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.

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.

As a sometimes-skeptic of state budgeting processes, one honed over nearly 40 years of involvement in the processes, I often tend to move more to oppose than support those processes.

But, recently, there have been two developments that provide cause for cautious optimism.

One was a decision by the two legislative leaders, House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, and Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, to ask the Joint Ways and Means Committee to develop a “current taxes” budget. They did in contrast to Governor Kate Brown who built $897 million of proposed new taxes into the “Recommended Budget for 2017-19” that she unveiled last December 1.

The Ways and Means budget allows legislators to make a reasoned decision on the need for new taxes to avoid potentially deep cuts in the two-year budget.

Here’s the way the Oregonian newspaper put it in a story on the Ways and Means budget:

“Oregon’s top legislative budget writers unveiled a plan Thursday to close a looming $1.8 billion shortfall by making cuts across state government — a plan they hope lawmakers and voters will reject as unacceptable.

“The 2017-19 budget proposal lead to teacher layoffs, university tuition hikes and kicking people off the state’s Medicaid program, Sen. Richard Devlin, D-Tualatin, and Rep. Nancy Nathanson, D-Eugene, said during a press conference.         

“The magnitude of their proposed cuts was not a surprise. Democratic leaders in the Legislatur said earlier this month they hoped the $20.6 billion budget would help build political will to overhaul the state’s tax system. In a joint statement Thursday, Devlin and Nathanson described their budget as “one we believe Oregonians will reject.”

“We do not believe the resources allocated in this document are sufficient,” Devlin said.”

Now, a critic of these processes could point out that economists expect the state to have nearly $1.3 billion more in tax and lottery revenue in 2017-19 compared with the current two-year budget. But that’s not enough to cover rising costs, particularly from the state’s Medicaid program and personnel costs such as raises and public pensions.

Now, on to the second piece of good news.

Last week, the two legislative leaders, Kotek and Courtney, reported that they had invited representatives of business and labor to meet in Salem to consider whether the 2017-19 “no new taxes budget” was appropriate.

Here’s the way they put in a joint news release:

“We met together with representatives of the business community and labor unions Wednesday evening. The discussion was productive. Everyone agrees that the current budget environment is not acceptable. We also share common goals for Oregon’s future. 

“As the presiding officers in the Oregon Legislature, we felt a duty to initiate discussions. The two groups agreed to continue to meet. We left the meeting encouraged that both sides will work together in good faith, and hopeful that we can find a path to move Oregon forward together.”

Good.

It’s about time political leaders in Oregon – it could be argued, by the way, that Governor Kate Brown should have been the one doing the heavy lifting – called competing interests together to discuss the state budget.

This comes, of course, after the huge defeat of the public employee union tax increase proposal at the polls in November. Business interests came together as never before to raise about $30 million to kill the tax, which had been proposed, stupidly I contend, on sales, not on profits.

The measure went down to defeat 58 to 41. It had the endorsement of Kotek and Brown (not Courtney), which meant that at least Kotek would have had to ask, humbly, for business participation in the next steps.

She did, though not sure humility was involved. And so did Courtney.

Now, we’ll see whether there is any room for middle ground on spending and taxes in Salem. To find it, both sides – business and labor – will have to “give” as well as “get.” That, after all, is the nature of political compromise.

Here’s one view holding out hope for success.

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.

As the Trump Administration continues to move in more ways than can be counted, it is worth thinking about what we lose and what we gain in this new way of doing the nation’s public business.

Further, is it even worth calling the Trump presidency an “administration,” if the word administration means having your act together in some kind of rational, consistent management fashion? I don’t think so, which means that, in this blog, I’ll put quote marks around the word “administration” when it applies to Trump.

First, what we lose.

We lose truth. Trump has his own version of truth as he changes his tack every day to suit his whim, prejudice and tweeting-approach to doing business. For example, one day he criticizes the nation’s intelligence organizations as being soft and out-of-touch with his reality and the next he goes to the Central Intelligence Agency and says all of those who work there “are great.”

We lose honesty. Almost no one in the “administration” owns up to telling lies; they call them “alternative facts.” To be fair, there was one occasion for something resembling honesty when press secretary Sean Spicer, who apparently was told one day by Trump to castigate the media for underestimating the size of Trump’s inaugural crowd, showed up the next day and sort of apologized for using inaccurate figures to make his original point.

We lose deference. By that I mean the ability to disagree agreeably. It is often a lost political art on both sides of the aisle these days. Trump will have none of deference. If someone disagrees with him, they are wrong and he gets angry, writes tweets, and holds grudges. He also suffers from narcissism. It’s all about him all the time.

This is a different kind of politics that does not resemble the definition of the word, which is the “art of compromise.”

We lose consistency. Some will say “consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds,” but, yet, consistency, especially in the conduct of foreign policy, is in the United States’ best interest. Inconsistent actions, without apparent regard to rational thought about impacts and implications, could literally lead to distrust, if not war.

Now, on the other side of the ledger, what do we gain?

Well, the two points below could have downsides, but, to be fair, they are gains.

We gain aggressive action. For those who have wanted government to reach a decision and work to implement it, they have found it in the Trump “Administration.” Consider the Keystone Pipeline. After the Obama Administration stonewalled the project for years even though it had received permit approval, the Trump “Administration” has said, resolutely, go forward with it.

The executive order designed to stem the flow of immigrants also represents action, though there is a view that the order could have been vetted more thoroughly before it was signed. The fact that an Iranian baby couldn’t get into Oregon for planned surgery is only one indication of unintended consequences.

We gain an “Administration” that sets out to implement campaign promises, for better or worse.

It appears to me that the Trump “Administration” prospers in some minds became it represents a counter to the perception that many political figures in the past have been in politics for their own ends and benefits. Trump, of course, mentioned this in his inaugural address from the steps of the Capitol even as those who allegedly had prospered at the expense of “the people” sat only a few feet behind him, trying not to look downcast.

If you talk to Trump supporters, many of them say they are willing to overlook his incredible personal faults – objectifying women in very derogatory terms, making fun of those with disabilities, assuming all Muslims are the enemy, running his businesses into the ground, not paying contractors etc. – in order to support his approach to depart from the “liberal” ways of his predecessors.

One of these supporters told me last week that he simply could not vote for Hillary Clinton because “she was a crook” and he was not prepared for, essentially, a third Obama term. So, he accepted Trump with all of his personal and professional baggage.

So, one of the ways Trump salutes his supporters, is to fulfill the various pledges he made on the campaign trail – and fulfilling campaign promises is often a lost art in politics.

Overall, the risk is that the Trump approach wears pretty thin over time. And that carries potential jeopardy for this country because, first, we may have someone who views himself a dictator in the top political job in this country, thus a risk to democracy, and, second, we could be making enemies – or at least skeptics — of friendly countries around the world that we will need to support us.