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.

Why, you may ask, do I open this department from time to time?

Well, there are at least two reasons:

• First, many of those who write are smarter than I am, so I benefit from their perspectives and want to share the benefit.
• Second, the quotes prompt me to think from a broader perspective than just my own, which is a good thing for all of us.

So, the Department, one of two I direct, is open again.

From Wall Street Journal editorial writers:  “The ‘secular stagnation’ thesis is having a bad year. Readers will recall that this idea, popularized by former Obama White House economist Larry Summers, held that America is fated to endure slow economic growth. This conveniently justified the Obama era’s historic slow growth as an inevitable deus ex machina, and Mr. Summers’s policy advice was for government to borrow more money to spend on public works.

“A year after the Obama economists left town, stagnation may be following them back to Harvard. The Commerce Department announced Friday that the U.S. economy grew 2.6 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2017, below what most economists expected but the third straight quarter of solid growth.”

Comment: Economic growth is one result of having Republicans, including President Donald Trump, in charge in Washington D.C. as they surmounted Democrat opposition to produce the first major tax reform in 30 years. One hopes that Trump will allow the positive results to rule rather than denigrating the status with his pompous tweets.

From Mary Anastasia O’Grady in the Wall Street Journal:  “Yet if Mr. Booker doesn’t understand the hell that migrants often leave, Mr. Trump doesn’t understand the value they bring with them. The president doesn’t want the U.S. to take in so many ‘huddled masses yearning to breathe free’ as Emma Lazarus called them in her famed 1883 poem, ‘The New Colossus.’ He prefers a merit-based system that would award points for attributes like education, skills and English-language proficiency.

“This is not racism, and providing that Mr. Trump doesn’t sharply cut immigration at the same time, it is not nativism. But it is likely a mistake. The U.S. has been built on the hard work of hungry migrants willing to make sacrifices for a future generation. They are ambitious risk-takers like none other.”

Comment: Columnist O’Grady makes several good points about the status of the immigration debate in the nation’s capitol. When you hear the diatribes from both sides, just remember that this nation was built on the backs of immigrants who, along with native Americans, produced a great country, as even as both sought a better life for themselves.

And, I say this has more than a person of Norwegian heritage because, of course, Trump says he wants to welcome more Norwegians to this country.

James Hohmann in the Washington Post as he covered a Charles Koch group-led meeting in Southern California:  “Now the network’s donors realize that their fortunes are tied to Trump, at least to some degree. His policies have been better than they expected, but his personal behavior has been worse. There’s quiet exasperation and palpable concern that the president’s reality-TV antics and racially charged statements could wind up generating a backlash that taints their brand and sets back their cause.

“’I’m not a fan of his style of doing things,’ said Bill O’Neill, the retired president of Leaseway Transportation, during a cocktail reception Sunday night. ‘I think it hurts him and hurts some of the causes he supports. I think his style gets in the way, but I’ve been trying to look beyond that.’”

Comment: The Koch family has come in for substantial criticism over the years, much of it from the left, which cannot tolerate the involvement of the family in politics. I don’t know about all things Koch, of course, but the point above – “There’s quiet exasperation and palpable concern that the president’s reality-TV antics and racially charged statements could wind up generating a backlash that taints their brand and sets back their cause” – is worth noting.

Trump’s antics threaten to jeopardize various public policy successes in the last year. It’s those successes – successes labeled by me from my just right-of-center centrist persuasion – that should carry the day in the mid-term elections.

Who knows if they will, especially with the reality TV host in charge.