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.

From Jason Gay in the Wall Street Journal: “For the first time since 2017, the New England Patriots are going back to the Super Bowl.  Twelve long months, the fans of this franchise have been forced to wait to return to this game!

“I think I just saw a couple of Detroit Lions fans walk into traffic.

“Do you realize that 95 per cent of Bostonians are physically addicted to Duck Boat championship parades? It’s a public-health crisis. Dunkin’ Donuts now serves a flavor called Brimming Entitlement.

“Even crazier: Belichick smiled when the Pats sealed the win. Smiled!

“At first, I thought he had stepped on one of defensive coordinator Matt Patricia’s sharpened pencils, and was gritting his teeth in pain, but I believe it was, indeed, a smile. Photo evidence is being submitted to the National Archives as we speak.

“You have to love the Grumpy Lobster Boat Captain, Coach Belicheck. Did you see the cut-off sweatshirt-slash-undershirt Belichick wore to his postgame press conference? I’m not saying the media should be offended, but it was the kind of thing someone wears to clean squirrel nests out of the gutters.”

Comment: Gay, as usual, demonstrates his gift for satirical humor. I start with this quote, not because the coming Super Bowl is the most important issue these days. Rather, it provides a time to get away from the often harsh reality and focus on an annual spectacle.

From the Wall Street Journal:  “’Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots,’” Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters on Friday night.”

Comment: Good point. Kennedy’s comment came before the shutdown was over, but it was a solid illustration of the depths to which government has sunk in the U.S.

From Gerard Baker, editor of the Wall Street Journal:  “Everyone in Washington seems to be trying to calculate who gets blamed for the shutdown—or indeed if it has much political effect at all. The Journal’s Gerald F. Seib writes that the turmoil reflects the current state of the U.S. political system. The process, he says, is being driven not by those in the broad center but by those in the more narrow and partisan ideological bases of the two parties.”

Comment: Shutdown politics rears its ugly head again as extremes on both sides look for political gains. Usually, despite claims to the contrary, no one wins…see below.

From Gerald Seib in the WSJ:  “Most people, inside Washington and out, don’t want the government to shut down. And a majority of people, inside Washington and out, want to find a way to help the Dreamers, immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally when they were children.

“Yet, the government has shut down because of a dispute over the Dreamers. How does this kind of thing happen?

“The shutdown happened because most politicians worry more about a backlash from their bases for not being rigid enough than about an adverse reaction from the broader public for being too rigid.

Put differently, for many politicians, the danger lies less in the shutdown than in anger within the base for failing to push all the way to a shutdown. Activists in the bases, after all, provide the energy in election season, and they have been increasingly willing to shoot their own kin when they prove too willing to compromise with the other side.

Comment: True. Extremes, not the center, control the process.

From the Wall Street Journal: “’Democrats went into battle and then buckled and weren’t ready for it,” said Adam Green, a co-founder of The Progressive Change Campaign Committee. There should have been an outside game that was planned.’

“How Senate Democrats got to the point of charging forward on Friday night and then pulling back on Monday morning is the story of a Republican party more organized than the Democratic insurgents and centrists in both parties who challenged the partisan rhetoric of both Mr. McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.)., forging a path forward during meetings where one senator nearly broke a glass elephant with a ‘talking stick.’

“Over in the department of futile and stupid gestures, the Senate on Monday voted 81-18 to end the government shutdown that Democrats had insisted on late last week. The politics apparently didn’t turn out to be the winner the Democrats anticipated, so they bailed out and called retreat a victory.”

Comment: Finally? The moderate center in the U.S. Senate emerged to bring sense out of nonsense despite comments from such over-the-top advocates as Adam Green who, from the extreme left, want continued stalemate. Give the moderates plaudits.