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.

Campaigning for office is not the same as governing once in office.

Often, this notion for me has focused on the tendency toward the permanent campaign. Members of Congress, as well as Oregon legislators, appear always to be running for election. Nearly every action they take results in a news release touting their credentials with an eye toward the next election.

They don’t spend nearly as much time or effort governing.

The same can be said as Republicans in Congress have announced defeat of their bid to repeal and replace ObamaCare after pledging to do so for so long on the campaign trail in the last seven years.

Here is the way the Wall Street Journal’s William Galston put it in a column that ran in the WSJ yesterday:

“Campaigning is one thing, governing another. Opposing is not the same as legislating. Republicans had seven years to coalesce around a replacement for Obama Care, and they wasted them. The bill they passed in 2015 was for show; they knew that President Obama would veto it and that they would not have to take responsibility for its consequences. Republicans are a majority party, but they have yet to prove that they are a governing party.”

In my view, both Democrats and Republicans deserve criticism for the way they have handled health care policy issues.

First, seven years ago, Democrats, with Barack Obama in office as president, jammed what came to called ObamaCare down the throats of minority Republicans. ObamaCare did not get one Republican vote.

At least you could say Democrats had their act together enough to pass a bill. Now, Republicans, for all their talk on various campaign trails, have failed to do the “repeal and replace” deed in Congress.

Is there a way forward now? The easiest answer may be no because it appears Republicans and Democrats hate each other so much they cannot even be in the same room to hash out compromise on any issue. In “one bad turn deserves another,” compromise is anathema to most Members of Congress.

The WSJ’s Galston still holds out hope.

“There is a way forward, and Mr. McConnell (Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader) has pointed to it. Republicans and Democrats could sit down together to negotiate much-needed fixes to ObamaCare’s troubled health-insurance exchanges. With even a modicum of goodwill on both sides, this would not be “Mission: Impossible.”

“Along with bipartisanship, Mr. McConnell should do what he promised—return the Senate to regular order. Explaining his decision to deliver the coup de grâce to the McConnell bill, Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran criticized the ‘closed-door process’ that had produced the bill and called on his party’s leaders to ‘start fresh with an open legislative process.’ I suspect the American people would welcome this shift.”

In all of this, I submit two things are true. First, it is almost impossible to repeal an entitlement once it is in place. Almost every media story or comment from elected officials relates sad stories about who will lose benefits. Policy doesn’t matter. Financial deficits don’t matter.

Second, a single payer system could be on the horizon for the United States, especially if Democrats re-take either the House or the Senate in the mid-term elections. Of course, if they do, they’ll still have to reckon with President Donald Trump, but he probably will be diverted by trying to save his own job because impeachment will be on the minds of many Democrats.