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 Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering opens again today – remember, I am its director – I focus this time on quotes from one my favorite columnists Peggy Noonan who writes for the Wall Street Journal.

She has an ability, with well-chosen words, to capture the moods of the country better than mosst prognosticators today.

Today, in the first quote, Noonan is again exactly on point in her reflections on the failure of Congress to do anything about ObamaCare.  Once an entitlement is in place, it is almost impossible to do anything about it.

If the debate initially was about creating an entitlement, then so be it.  But it was not.  It was about health care reform.  The trouble was that Democrats initially passed ObamaCare about seven years ago with so much federal money involved that it is now impossible to make any change.

From Noonan:  “It is true that a central dynamic of the failure was the truism that once people are given an entitlement, they aren’t keen to see it taken away.”

More from Noonan:  “As for Mr. Trump, the first six months of his presidency suggest many things, including that what made him is thwarting him.

“He is a man alone, independent and ungoverned. He freelances, not because circumstances dictate it, but because he is by nature a freelancer. He doesn’t want to be enmeshed in an institution, he doesn’t want to have to bolster and defend it and see to its life. He wants to preserve his freedom—to tweet, to pop off, to play it this way or that.

“One of the interesting things about his New York Times interview this week was that he met with the reporters alone save for his aide Hope Hicks. Afterward members of his own White House reportedly had to scramble to get tapes so they’d know what the boss said.

“But presidential leadership involves being to some degree an institution man, upholding not only a presidency but a government, even its other branches. He doesn’t understand this. In any case he doesn’t do it. It is all a personal drama. This aspect of his nature will probably make further legislative failures inevitable. In time, though no one in the White House seems to fear this, it will lead to his diminished support. His supporters will likely never hate him, and won’t be severely disillusioned because they weren’t all that illusioned.

“They’ll probably always appreciate him for blasting open the system and saving them from normality—i.e., the dumb, going-through-the-motions cynicism of Washington. They are sympathetic because of everything he is up against—every established power center in Washington—with no one behind him but his original supporters.”

Comment: In a few words, Noonan captures President Donald Trump, the person who believes everything revolves around him and insatiable ego. It appears he cares about no one but himself – not his staff, not those who elected him, not Republicans who might want to support him and, of course, Democrats who want to impeach him.

Still more from Noonan:  “As for health care, Senator John McCain, recovering from surgery, had it right: ‘One of the major problems with Obamacare was that it was written on a strict party-line basis and driven through Congress without a single Republican vote. As this law continues to crumble in Arizona and states across the country, we must not repeat the original mistakes that led to Obamacare’s failure.’

“Congress, he said, must return to regular order, hold hearings, work across party lines, ‘and heed the recommendations of our nation’s governors.’

“Is there any legitimate hope of a bi-partisan solution? It can be fairly argued, as Jim Geraghty does in National Review, that a Democratic Party that relentlessly lied to pass ObamaCare—you can keep your plan, you can keep your doctor, premiums will go down—is unlikely to consider conservative reform ideas in good faith.

Comment: Health care reform proposals with a chance to pass must come from both sides out of a commitment by those involved to sit down, across the room from each other, and hammer out what has so far not been possible – a middle ground compromise. To date, both Democrats and Republicans deserve criticism for their failure to do the deed of reform.

Not one side. Both sides.