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.

You may know that I currently serve as director of two departments – the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering.

I have just appointed myself to direct, with complete and unfettered authority, a third department.

It is the Department of Too-Strange-To-Believe Developments.

So, as the Department opens for the first time, here are two strange developments.

MERKLEY FOR PRESIDENT: CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

The lead item – one that, for me, would be the lead in every opening of the department – is that Senator Jeff Merkley is thinking of running for U.S. President. Yes, U.S. President!

Now, I think I’ve heard everything, even after having to exist with all sorts of strange goings-on with current President Donald Trump.

CNN actually is reporting that Merkley, the junior senator from Oregon – emphasis on junior — is harboring thoughts of running for the nation’s highest political office.

That this appalls me is based on several years of lobbying Merkley while he served in the Oregon Legislature. I never lobbied a legislator who illustrated more of a “holier-than-thou” approach than Merkley did.

Just as one example, he would never let any of us lobbyists buy him a drink or lunch to talk about the state’s business. He feared we would want something in return.

No. What we wanted – let me say, what “I wanted” — was just consideration for a point-of-view other than his own.

Frankly, it offended me that he thought I – and others like me – would be so low as to expect favors in return for a simple lunch or a drink. All we wanted, in the press of legislative business, was time to talk and share perspectives.

The result was that Merkley didn’t know as much as otherwise could have known about what others thought. His loss.

In Congress, where he serves because he unseated Republican Gordon Smith when he was not favored to do so (a sad result for Oregon), Merkley has continued the “I know more than you do” persona.

Perhaps that is why it apparently crossed his mind that a presidential run is not beyond his reach.

For my part, I hope it is.

WHAT BILL MAHER SAYS

It’s difficult for me to cite this political comedian as a source for anything – given that he is, In fact, a comedian working for laughs — but, down here in Palm Springs where I am writing this, I had nothing better to do than to watch his TV program last night.

And, he said something that strikes me as very true – a strange development in itself as he works, mostly, to skewer folks who have the will to function as conservatives, thus differing with his liberal persona,

What he said was this.

Rather than focusing on the “he said/she said” type of issue in the current scandal over Russia’s alleged involvement in the U.S. election, we should focus instead on the basic question: What did Russia do and how did the country do it?

Better to focus on the issue and ask the question, “Are We Safe?”, than to focus on intrigue and innuendo in a set of developments that continue to capture time and attention in Washington, D.C.

For once, I agree with Maher.