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.

It is time to open the department and – remember – I am the director with full and complete authority to decide what the department will consider and what it won’t consider.

In that way, call me a dictator.

From the Wall Street Journal editorial pages:  “One reason men and women in business are reluctant to go to Washington is the reception accorded Alex Azar Monday after President Trump said he will nominate the former Eli LIlly & Co. executive to lead the Health and Human Services Department.

“Mr. Azar was immediately criticized for, well, knowing too much about health care.

“’It’s a pharma fox to run the HHS henhouse,’ a talking head from Public Citizen told the Washington Post, which headlined the same piece ‘Trump’s pick to lower drug prices is a former pharma executive who raised them.’ It seems that when Mr. Azar was president, Lilly ‘doubled the U.S. list price of its top-selling insulin drug.

“Well, sure, pharma executives are paid by shareholders to make money selling drugs. Profits drive drug innovation, so there wouldn’t be better treatments without profits, which sometimes requires raising prices. Pardon the reality of market economics.”

Comment: Good point. It’s unfortunate that qualifications often don’t matter in public life, especially if the task is to run a major department of government. There is no question but that Azar is qualified. I say good for him, both because he is qualified and because he is taking a risk – again – to work for government when personal attack is what Democrats will do to him when he stands for confirmation. We need qualified persons like him to work for us.

From the Capital Journal column by Gerald Seib in the WSJ:  “So life is good for Democrats. They now have legitimate hopes of winning back control of the House of Representatives next year.  But they still could blow the opportunity.

“That’s true in part because American politics in the last generation has featured a recurring cycle of each party in turn overplaying a good hand. In this case, Democrats can miss their chance by deciding that simply running against an unpopular president is sufficient, and failing to come up with an economic message that recaptures the kinds of voters they lost to Mr. Trump last year.”

Comment: Seib is often right on target and he is again this time. Overplaying a hand is what Republicans and Democrats do when they get in charge. It happens in Washington, D.C. It happens in Salem. When one side overplays, the other responds in kind – and it, the “getting even,” never ends. That’s why it is valid to ask if this country’s democracy is broken, and whether it ever be fixed again.

From Oregonian editorial writers: “Instead voters should look at the long list of commitments they have already made before jumping on the bandwagon of the latest good cause. They should sharply examine measures to see if they address a specific need or are sprawling requests designed to score popularity points. And they should weigh whether the agency seeking the measure is the right steward for such money. Funding every good cause only leaves us less able to fund the ones we absolutely need to.

Comment: Well said from this normal just a-bit–left-of-center newspaper. Voters in the City of Portland and Portland Public School District have approved bond measures that will raise local property taxes. If the measures won because they represented solid investments, fine. But the Oregonian points out that taxpayers cannot fund “every good cause.” A question that is often not asked, but should be, is whether the purpose of a bond measure represents something government should do or not.

From a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal:  “Regarding your editorial Bad Marks for a Good Military: Saying ‘Congress needs to allocate enough money to adequately train sailors’ doesn’t address the core issue of failure. Funding wasn’t the problem; it was, as always, a complete lack of leadership at the highest levels. This episode falls on admirals who wanted a third or fourth star and were eager to compliment a pitifully naive and unprepared new entrant to the presidency who saw the military as a petri dish for social change and was willing to cripple the national defense to that end.

“Yes, the officers and senior NCOs received training, but it was re-focused from bridge command and control to diversity training. Now they can’t run a ship but are fully proficient in diversity issues. Perhaps with a new commander in chief we’ll get our priorities back in line with the brick and mortar of national defense.

Comment: This is an overlooked area – the character of training for those in the military. When it devolves from military and, for the Navy, ‘bridge command and control,’ to diversity, then the military is in trouble. Recent Naval collisions only illustrate the obvious

From Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker: “ Without nearly enough fanfare, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made history this week with a four scant words: “I believe the women.” All across the United States, forks dropped, glasses shattered and knees wobbled as women turned to each other in astonishment. Wait. What? Did he say what I think he said?

Comment: Yes, Senator McConnell made a bit of history with those four words, but it is important to add that they were uttered after investigating the circumstances of candidate Roy Moore’s history.  It was not just an off-the-cuff remark.  That fact makes the McConnell quote even more noteworthy.