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.

If you read Daniel Henninger’s most recent column, excerpts of which are reprinted below, you may be able to guess that Henninger, deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, is one of my favorite columnists writing today.

His latest contention: America’s political apparatus is steadily disconnecting from reality.

Politics is no longer about what elected officials can do to benefit the public or their own constituents. Nor is it about solving pressing societal problems.  Rather, it has become a series of end-game strategies where one sides seeks to embarrass the other. The motive is just that – embarrass the other side. Plus, the effect if this is aggravated because politicians are always running for office, not focusing on governing.

For me, all of this is a sea change from when I started as a lobbyist more than 25 years ago.  Back then, the objective of elected officials was to do a good job of doing the public’s business.

Here are excerpts from Henninger’s recent column: “Street politics has become the politics du jour. Groups form constantly in the street to chant slogans. America’s campuses live amid perpetual protest.”

To Henninger, the phenomenon that enables politics without purpose is the Internet. It is the organizing tool for fanatics on the right and left, including the nut-ball, Alex Fields, Jr., who drove into the crowd in Charlottesville, killing one person who won’t be the last casualty.

Henninger adds: “Fields makes me think of the lone-wolf jihadists here and in Europe who explode out of the general population in a homicidal rage. These are people who sit endlessly in front of a computer screen, brainwashing themselves with online propaganda until they snap to make a ‘political statement.’

“The Internet—websites, social media, message boards—is elevating political paranoia and delegitimizing normal politics.”

Henninger is right, but I also like what a letter to the editor writer said in the Wall Street Journal this week. “The reason these groups (white supremacists, etc.) need to bus people in from other states is because most of us wouldn’t waste our time participating.”

Kudos to the writer. I hope that the politics of division and hate doesn’t become the norm. Leave the fringes to those who like fringes as they try to grab headlines.

It is up to us, as voters, to elect persons who will return to what should be the main objective of politics – to find the smart middle on the issues that face us.

Rarely is the solution to any pressing problem found at the extremes. So, I say, don’t ignore Charlottesville or other right and left extremes, but learn from them and seek a more reasonable and reasoned future.