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.

Republicans in Congress, especially in the House, are learning a tough, but old lesson: It is almost impossible to get rid of a government entitlement program once it is in place.

Led by House Speaker Paul Ryan, Republicans have tried to make good on a campaign pledge to get rid of ObamaCare, the still-relatively-new health care entitlement started under former President Barack Obama.

The effort is in the process of coming to grief, underlining the old problem of changing entitlements.

Anecdotes about who is losing coverage dominate the political debate no matter how hard public policy wonks like Ryan try to underline the dispassionate rationale for change.

The near failure of the Republican plan has prompted some observers to contend that the only answer is a single payer system, a government-run, government-financed entitlement that would go even farther than ObamaCare.

In fact, California is moving in that direction.

According to Wall Journal editorial writers, “this proves the truism that the liberal solution to every government failure is always more government.”

Many on the left, the Journal continues, “championed single-payer in lieu of ObamaCare’s regulations and subsidies, but in 2010 the program lacked enough support among Democrats in Congress. But with premiums soaring and insurers fleeing the Affordable Care Act exchanges, progressives are now trying to pivot to achieve their longtime dream.”

The California bill reflects the left’s ideal – or, without using political terms, something we all would like if paying for it wasn’t an issue: Free care for everyone for everything.

Patients would be entitled to an essentially unlimited list of benefits, including acupuncture and chiropractic care, as well as “all medical care determined to be medically appropriate by the member’s health care provider.” Patients could see any specialist without a referral. Co-pays and deductibles and charging premiums would be prohibited.

Thus, there would no restraint on health-care use and costs. Patients could get treated for virtually any malady by any physician at no cost.

But even paradise has a price. In California, the Senate committee considering the single payer bill pegged its cost at $400 billion a year, which is likely a conservative estimate since analysts assume utilization rates close to those for Medicaid in which patients lack access to many specialists. About $200 billion could be re-allocated from other government health-care programs including Medicaid and Medicare, though this would require federal waivers. The rest would require higher taxes.

A $200 billion tax hike in California would be equivalent to a 15 per cent payroll tax, which would come on top of the current 15.3 per cent federal payroll tax. The Senate staff analysis estimates that “between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of the payroll tax revenues would represent a new tax on employees, not likely to be offset by higher wages.”

One danger for taxpayers in the other 49 states is that California liberals will drag ambitious Democrats elsewhere to endorse a single-payer system if they want to compete for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Plus, for those of us in Oregon, public policy proposals often move north and south along the West Coast, so it will be only a matter of time before Democrats here have a single payer bill under consideration.

Okay, so, if not a single payer system, then what?

Well, if I was in charge of health Care policy, I would have five planks in my reform platform.

1. Require all citizens to have health insurance. [As I’ve written before, think of it this way. All of us who drive cars are required to have automobile insurance. If we don’t, we pay a price. The same policy should exist for health insurance, though it will be difficult for many Republicans to stomach this mandate.]
2. Provide a catastrophic health insurance plan for those who cannot afford regular insurance and who need a lower-cost option. Call it what it is, which a “high-risk pool.”
3. Accommodate people with pre-existing health conditions.
4. Allow broad access to health-savings accounts.
5. Save as much as possible of the joint federal and state Medicaid program as a way to provide government-financed care for low income citizens.

Will these proposals solve all of today’s health care problems? Of course not. But they will go a long toward removing incentives for a single payer system, which, frankly none of us can afford, especially if we to preserve funding for important priorities such as K-12 education, higher education, and public safety.

Just ask Californians as they contemplate huge tax increases to fund government health-care-for-all.

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 Secretary of State’s Office issued a breathless “audit alert” a few days ago suggesting Oregon was facing a huge financial deficit by granting Medicaid payments to ineligible citizens.

It was almost as if the contention was that questionable payments had been made intentionally.

Not true.

There is an issue here, to be sure, but my view from cheap seats – in other words, from my position as a retired state lobbyist – suggests that the Secretary of State’s alert was way overstated. Frankly, that has been the case for years as secretaries of state have capitalized on their audit function to come across in the media as guardians of state taxpayer dollars.

In this blog, I try to be careful about what I write on issues where I served as a lobbyist for many years. In this case, I handled major health care issues, including Medicaid, for more than 20 years as a representative of Providence Health System, a major health care provider in this state which operates eight hospitals, a number of special programs and a health insurance carrier.

However, I set aside my caution this week, given the huge discrepancy that exists between what the Secretary of State announced and the true context.

That context emerged this week as Oregon Health Authority (OHA) officials appeared before a Joint Ways and Means Subcommittee to provide a report on the Medicaid eligibility issue.

The history is this. When the Cover Oregon health insurance exchange collapsed, Health Authority officials were left with a huge task – to determine how many individuals supposedly covered by Cover Oregon were eligible for Medicaid, the cooperative health care entitlement system for low income individuals financed jointly by the federal and state governments.

They also faced a legal requirement to review eligibility at least once a year because, unlike Medicare and Social Security, Medicaid is a “dynamic” program, meaning recipients cycle on and off based on their income, as well as family status.

The rigorous eligibility determination process – sometimes called re-determination — is still under way and will be completed by August 31, according to what Oregon Health Authority officials told the Joint Ways and Means Subcommittee.

It is possible that a total of 32,000 Oregonians might have received payments in error. That won’t be known until the end of the determination (re-determination) process in late summer. That total is part of a 115,000 person backlog of re-determination issues that is proceeding apace, with an estimated an estimated 6,200 cases resolved each day.

The size of federal Medicaid matching funds is an interesting sub-issue here. For those citizens who are in the so-called “expanded Medicaid population” (newly and potentially eligible for Medicaid under the more liberal standards of the federal Affordable Health Care Act), then the federal government bears 94 per cent of the cost of their care. That is way above the normal federal Medicaid matching rate for Oregon – 64 per cent.

Another issue that arose in the Secretary of State audit alert dealt with whether there had been coordination between the federal agency responsible for Medicaid, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and OHA. The Secretary of State contended that such coordination did not occur.

The fact is that it did. State and federal officials have been meeting at least weekly – by phone conference, of course — to share updates on the Medicaid eligibility determination process. Further, the federal government has approved Oregon’s process by granting additional waivers.

In its report on the Joint Ways and Means Subcommittee hearing, Salem Statesman-Journal newspaper quoted subcommittee member Senator Sara Gelser, a Democrat from Corvallis, as saying this:

“I think that we can and should expect of our Secretary of State to send out information that is accurate, that is honest. I expect more. I can’t begin to imagine the amount of work this has caused by sending out an alert that clearly has some faulty and inaccurate information.”

The Secretary of State has a role to play in all of this – to audit state agency programs – and it is a worthwhile endeavor. But the clarity gets very clouded when the office overstates the reality of a problem.

As the legislature drives toward the finish line a month or so from now, one of the issues at stake here is an important one. It is whether to approve taxes on hospitals and health insurances to help finance Medicaid.

Principals from hospitals and insurers are negotiating the tax issues, which are likely to occur if only because the health of so many low income Oregonians is at stake.

But the Secretary of State’s audit alert made the tax agreement much more difficult. The Oregon Health Authority appearance before the Joint Ways and Means Subcommittee did a lot to set the record straight.

Footnote: It should be noted that Lynne Saxton, director of the Health Authority, is a good friend. We have known each other for years and have worked together on a number of important public policy issues. My friendship did not influence this blog: I was interested in dealing with competing views of a major public policy issue for Oregon.

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 department, one of two I control as director, is open again. It was open last week, too, but there have been a lot of good quotes recently, so are a few.

Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ): “Maybe the 70-year-old president is too old to change, and Americans must simply accept his chaotic, unpredictable, impulsive nature. But if Mr. Trump can’t recognize he’s the cause of the turmoil, he risks creating a hard cap on his approval ratings in the low 40s or high 30s. This will drain his power, make it difficult to achieve his agenda, and turn him into a lame duck well before normal. If Mr. Trump can’t change his ways, he will fail the people who entrusted him with their hopes.

“This presidency has reached a critical moment. For months, true-blue Trump supporters grimaced at tweets and winced at needless controversies, but stood firm. Now many are questioning whether their man is up to the job. Mr. Trump will not restore their confidence with the behavior he’s shown so far.

“Americans want a president who is steadier, humbler, better disciplined, more honest and fully engaged on creating jobs, paychecks and prosperity—the issues that got Mr. Trump to the White House. The clock is running. Either he changes or he fails.”

Comment: Rove, with his substantial Washington, D.C. experience, is accurate again. Either President Trump changes or he will fail. So, failure is likely; change is not.

Daniel Henninger in the WSJ: “After the past two weeks, one must ask: How many parallel universes can the U.S. political system endure?

“Let us enumerate the celestial bodies traveling along independent orbits just now: Donald Trump, Sean Spicer, the Beltway press chorus, the White House’s Borgia factions, 2018’s at-risk congressional Republicans, the Schumer Democrats, the mosquito clouds of social media, and the various people working in what little exists so far of the Trump government.

“One more parallel universe deserves mention: the Trump vote, which decided the 2016 election. Oh, them.”

Comment: Whether you voted for Trump or not, it is hard for all of us to watch the travails of the president as he scrambles around to stem controversies of his own making. I say that with an assurance that I wish the best for America, which is near impossible with Trump at the helm.

Dorothy Rabinowitz in a WSJ Review of television program, Bannon’s War: “The subject of this documentary has never yielded in his regard for the infliction of shock and chaos as a political tactic, according to the commentators, mainly journalists, assembled for ‘Bannon’s War,’ a ‘Frontline’ film on the life and career of Steve Bannon. It’s a perception regularly echoed in this telling portrait of the adviser primarily responsible for shaping Donald Trump’s message for most of the presidential campaign—and the one delivered in President Trump’s memorably dark inaugural address.”

Comment: The upcoming documentary could explain a lot, confirming that Bannon, who has had the ear of the president for months, focuses on “shock and chaos” as means to a political end. Trump’s strange and foreboding inaugural address was only the first step down a dark path. If Bannon is now moving to the background, good.

Too much to expect, I know, but wouldn’t it be a breath of fresh air if sound arguments on policy – health care, taxes infrastructure, international relations – could dominate our political debate?

Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post: “Invariably, the president contradicts statements from his communications team and other officials, and blurts the truth. As counterintuitive as it seems, Trump is a truth-teller among spinmeisters.”

Comment: An interesting thought from Parker, but I disagree. Suggesting that Trump tells the truth does not square with the facts. Most of the time his huge ego takes over and blurts out what could be called “alternative facts,” certainly not truth.

From the editorial columns of the Oregonian newspaper: “The federal government pays by far the larger share of Medicaid costs, but Oregon still shoulders millions in reimbursements. Will money need to be paid back? To whom and by whom? As those questions are parsed, the Oregon Health Authority must accurately portray its financial commitments to the Legislature, awash in spreadsheets that detail money in, money out. Let this be the last headache in the state’s Cover Oregon hangover, a record-keeping mess deepened by the explosion in the number of Medicaid enrollees under Obamacare.”

Comment: This issue – inaccurate Medicaid payments – is becoming bigger by the moment. In this editorial, Secretary of State Dennis Richardson takes credit for unearthing the issue by way of his state agency audit function. Perhaps. But the Oregonian is also right to paint this as one of the last hangovers from the Cover Oregon scandal. Still, getting past this issue with an accurate summary of the real costs is a challenge for the Oregon Health Authority and its very capable director, Lynne Saxton.

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.

After writing about Donald Trump yesterday, I couldn’t help doing so again, despite my post far away from the Washington, D.C. beltway.

I have come to a basic conclusion about Donald Trump, one that struck me first a few months ago and now has been confirmed by recent events.

It is this – and it won’t be surprising to many who follow national affairs of state.

Trump is an egotistical narcissist (perhaps a redundancy). He will do and say anything to aggrandize himself.

I was talking about this on the golf range the other day when a friend of mine raised the subject. He said he thought Trump was the victim of Democrats out to get him in much the same way Republicans were out to get Barack Obama when they said, “let’s make him a one-term president.”

Trump would be successful, this friend said, if only Democrats would leave him alone.

I responded that, no, Trump was his own worst enemy, jeopardizing his chances to succeed in such issues as growing the economy, reforming the tax system and making sense out of health care policy.

Then, one of my favorite columnists, Kathleen Parker, who writes for the Washington Post, came to another conclusion, one with which I disagree.

“One thing we’ve learned the past several weeks is to ignore the White House and wait for Donald Trump to spill the beans,” she wrote in the Post. “Invariably, the president contradicts statements from his communication team and other officials, and blurts the truth. As counterintuitive as it seems, Trump is a truth-teller among spinmeisters.”

For me, that is giving Trump far too much credit.

Truth is not a criterion for his behavior.

What explains him is his unbelievable desire to be the central figure in everything.

Call him a narcissist.

The dictionary defines the term this way:

“Inordinate fascination with oneself. Excessive self-love. Vanity. Gratification derived from administration of one’s own physical or mental attributes.”

Sound like Trump?

Imagine him in the Oval Office with the two recent Russian visitors. Rather than do what smart presidents would so, which is to guard sensitive intelligence material, Trump puts himself at the center of everything by trying to impress his visitors with his grasp of intelligence information.

As Kathleen Parker put it: “…his odd boast to the Russians that he ‘gets credit intel” – I have people brief me on great intel everyday’ – seemed more like showing off than a serious discussion of mutual security concerns.”

On another issue, his staff (by the way, no doubt one of the worst jobs in the history of political Washington, D.C.) provides a credible explanation for the decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. They said he relied on a well-written memorandum from the deputy director of the Department of Justice, Rod Rosenstein, which made a compelling case that Comey had violated a number of well-understood and venerable department protocols.

But, Trump could not stand it. Rather, he said HE had planned to fire Comey all along and had not relied on the Rosenstein memo.

Again, Trump had to be the pivot around which everything else spun.

Narcissism is, or at least could be, a very serious fault for any president, especially as this one heads overseas for his first international trip as president.

Not just on this trip, but, in general, with his finger on the nuclear trigger, it is easy, unfortunately, to imagine Trump doing the unthinkable, which is to plunge the United States into another war because someone has made the mistake of offending him, the egotistical narcissist.

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.

What gives me status to write about President Donald Trump, you might say, after you read this blog? After all, I live in Salem Oregon, not Washington, D.C., so I do not have an up-close-and-personal view of national politics.

I have no status, but, for what it’s worth, I do pay close attention to national issues as I read the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times each day.

Does that provide status? Perhaps not, but I commented often as Donald Trump ran for and won the presidency, worrying that, perhaps in an overstatement, he came across a lot like what Hitler must have been in Germany of the 1930s. Trump, railed against the down economy and said only he could produce a recovery. He also criticized almost everyone, save for himself, the savior.

Recent processes with Trump – some call them missteps – underline basic questions about this most unpredictable of presidents, a question that began emerging in the campaign and now shows up full throttle in office.

• Is Trump the savior of a post-conventional truth in politics as he rallies the U.S. to his view of its place in the world.
• Or, is he always the smartest person in the room who leads the country to be, as he might say, “all it can be because of me…just like Hitler in pre-World War II Germany?
• Or, is he absolutely stupid without any real, down-to-earth knowledge of what he is doing in the nation’s highest political office, thus risking the security of the United States?

For my part, I vote for the latter, though there are evidences that the answer to all three questions could be yes.

The most recent example was the stupidity of Trump’s action to divulge sensitive intelligence material – gathered, it has been reported lately, from Israel – in his meetings with two high-level Russian officials. As president, Trump may aver that he has the right to talk about anything, including sensitive intelligence information, but it is easy to imagine him trying, as an egotist, to impress his Russian visitors with his grasp of inside information on terrorism.

The fact is that Trump, blowhard that he is, cannot be trusted to hear and keep sensitive national security information. To satisfy his narcissism, he will tend to blurt out information he is supposed to hold close.

With Trump, it is always me first, me most, and me at the center.

In the case of Trump firing FBI Director James Comey, Comey may have deserved it after a checkered list of recent missteps in one of the nation’s top law enforcement jobs. The word “one” is in bold to indicate that Comey should not have acted as an independent agent. His position reports to superiors at the Department of Justice…whether Comey liked it or not.

But Trump botched the firing, too, giving aid and comfort to his opponents, especially in Congress.

After his staff pointed to a well-written memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that made the case it was time for Comey to go, Trump reverted to the me-first attitude. He said, no, the Rosenstein memo had nothing to do with his decision, one he said he intended to make all along on his own.

The trouble with his contention was that it underscored the possibility that Trump was firing Comey to stall or stop the investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election, an investigation that could reach to Trump’s campaign or to the Oval Office itself. The investigation gained even more momentum when Trump, before the firing, was reported to have asked Comey to stop the investigation into former Trump aide Michael Flynn. Trump also said he had tapes of meetings with Comey, a tale that recalled to mind the Watergate tapes.

The fact that Trump’s action to fire Comey produced the reverse spin effect – the intent to investigate Russian entanglements in the U.S., even those that could reach to Trump himself, gained more steam.

Wall Street Journal editorial writers put it this way this morning:

“The state of the Trump Presidency has been perpetual turbulence, which seems to be how the principal likes it. The latest vortex is over Mr. Trump’s disclosure of sensitive intel to the Russians—and whatever the particulars of the incident, the danger is that Presidencies can withstand only so much turbulence before they come apart.”

What’s at stake in all of this? A lot.

Trump is already perilously close to losing Republicans he will need to pass his health care and tax reform agendas. As the Wall Street Journal wrote, “Weeks of pointless melodrama and undisciplined comments have depleted public and Capitol Hill attention from health care and tax reform, and exhaustion is setting in.”

But beyond “just” Republicans, it appears he is perilously close to losing support from the general public, especially with polling numbers sliding down past a 40 per cent approval rating.

We need top quality persons in the nation’s top job and we don’t get it with Trump, even as the chorus grows that he needs to be impeached.

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.

Every time you turn around, you see President Donald Trump doing or saying something that generates headlines, usually ones that detract from what should be his main agenda – helping the private sector create jobs and boost the economy.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Capital Journal columnist Gerald Seib put it very well:

“Most people prefer to avoid controversy. Donald Trump seeks it out.

“Indeed, it sometimes seems that, if a controversy isn’t roiling, he works to create one and then stoke it. Sometimes this is to change the subject to one he prefers, sometimes to distract attention from the last controversy he wants to move beyond.

“It’s an approach mostly foreign to the worlds of politics and governance, which is exactly what his supporters like about it. Somehow it worked for Mr. Trump as a presidential candidate. We are watching a live experiment in whether it can work as president. Chances are it will always be thus.”

To put it mildly, Trump ran an unconventional campaign to win the presidency. The very fact of that approach drove many Americans to vote for him because they said they had enough of political convention.

The latest Trump feint occurred when he was reported to have revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week. Some U.S. officials said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.

According to a Washington Post story, “the information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.

“The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said that Trump’s decision to do so risks cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and National Security Agency.”

In the Washington Post, Stephen Strasbourg said the action was a “picture not so much of conspiracy or malevoleance, but unfathomable carelessness.”

One of the biggest risks is that Trump doesn’t even understand the tension of U.S. intelligence sources and resources, so, speaking on the fly with Russians he wants to impress them with his own access to detail, thus revealing information that should be confidential.

“I get great intel,” he told the Russians. “I have people brief me on great intel every day.”

As president, Trump has broad authority to declassify government secrets, so it is unlikely his disclosures broke the law. Still, they were stupid, if not worse, by compromising the U.S. international position.

His decision to fire FBI Director James Comey also appeared to divert focus on such issues in Congress as reforming health care and redesigning the country’s tax system. If you look at this situation dispassionately, it stood to reason that Comey should go because he failed to understand his role as part of a national law enforcement bureaucracy, not an independent actor. Reasons to fire him were very well laid out by Deputy U.S. AG Ron Rosenstein in a credible memorandum.

For Trump, the risk is that he compromises his own agenda or at least what, to his supporters, should be his main agenda — to grow the national economy.

If Trump thought about it, it might be assumed he would stay on track and on message. Perhaps he doesn’t think. He just acts in accord with his own egotism.

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.

Remember that old saw?

Never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel.

As you consider the words in this admonition, they fit more in the days when printing newspapers was still the order of the day and the Internet, if it existed, was only in its infancy.

But, the message behind the admonition was worth heeding in the old days, just as it is worth heeding today.

Smart operatives who deal with the media try to avoid becoming part of the story. They don’t want the process of dealing with the media to outweigh the basic messages.

Consider the difference today, especially in respect to the Trump Administration (even if that word, administration, conveys a sense of order and discipline, which might not apply to the Trump presidency.)

Trump chooses to rail against the media and, thus, becomes part of the story or even the story itself.

Consider this excerpt from a column by Karl Rove that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

“On his 100th day in office, he (Trump) brought a huge crowd in Harrisburg, Pa., to its feet by attacking CNN and MSNBC for ‘fake news’ and charging that ‘the totally failing New York Times’ was run by ‘incompetent, dishonest people.’

“That same night, members of the White House Correspondents’ Association, in gowns and tuxedos, applauded at their annual dinner as the organization’s president rebuked Mr. Trump. ‘We are not ‘fake news,’ ‘ Jeff Mason of Reuters proclaimed. ‘We are not failing news organizations.’

“How wise was it for Mr. Trump to open his Pennsylvania speech by assaulting the media? Axios reported that West Wing officials ‘conceived of a split-screen effect’ for the event, with ‘Trump in full-blown nationalist populist mode, connecting viscerally with ‘forgotten’ Rust Belt Americans, while the other side of the picture showed elite Washington reporters dining in elegance.

“But spending his first 11 minutes attacking the press prevented Mr. Trump from focusing on what he’s doing to create jobs and fatten paychecks. Which do Mr. Trump’s ‘forgotten Americans’ care about more—his attacks on the press, or their own prosperity? Trashing the Times may keep his core supporters energized, but it does almost nothing to expand his appeal.”

Or, consider Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, who almost inevitably becomes part of the story, even as recent reports suggest that Trump may fire him. This from Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple in his “Daily Spicer” report:

“Many briefings with White House press secretary Sean Spicer seem like watershed moments. Like the first one, where he lectured the media about its reporting on inaugural crowds; like the one where he bolted as reporters yelled, ‘SEAN!!!!!’; like the one where he messed up his Holocaust history; like the one where he instructed reporter April Ryan how to carry herself during the Q-and-A session; like the one where he struggled to defend a tweet by his boss, which covers just about the rest of the sessions.”

Rove, the often-controversial political operative for the George Bush Administration, makes a good point above. Trump didn’t avoid arguing with the media because it buys ink by the barrel. He did just the opposite. He went after the media with both barrels and, thus, became “the story,” instead of being able to focus on his efforts to create jobs and boost the economy, both of which are still in the nascent stage.

To be sure, Trump might say he is diverting the media from being more aggressive in covering his actual work as president and, on occasion, he may be right.

But, Rove called the 100^tth day episode a missed opportunity for Trump.

Trump appears routinely to deal in missed opportunities.

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.

To refresh your memory, I am the director of the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering and I enjoy complete authority over how the Department runs.

In that way, I guess I resemble fired FBI Director James Comey who appeared to believe that he reported to no one and was responsible only to himself. Beyond that, there are no comparisons between me and the now-departed director.

Here, then, are new quotes worth remembering.

FROM WALL STREET JOURNAL (WSJ) EDITORIAL WRITERS: The various Russia probes will continue with even more vigor. Acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, a Comey loyalist, told Congress this week that he has seen no attempt to interfere with its investigation. He said the FBI has ample resources for the job and that he wasn’t aware of a request by Mr. Comey for more. This contradicted another media report.

If Mr. Trump hoped to cover something up, sacking the FBI director is exactly the wrong way to do it. Every G-man with a mediocre lead will leak if he thinks politicians are trying to sit on evidence. The next FBI director will be watched like a Russian agent for any hint of political favoritism. The House and Senate intelligence committees have also been given new impetus for thorough investigations.

COMMENT: I agree. Even if Comey deserved to be fired for failing to understand that he was not a free agent, all Trump’s firing did was to give new emphasis to the investigation of alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.

AND THIS ALSO FROM THE WSJ: The main source of dysfunction is the man at the top. The President is his own worst enemy—impulsive, thin-skinned, undisciplined, by now readers know the story. Every time his supporters think he might finally be appreciating the weight of the job, or the gravity of a President’s words, he goes on a Twitter rant.

Rather than focus on his agenda, he keeps the Russia pot boiling by railing against critics. Health care—what’s that? He faults his communications team for mistakes, but they are usually based on incomplete information or an attempt to clean up the boss’s effusions.

Mr. Trump has assembled many able advisers and officials who are trying to serve the country and steer the mercurial President from his own worst instincts. If Mr. Trump won’t heed their counsel, he really will turn into Jimmy Carter.

COMMENT: No more neesd to be said than that Trump is his own worst enemy. Everything he does seems to detract from a job-creating agenda, which ought to be a top priority for America.

DANIEL HENNINER IN THE WSJ: No one outside Washington should be misled by the choruses calling for an “independent” prosecutor. This is special pleading.

For the political class it relieves them of responsibility for policing their own neighborhood. The media likes these prosecutors because they become Inspector Javerts, melodramatically chasing their targets for years, more often than not destroying reputations. The Justice Department’s guidelines make clear these special prosecutors are accountable to virtually no one. They don’t produce justice; they endanger it.

COMMENT: Given how past independent prosecutors have performed – emphasis on that word, performed – the last thing we need is to appoint another one. We ought to use existing channels, including in Congress, to get to the bottom of the Russian deal – or to determine, in fact, if there is a bottom.

FROM OREGON EDITORIAL WRITERS ON CHANGES IN OREGON’S TAX SYSTEM: If enacted at the level Warner (Paul Warner, the state’s chief revenue officer) described, a gross receipts tax, along with the elimination of the current corporate income tax and a slight lowering of personal income tax levels, would combine to raise $637 million of net revenue for the state in the next budget cycle.

Such a tax plan is one of several ways lawmakers are looking to close the state’s $1.6 billion budget shortfall for the coming two years. They’re also considering spending cuts and taxes on health care providers.

COMMENT: It would have been good if leaders in Salem had moved more quickly to devise a tax and spend deal – increasing certain taxes and cutting certain spending. It’s nearly too late to do so now, given the inevitable controversy over both parts of the equation.

FROM AN OREGONIAN NEWSPAPER STORY ON HEALTH CARE TAXES: The governor also sounded optimistic in a statement Thursday. “While there is still work to be done, I am optimistic about the progress we’ve made in the last few weeks with legislative leaders and stakeholders to find a solution that ensures quality health care continues across our state,” Brown said.

Solving the $882 million shortfall in the Oregon Health Authority budget is key to closing the $1.6 billion hole in the next two-year general fund budget. In April, top Democrat budget writers warned they would have to throw 350,000 low-income Oregonians off Medicaid and cut a number of other vital programs unless the Legislature raises $575 million in new revenue.

COMMENT: On this subject, one of the main challenges will be, once the taxes have been imposed and revenue collected, to assure that the money actually is devoted to health care and not siphoned off to other programs. Siphoning has occurred since the health care taxes were first imposed in 2003.

FROM COLUMNIST DANA MILBANK IN THE WASHINGTON POST: The very same president (Donald Trump) registered the approval of just 36 per cent of the country in a new Quinnipiac University poll. When Americans were asked to volunteer a word that comes to mind when they think of Trump, the top answer was “idiot.”

COMMENT: I am not a fan of Milbank because he only values the left, but his report on the Quinnipac poll is interesting. If I was polled about Trump, I might not say idiot. Perhaps buffoon, egotist, self-absorbed. Or many 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.

Even as many of us reckon with the U.S. House of Representatives’ action to replace parts of ObamaCare and pending action in the U.S. Senate, it is important to recognize that health care is like a number of other public policy issues these days:

• If you make policy decisions on the facts and statistics from a dispassionate point of view, you might get one result – or, more accurately, a series of results.
• If you make policy decisions based on anecdotes, you might get far different results.

It’s easy to say that my view is that public policy decisions should be made on the basis of facts, not anecdotes. But, based on my 40 years of work on public policy, not to mention my observation of the current health care debate in Congress, that is not the way the world works. And, in the spirit of full disclosure in my long tenure as a state lobbyist, I often turned to anecdotes to make a client’s point.

Anecdotes often carry the day.

Here’s the way the Wall Street Journal put it in relation to House passage of what is coming to be called TrumpCare, even as the Senate began debating how to respond:

“The Trump Administration and the GOP have to be prepared for the communication strategy their opponents are already employing, with the media’s help: The bombardment of emotionally laden anecdotes. Already Republicans are making the same mistake they always do, which is to rest their case on impersonal facts and figures.

“Facts are the background noise of debate and analysis; anecdotes are a message’s most powerful anchors. In the battle for public opinion, personal stories win. So what if ObamaCare is woefully undersubscribed because it’s a bad deal for young, healthy people, or if millions have watched their deductibles skyrocket and choices narrow? Do you really want Paula, Namir, Cameron and Jason to die (a reference to specific case studies involving names)?”

Consider the issue of pre-existing conditions. From an insurance standpoint, those who have such conditions should pay more to be insured than those with lower risks. Otherwise, a portion of the burden for pre-existing condition care falls on the rest of us.

A key tenet of insurance is to assess the level of risk and establish premiums in response to the risk. The higher the risk the higher the payment.

But, mark my words, Congress and the Administration, if they finally, pass a new health care plan, will decide pre-existing condition policy on the basis of anecdotes, not neutral facts.

Look no farther what comedian, Jimmy Kimmel, said on TV the other day, which almost immediately went viral via the Internet:

“If you were born with congenital heart disease like my son was, there was a good chance you’d never be able to get health insurance because you had a pre-existing condition. If your parents didn’t have medical insurance, you might not live long enough to even get denied because of a pre-existing condition.”

Using neutral facts, one way to deal with pre-existing conditions is to create high-risk pools, which more than 30 states have done and which are included in the House-passed version of TrumpCare. It is true that some of these high-risk pools have not worked well, or at least have encountered very high costs which threaten their financial viability. But they also represent a worthy option to deal with a tough issue.

For me, the fact that anecdotes are driving health care policy underlines an important prediction: Before long, we’ll have a single payer system and government will be that payer.

One of favorite columnists, Charles Krauthammer, has reached the same conclusion and says in regard to U.S. House action on TrumpCare: “Ironically, ObamaCare won the day. I think what conservatives and Republicans are beginning to understand is how the fundamental view of health care among the American people has changed.

“ObamaCare is a disaster on the ground, and, politically, it ruined the Democrats. However, there’s an irony and a hidden victory here: Over these past seven years, people’s expectations have changed. You watched the debate over the last three months. What are the grounds? The grounds are all liberal grounds: How many people are going to lose their coverage? How can you leave people out in the cold? The Jimmy Kimmel thing. It’s showing that the country is at a point where I think it believes in universal coverage.”

So, I say, bring on the anecdote-driven single payer system and, then, we’ll have to decide how to pay 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.

I worked as a media and public relations executive during a time when there was an important and telling phrase:

Don’t argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel.

As you consider the words in this admonition, it fits more in the days when printing newspapers was still the order of the day and the Internet, if it existed, was only in its infancy. One reason I remember this old saw is that I am old enough to do so.

But, the message behind the admonition was worth heeding in the old days, just as it is worth heeding today.

When I served as a media spokesman for government or private interests, I tried to avoid becoming part of the story. I didn’t want the process of dealing with the media to outweigh the basic messages I was conveying. And, surely, I didn’t want to argue with reporters or editors because, to get back to the old saw, they could “buy ink by the barrel.”

Consider the difference today, especially in respect to the Trump Administration (even if that word, which conveys a sense of order and discipline, might not apply to the Trump presidency.)

Trump chooses to rail against the media and, thus, becomes part of the story or even the story itself.

Consider this excerpt from a column by Karl Rove that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

“On his 100th day in office, he (Trump) brought a huge crowd in Harrisburg, Pa., to its feet by attacking CNN and MSNBC for ‘fake news and charging that ‘the totally failing New York Times’ was run by ‘incompetent, dishonest people.’

“That same night, members of the White House Correspondents’ Association, in gowns and tuxedos, applauded at their annual dinner as the organization’s president rebuked Mr. Trump. ‘We are not ‘fake news,’ ‘ Jeff Mason of Reuters proclaimed. ‘We are not failing news organizations.’

“How wise was it for Mr. Trump to open his Pennsylvania speech by assaulting the media? Axios reported that West Wing officials ‘conceived of a split-screen effect’ for the event, with ‘Trump in full-blown nationalist populist mode, connecting viscerally with ‘forgotten’ Rust Belt Americans, while the other side of the picture showed elite Washington reporters dining in elegance.

“But spending his first 11 minutes attacking the press prevented Mr. Trump from focusing on what he’s doing to create jobs and fatten paychecks. Which do Mr. Trump’s ‘forgotten Americans’ care about more—his attacks on the press, or their own prosperity? Trashing the Times may keep his core supporters energized, but it does almost nothing to expand his appeal.”

Or, consider Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, who makes a habit of taking on the media, thus diminishing messages about the Trump Administration (there’s that word again!). Washington Post reporter Erik Wemple, has taken to publishing a daily “Spicer Report,” which quotes Spicer as a way of mocking his performance.

Here’s Wemple’s most recent summary:

“Many briefings with White House press secretary Sean Spicer seem like watershed moments. Like the first one, where he lectured the media about its reporting on inaugural crowds; like the one where he bolted as reporters yelled, ‘SEAN!!!!!’; like the one where he messed up his Holocaust history; like the one where he instructed reporter April Ryan how to carry herself during the Q-and-A session; like the one where he struggled to defend a tweet by his boss, which covers just about the rest of the sessions.”

Back to Rove. He makes a good point. Rather than avoid arguing with the media because it buys ink by the barrel, Trump did the opposite. He went after the media with both barrels and, thus, became “the story,” rather than being able to focus on his efforts to create jobs and boost the economy.

Rove, who has experience in the White House with President George Bush, called this a missed opportunity for Trump.

But, then again, Trump appears to deal in missed opportunities, especially when it comes to enabling a JOBS message to set at least part of the nation’s political agenda.