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.

What does the word “progressive” mean?

I ask because the word often is used in a positive way to describe proposals from Democrats who usually believe that more government represents progress. In fact, the reverse may be true. More government is not always positive, so I contend the word progressive should not be used to describe such proposals.

Here are the dictionary definitions of the adjective:

• Favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are, especially in political matters – such as a progressive mayor.
• Making progress toward better conditions; employing or advocating more enlightened or liberal ideas, new or experimental methods – such as a progressive community.
• Characterized by such progress or by continuous improvement.

Consider this story, which recently appeared in The Nation:

“The list of victories thus far on this year’s long calendar of contests—mayoral, City Council, state legislative, and even statewide—is striking. Many of them are unprecedented, and most are linked by a growing recognition on the part of national progressive groups and local activists that the greatest resistance not just to Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan but to right-wing governors could well come from the cities and states where the day-to-day work of governing is done.”

Note use of the word progressive. It has the effect of conveying a positive impression of movement forward, even though the specific proposals by those running for local election may not be positive.

Turns out that a long-time Texas Republican in Congress, Lamar Smith, has been on a quiet mission for years to flag what he sees as examples of bias in news reporting. One of his examples is use of the term “progressive” when a more accurate modifier, he says, might be “liberal.”

I agree. I say the judgment about the positive or negative character of government proposals should be left up to individuals, not conveyed by use of a word that comes across as positive.

[Footnote: I could have included this blog as a part of the Department of Pet Peeves, which I manage. I didn’t, preferring to give the word “progressive” singular standing. But its over-use stands as a pet peeve.]

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.

The news was earth-shaking for some.

Don’t drink water supplied by the City of Salem’s system. At least don’t let your young children or pets do so. Some older adults, as well. The water could be contaminated.

The first time around, the news emerged in an over-the-top way as the state government Office of Emergency Management (OEM) produced an alert that caught most readers or hearers off-guard as the words made it sound like something far worse was in store.

The OEM apologized for not making the alert very specific about the problem – problems with the city’s water system.

But, that reality aside, all of us can learn something from this episode, which, by the way, is continuing as OEM issued another alert saying that, after a few days of relatively clean water, the supply was contaminated again.

The best advice: Be prepared! It was advice we took to heart several months ago in response to concern about a major natural disaster, such as an earthquake, that could leave us and neighbors in South Salem in jeopardy, as well as cut off from first-responder aid. We were advised to make preparations, such as, for instance, having a supply of water on hand in case we couldn’t be reached for some time in the face of a disaster.

So, we did.

One of our neighbors ridiculed our efforts, saying in jest I knew, that, if there was a natural disaster, he/she would just come to our supply of food and water and take what he/she needed.

All kidding aside, I said we would have enough supplies to help neighbors in need.

In response to the initial water contamination, Oregon Governor Kate Brown declared a state of emergency for portions of Marion and Polk counties, thus opening the door for national guard troops to truck in fresh water for residents grappling with the discovery of low-level toxins in tap water.

Under state law, her alert also allowed the state attorney general to investigate allegations of price gouging and, if true, to prosecute the offenders.  In the face of a natural disaster, retailers are limited to imposing a 15 per cent price increase for disaster-related supplies.

My wife went shopping the other day after the first emergency alert and found many people stocking up on supplies of water. Apparently, they didn’t have some already at home as we did.  Plus, it should be added that we are served by a separate water system, one based on wells, so Salem’s water problem doesn’t affect us.

At Costco, she also found that the company had not increased the cost of water, which is good news for Costco’s commitment to the community.

Beyond Costco and other smart retailers, another piece of good news was that the City of Keizer, which gets its water from wells, stepped up to provide supplies for use by Salem residents.

Back to the lessons learned.

This episode, a relatively minor one by most standards, should be used by residents to illustrate the value of stocking up on supplies, including water, if some other, more serious natural disaster occurs.

The director of OEM, Andrew Phelps, after he had apologized for his office’s initial strange alert, said the runs on bottled water illustrate how ill-prepared Oregonians are for any kind of emergency. Residents are advised to have a 14-day stock of potable water at all times.

“As best you can, prepare for whatever bad day lies ahead,” Phelps said.

Good advice!

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.

This is one of the departments I run with a free hand to do what I want to do, which means that, like Trump, I am a dictator. Of course, my dictatorship covers far smaller turf than Trump who, as a huge egotist, believes he is always the most important person in the U.S., if not the world.

So, he says he is above the law, even willing to consider pardoning himself if he is charged with any crime.

Oh well! That is the pivot for another blog at a later time.

Meanwhile, here are more quotes worth remembering.

From Joe Scarborough in the Washington Post:  “Even after his calling for a Muslim ban in 2015, professing ignorance of former Ku Kluz Klan leader David Duke in 2016, defending white supremacists in 2017, and calling out Hispanic ‘breeding’ in April, Trump still enjoys steadfast support among most Capitol Hill Republicans.

“…For starters, they can point to Trump’s conservative judicial nominees beyond Neil Gorsuch as cause for celebration. But their talking points can also include massive tax cuts, a bigger military budget, regulatory reform and the gutting of the Environmental Protection Agency, gutting the Paris climate accords, scrapping of the Iran nuclear deal, undermining Obamacare, moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, attacking federal employee unions, and promoting extreme immigration policies. Add to that the mocking of political correctness and identity politics, and you have a platform sure to inspire the activists who drive today’s Republican Party.”

Comment: Republicans on Capital Hill have been loathe to go against Trump, but the risk is that, in supporting Trump, they appear to support all of his over-the-top rhetoric. But, as Scarborough explains above, Trump has managed – who knows how – to create a decent conservative policy agenda.

From Washington Post White House reporters and editors:  “The result: A White House solar system in which the president functions as the sun and his aides and advisers circle around him, but with no clear lines of orbit. Rudy Giuliani, for instance, weighed in during a recent interview with The Washington Post on a topic totally outside his Russia-investigation purview: Iran.”

Comment: Again, everything revolves around Trump, at least in his own mind.

I hate to cite him because of his typical left wing dogma, but this from E. J. Dionne in the Washington Post:  “By now, we know that President Trump is a lying demagogue. Because this is not said often enough, he has been allowed to routinize lying and enshrine the vilest forms of divisiveness as a normal part of our politics.  Lies do not deserve deference just because a president tells them.”

Comment: Lying, in the Trump era, has become an art form – and that risks trust in government and many other institutions (see another of my recent blogs).

From former CIA Director John Brennan in the Washington Post:  “The esteem with which I held the presidency was dealt a serious blow when Donald Trump took office. Almost immediately, I began to see a startling aberration from the remarkable, though human, presidents I had served. Mr. Trump’s lifelong preoccupation with aggrandizing himself seemed to intensify in office, and he quickly leveraged his 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address and his Twitter handle to burnish his brand and misrepresent reality.

“Presidents throughout the years have differed in their approaches to policy, based on political platforms, ideologies and individual beliefs. Trump, however, has shown highly abnormal behavior by lying routinely to the American people without compunction, intentionally fueling divisions in our country and actively working to degrade the imperfect but critical institutions that serve us.

“Although appalling, those actions shouldn’t be surprising. As was the case throughout his business and entertainment careers, Trump charts his every move according to a calculus of how it will personally help or hurt him. His strategy is to undercut real, potential and perceived opponents; his focus is to win at all costs, irrespective of truth, ethics, decency and — many would argue — the law. His disparagement of institutions is designed to short-circuit legitimate law enforcement investigations, intelligence assessments and media challenges that threaten his interests. His fear of the special counsel’s work is especially palpable, as is his growing interest in destroying its mandate.”

Comment: Brennan, once a relatively private figure as director of the CIA, is right-on with his criticisms of Trump.

From the Washington Post story about Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s decision to step down as CEO and chairman of the Board, raising speculation that he may seek public office, perhaps the presidency: “It’s not about Starbucks, it’s about the country. What kind of country do we want to live in? For me the answer is very simple. The promise of America will not be achieved if it is only available to those that have the right color of skin or have the right Zip code. We must provide opportunity and aspiration to every single person who is American, and we must see that through the lens of humanity. And this exercise is the beginning of that for Starbucks.”

“Schultz — in letters to employees and remarks at annual shareholder meetings — has for years been honing his own brand of lofty rhetoric that has often sounded hints of a campaign-style stump speech. Speaking before the election in 2016 that would vault Trump into the presidency, Schultz said, ‘I’ve struggled for weeks to find the right words to express the pain I feel about where America is headed and the cloud hanging over the American people. There are moments when I’ve had a hard time recognizing who we are and who we are becoming. We are facing a test not only of our character, but of our morality as a people.’”

Comment: If Schultz continues comments like this and decides to run for president — the Washington Post today says interest in Schultz may wane quickly — I would consider voting for him.

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.

Trust is an important commodity in every day life. And, not just a commodity, but a critical factor in maintaining a sense of equilibrium.

But America’s trust in its leaders and institutions has been falling for four decades. Trust in the federal government has never been lower. In 1958, Pew Research found that 73 per cent trusted government to do what is right “always” or “most of the time.” That sounds healthy.

As of 2017, that number was down to 18 per cent. Not healthy.

In a column by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal the other day, she posited: “Other institutions have suffered, too—the church, the press, the professions. That’s disturbing because those institutions often bolster our national life in highly personal ways. When government or law turns bad, they provide a place, a platform from which to stand, to make a case, to correct.”

Noonan, ever an optimist, believes there are things we can do individually to help America be more at peace with itself.

“First,” she says, “realize this isn’t merely a problem, but a crisis. When you say you believe in and trust democratic institutions, you are saying you believe in and trust democracy itself. When you don’t, you don’t. When a nation tells pollsters it’s unable to trust its constituent parts, it’s telling pollsters it doesn’t trust itself.”

Noonan says and I agree that there is a difference between skepticism and cynicism. Skepticism is constructive. Cynicism is the opposite, childish.

“Skepticism,” Noonan adds, “involves an intellectual exercise: You look at the grand surface knowing it may not reflect the inner reality. It implies action: If it doesn’t, try to make it better. Cynicism is a dodge: Everything’s crud, you’d be a fool to try and make it better, it’s all irredeemable and unchangeable.”

Be skeptical of our institutions, not cynical toward them.

President Trump cannot help in this effort. Increasing public trust is not his declared mission, and what it would take is not in his toolbox. He tends in his statements to undermine trust: His own government is embarked on a deep-state witch-hunt conspiracy, his agencies are incompetent, the press is fake-news liars.

So, forget Trump if that is possible. Practice skepticism.  Forego cynicism.

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.

Where were you in 1968?

Recalling that tempestuous year is a bit like remembering where you were in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was assassinated or in 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to walk on the moon.

There was not just one event in 1968. They were many, as this blog details below.

For my part, I was in college at Seattle Pacific College (now Seattle Pacific University), at about the middle point of my four years there. With the Vietnam War in full swing, I was concerned about my future – or, frankly, whether I would have one.

The year 1968 served as the pivot for a recent column by Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The headline for his piece termed “1968 as the year that politics collapsed.”

It went on to say that 1968 also was the year that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump graduated from college.

The year also was important enough that the Smithsonian Magazine devoted its entire January-February 2018 edition to a retrospective on 1968 — and I am still reading the magazine to recall even more events.

Meanwhile, here’s more from Henninger:

“The modern era of American politics—defined by polarization and nonstop intensity—began with the cataclysmic events of 1968, now celebrating, if that’s the right word, its 50th anniversary.

“Everyone says the pace of events in the Trump presidency is overwhelming. Compared with 1968, the past year has been a walk in the park.

“It is impossible to understand the relevance of that year (1968) without a timeline.

“Jan. 23: The USS Pueblo and its 82 survivors are captured and taken hostage by North Korea. On Jan. 30, North Vietnam launches the notorious Tet Offensive, including an invasion of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. March 12, Minnesota’s Democratic Sen. Eugene McCarthy comes within a few hundred votes in the New Hampshire primary of upsetting President Lyndon B. Johnson. Within three weeks, Johnson announces he will not seek his party’s presidential nomination.

“Four days later, Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis. Urban riots break out across the U.S. April 23: Students occupy offices at Columbia University until police storm the building a week later. June 3: Andy Warhol is shot in New York by Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto, or “Society for Cutting Up Men.”

“Then, on June 5, while running for the Democratic presidential nomination, Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated at a Los Angeles hotel.

“August 8: Republicans nominate Richard Nixon. Two weeks later, the Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia.

“In late summer during the Democratic Convention in Chicago, police fight a pitched battle with antiwar protesters in Grant Park. In October, at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise gloved fists as a black-power salute during a medal ceremony.

“November 5: Nixon defeats Hubert Humphrey and a third-party populist, former and future Alabama Governor George Wallace, who in the spirit of the times told a group of antiwar protesters: ‘I was killing fascists when you punks were in diapers.’”

Historians have tried to decipher the volcanic eruptions in 1968.  For some, it was the emerging political power of televised images; Vietnam was called “the living-room war.” That was true for me as I watched my generation serve on a battlefield while many at home demonstrated against their service, even reviling them as the likely one returned from the war.

For his part, Henninger posits that 1968 “marked the start of political polarization. Contrary to current myth, the civil-rights legislation of a few years before was bi-partisan. With the Vietnam War, unity began to unravel.”

The late 1960s, he says, saw the beginning of left-liberal moral triumphalism. The opposition was no longer just wrong. It was morally suspect. For a new generation of Democrats, which increasingly included the so-called “politically neutral press,” the Vietnam War was opposed as, simply, “a bright shining lie.”

Some 10 years later, inevitably, Henninger adds, the religious right emerged.

So, here we are today, fractured by politics and technology into myriad cultural subsets of separations that began in 1968.

For me, two points are true here.

One – we have come a long way since 1968, at least in terms of the passage of time. Things are different today as we talk to each other by mobile device no matter where we are, as we contend with a pervasive social media that confronts us at every turn, as we look at a president who defies normal norms for the most important political position in the country, if not the world, and as we limit trust in almost any institution, including those that have thrown away any reason or building trust.

Two – as a people, we are even more divided today than back in 1968. Our political views illustrate that division every day and, more and more certain of those who represent us in government work to capitalize on that division.

My fond wish today, 50 years after the grueling year of 1968, is that we would find a way to honor humanity and work together for the common good.