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 headline answers the question: Nowhere.

President Donald Trump and Republican leaders illustrated that they cannot govern in their first big chance to do so in the majority and the main reason is one they will have to own. Republican conservatives, the inaptly named the “House Freedom Caucus,” compromised their own leaders and voted no – or at least pledged to vote no when, in the end, there was no chance to do so on the House floor because the bill was pulled.

President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan will be called losers for this result – and, in many ways, they probably deserve the moniker.

Trump, putting his personally acclaimed deal-making ability on the line, couldn’t produce one. He tried to blame Democrats for the result, but that won’t hold up under scrutiny. It was Republicans – very conservative ones – who produced the result.

As for Ryan, I have been a fan of his for years and I remain so.

He could be – and will be – criticized for bringing up health care first rather than, say, tax reform. But I also felt he had no choice, given the campaign rhetoric about getting rid of the government entitlement that came to be known as ObamaCare.

He did exactly what good leaders do, which is to PROPOSE a solution then allow it to be debated by all sides as the bill moved through a total of four House committees on the way to the House floor.

He’ll be criticized for not involving Democrats in the early stages so they could have a hand in devising a health care reform bill. That charge doesn’t hold up, in my view, because Democrats were never going to participate in an effort to reform the signal achievement of the Obama era. They voted en masse for ObamaCare and they were not going to participate in its demise, despite all of the facts that the plan was not working.

The fact that Congressional Budget Office (CBO) produced a report saying 24 million Americans would lose coverage contributed a lot to the debacle. Many Republicans couldn’t stomach the report, but I also wish the CBO would have acknowledged that some of those who would “lose” government-provided coverage could buy insurance on their own. Plus, I also wish the CBO would analyze results of the ObamaCare’s own crater in the next few years.

[My own prescription for health care reform relies on a simple, but controversial, proposition. It is that the law should require citizens to purchase health insurance in much the same way as laws requires drivers to purchase automobile insurance. That way, for health care, we’d all be in the same pool. Of course, there would have to be additional provisions related to covering low income citizens, but a purchase requirement is the base from which everything else proceeds.]

So, now Ryan moves on to other issues, though, if I were him, I would be attempted to do what John Boehner before him did – not just move on, but move out to a position in the private sector that would take advantage of his substantial intellect and credentials. It appears those will be of little use in the House where leadership is foiled mostly because follower-ship doesn’t exist.

The Wall Street Journal wrote that “this failure also reveals the unfortunate skills gap between Democrats and modern Republicans in practical legislative politics. Democrats have their Bernie Sanders faction, which claimed to ‘oppose’ ObamaCare in 2009-10 for lacking a government-run public insurance option. But the far left voted for the bill anyway because they concluded, rightly, that a new entitlement was a great leap toward single-payer national health care.”

It always is difficult to get rid of a government program that dispenses money to citizens. In reform, someone will inevitably lose and those who lose will rally those on the left to keep the government entitlement.

Critics assailed the House leadership bill as “ObamaCare Lite,” but the result of their rule-or-ruin strategy will now be the ObamaCare status quo, and Representatives Mark Meadows (North Carolina), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Louie Gohmert (Texas) and the rest of the Freedom Caucus will now have to own all of ObamaCare’s problems.

The Wall Street Journal – properly in my view, said “the grand prize for cynicism goes to Senator Rand Paul, who campaigned against the bill while offering an alternative that did not have a prayer of passing. ‘I applaud House conservatives,’ Paul said, ‘for keeping their word to the American people and standing up against ObamaCare Lite. I look forward to passing full repeal of ObamaCare in the very near future.’”

I doubt that there will be any such repeal in this Congress, and probably not in any other Congress under Republican leadership, which, of course, will be jeopardy in the mid-term elections of 2018.

So, the bottom line question is now what – for health care and for almost anything else. My sense is that Congress is in such disarray that nothing will happen in a bi-partisan way. It didn’t when Democrats were in charge and it is not now happening with Republicans in the driver’s seat.

Makes one wonder if the American form of two-party democracy works any more. [More on that in my next post.]