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.

For all of its problems, the immigration rule President Trump issued represents a good thing about democracy in the United States:   It is the checks and balances system in government, which often stops any side from running wild.

The executive order is, at once, simplistic and not well-vetted, even with his own agency appointees who will have to enforce it. Some judges stop parts of the order, then a Seattle judge stops it cold. And Trump’s legal representatives are told they have to appear in court to appeal the order rather than get an immediate injunction.

While this process – if you can call it a “process” at all – is under way, Congress sits by as members debate the merits or demerits of the order.

There was a better way to go to make good on President Trump’s campaign pledge to stem immigration. It would have been to work on the order for several days, involve Homeland Security Department Director John Kelly who would have to enforce it, involve the acting attorney general who would have to defend it in court, and consult key members of Congress who would have to respond to constituents about its content.

In this way, appropriate exceptions could have been built in to the order so, for example, the young Iranian child who had pre-scheduled surgery in Portland could have been let in to the country to undergo the procedure, or, in another example, the U.S. military veteran with a Middle Eastern-sounding name would not have been stopped at the airport after helping Americans fight in Iraq.

The checks and balance system in America, however irritating it can be from to time as it makes decisions occur more slowly, is a key part of “our” democracy.

But it works only when one side doesn’t do what former president Barack Obama did, which is to use the power of bureaucratic regulation, sans legislative involvement, to work his will when he couldn’t get Congress to do his bidding. In those cases, too, courts sometimes stopped the over-reach.

The Trump Administration would be smart to take advantage of the checks and balances system – take advantage of it to make decisions that are more well-rounded and effective, but still decisions made by an activist president.