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.

In one of my recent blogs, I wrote that, in trying to understand national politics from my home in Oregon, I often reviewed various newspapers, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

With those papers, I would tend to get, respectively, the left and the right.

This was absolutely true this week as the Times wrote an editorial lauding the health care compromise work being done by Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray. Perhaps predictably, the Journal slammed the work as not being balanced between Republican and Democrat aims.

Go no further than these two paragraphs:

From the New York Times: “…the Alexander-Murray deal represents real progress. These two no-nonsense lawmakers — the leading Republican and Democrat on the Senate health committee — have done yeoman’s work trying to fix a mess created largely by Mr. Trump. Their bill would appropriate money for payments to insurance companies that the president said he was stopping last week. He said they amounted to an illegal corporate bailout — a blatant lie. These payments, authorized by the A.C.A., or Obamacare, compensate insurers for lowering the deductibles and co-payments for low-income families. Further, Mr. Alexander and Ms. Murray would require the administration to spend $106 million on advertising and on people to help people sign up for insurance when open enrollment begins on Nov. 1. Mr. Trump’s minions at the Department of Health and Human Services slashed spending on outreach efforts in recent months.

From the Wall Street Journal: “How does Washington define “bipartisan”? We are about to find out if it means that Republicans surrender to everything Democrats want, or if it means a genuine trade of policy priorities in which both sides get something and the country benefits.

“That’s the question to ask about this week’s deal between Republican Lamar Alexander and Democrat Patty Murray to appropriate two years of funding for Obama Care’s ‘cost-sharing’ reductions that flow to insurers. The Trump Administration last week cut off these subsidies, which the Obama Administration paid without an appropriation from Congress. A federal judge ruled last year that those payments are illegal. Democrats would also get about $100 million for advertising ObamaCare.

“In sum, Democrats get what they care most about in politics: More to spend. And the structure of ObamaCare survives.”

So, which is the right view – the Times or the Journal?

Who knows, but probably neither.

One fact is that, if legislators in Oregon or Members of Congress in Washington, D.C., try to find middle ground, the first proposal out of the box rarely is the final word.

Other than the drafters propose amendments in one direction or the other. In this case in D.C., President Donald Trump, who wouldn’t know a good health care bill if he saw it, went both ways. First, he said he would support the effort, lauding both Alexander and Murray. A day or so later, he said, no, the effort wasn’t worth anything and he would oppose it.

I hope reasonable elected officials on both the right and the left – yes, there are a few remaining – will work hard to find the best middle ground on health care. I believe it exists. In many ways, I care less about the details and more about the process that produces a result.

We – and they – are facing a checkered history. First, President Barack Obama worked only with Democrats to enact a new federal entitlement, which has been almost impossible to remove or limit. Then, more recently, Republicans worked only with themselves to proposing repealing and replacing ObamaCare.

Neither effort represented good public policy. Perhaps Alexander and Murray can revise their first effort to gather the requisite number of votes and move this country forward on heath care.