate not descend into name-calling? Why is confrontation the only way the two parties — and their leading politicians — seem to interact these days?”

The answer, Cilliza writes, “is that confrontation is what energizes the bases of the two parties. And energizing those bases is what politicians spend most of their time focusing on these days. Unfortunately, the byproduct of all that confrontation is an increasing cynicism and disgust among the large swaths of people who aren’t part of either base.”

In this blog, on several occasions, I have advocated a return to middle ground, the area where most pressing public policy problems are solved. In Congress, the middle ground is often lost by the actions of both the presidential administration and Congress itself. For each, winning the debate and demonizing the other side appears to be the goal.

In Oregon, where I operated as a private sector lobbyist for nearly 25 years, to use a quote from Colin Powell, “I bemoan loss of civility in politics.”

If we cannot return to a kind of reasoned and reasonable discourse – the ability to disagree agreeable – I believe all is lost in our form of government.

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.

The recent furor over a Seattle judge’s decision to stall President Donald Trump’s immigration order called to mind a different incident for me more than 40 years ago.

Actually, the specific recollection wasn’t in relation to the judge’s ruling, but rather to Trump’s comments about it.

When I was part of the administration of the late Governor Vic Atiyeh in Oregon, he held weekly Cabinet meetings with key agency heads. At one point, Victor – as we sometimes called the governor back then, with his approval — railed against a decision by a judge to allow a challenge to Oregon’s prison system to go forward.

That decision, incredibly as I look back on it, was filed by a prisoner rights organization and contended that double-bunking, required because of prison over-crowding, represented “cruel and unusual punishment.”

A judge had allowed the suit to proceed and, in response, the governor said the judge’s decision was “preposterous.” I still member the normally understated governor uttering that word.

His choice got the attention of one of the agency heads in the meeting, Acting Attorney General Jim Brown, a close friend of mine. By the look on Jim’s face, I knew he was very wary of the word “preposterous” in calling attention to the judge’s ruling. Brown said the very word, if it leaked as a quote from the governor, could irritate the judge to the extent that it could influence his ruling.

The good news? The comment didn’t leak, though, if it did, Victor would not have minded in the least, for he, in fact, did feel that the ruling was “preposterous.” So would many law-abiding Oregonians.

Back to the case at hand – Trump’s comments about the judge who stalled the president’s immigration order.

In fairly typical fashion, Trump torpedoed the judge, calling him “a so-called judge” and contending that, if there was a terrorist attack while the executive order was stalled, the judiciary should be blamed for it. [I suppose now the Night Circuit Court of Appeals should also share the blame because it unanimously upheld the Seattle’s judge’s ruling.]

Wall Street Journal editorial writers commented this way: “Mr. Trump’s rants against the judiciary are offensive to the rule of law, and perhaps also to his own case.”

Further, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN that “I think it’s best not to single out judges for criticism.’’

Trump’s comments about the Seattle judge aren’t the first time he has publicly attacked a sitting member of the bench. During the presidential campaign, he criticized a judge overseeing civil fraud lawsuits against Trump University, claiming Judge Gonzalo Curiel had “an absolute conflict’’ in presiding over the litigation because he was of Mexican heritage. The judge was born in the U.S.

Comparing Trump and Atiyeh may be ill-conceived on a number of accounts. In this case, there is at least one key difference. Atiyeh’s use of the word “preposterous” was said in the confines of a private Cabinet meeting. Trump’s derogatory comments were made using his favorite medium, Twitter, for all the world to see.

So, Atiyeh and Trump? If there was a public vote, I would cast mine for Atiyeh, one of Oregon’s great governors, every time!

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.

Back in the day, when I was involved in working with the media on behalf of clients, one of my emphases was to quell arguments with editors and reporters on the theory that it was smart not to argue with those “who bought ink by the barrel.”

That old enough admonition loses a bit of luster today in a world dominated by social media, not ink. But, still, it is worth remembering that arguing with the media usually does not serve one’s interests well in the long run.

At least that used to be the case.

Now, with the Trump Administration, the motive appears to be to argue with the media every day as if such behavior will win friends, influence people and turn out well in the end. Things even went so far as the quote attributed to Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who said the “media is the opposition party.”

Press Secretary Sean Spicer often takes a cudgel to reporters in his daily White House press briefing, making news along the way, not on the basis of facts and figures, but on the basis of his fights with the media.  Some say he is just feinting, trying to deflect focus from the real issues with Trump.

It is not clear that arguing with the media will serve Trump’s interests, but here’s betting that many who voted for him will laud his anti-media disposition.

When I was involved in relating to the media, either for private sector clients, or for a Democrat congressman from Oregon or for Republican Governor Vic Atiyeh, things were very different. Without meaning to call myself an icon of anything, I tried to emphasize commitments such as these:

• Always tell the truth because, if you don’t, you will be caught in a lie that will destroy your credibility as a spokesperson.

• If there is something you cannot divulge or if it is not appropriate to do so, say so – and just try to move on, though editors and reporters may still want the information and find a way to get it. But your honest deferral will add to your credibility.

• On behalf of your client, try to “put your best foot forward.” Stay on message, even as you hew to the truth.

• Try to avoid being caught in what I call “a process story,” where your method of dealing with the media – or, in some cases, not dealing with the media – becomes a story or at least part of the story in and of itself.

Think of these and other commitments and consider how often – many times a day, it appears – the Trump Administration goes the other way in the mistaken belief that their own notions of superiority will “trump” (pardon the play on the words), the media.

My view is that the Trump approach will not stand the best of time.