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.

I pose the contrast in the headline because…

• I had a discussion with a neighbor who felt the U.S. was heading toward another civil war, and
• I read two articles in the Wall Street Journal, one entitled “Post Cards from a Collapsing Country,” and another under the headline, “Is Democracy in Danger?”

My conclusion: No country lasts forever, so there is always a chance for an end to the U.S. as we know it, but I also think there is a way for cooler heads to prevail so we don’t go down the drain as a country. Plus, another civil war sounds a bit exaggerated to me.

Am I only optimistic? No.

Am I only pessimistic? No.

I prefer to call myself, perhaps with Poly Anna as my companion, a realist, which involves both optimism and pessimism.

Columnist Walter Russell Mead describes his concerns this way in the Wall Street Journal: “This year’s Independence Day does not find the nation in the most celebratory of moods. With one of the most polarizing presidents in American history poised to make the most consequential Supreme Court choice in decades, trade wars looming on all sides, a moral and humanitarian crisis on the southern border, and at least one member of Congress calling for mobs to harass administration officials on the streets, the atmosphere in Washington could hardly be more tense. Some speak of a ‘cold civil war’ between red and blue.”

Then, in the Washington Post, I read a piece by Anna Luhrmann, deputy director of the V-Dem Institute and assistant professor at the University of Gothenburg (Germany), and Matthew Wilson, a visiting researcher at the V-Dem Institute and assistant professor at West Virginia University.

In a major study in 2017, they said they found “that democracy was on the decline — but not as much as many pundits believed.”

“But today,” they emphasized, “we are less optimistic than we were a year ago. Our new report shows that democracy’s decline is gaining momentum: One-third of the world’s population lives in a backsliding democracy.”

So, with that background, I turned to one of my favorite analysts, Gerald Seib, who writes a column for the Wall Street Journal.

His words:

“Important as civility is in public life, something even more important appears to be imperiled in today’s charged political climate: Faith in democracy itself.”

Part of the reason for this is that President Trump intentionally sets out to sow discord and acrimony, including with respect to democracy itself. Then, he tries to capitalize on the discord, contending that only he can solve every problem as he sits at the center of his own universe, setting out to be, it appears, a dictator.

Seib says many Trump supporters believed that their own party’s power brokers worked against them and that the political system, steered by financial institutions and dominated by coastal elites, was stacked against them. So, they turned to Trump.

Since Trump’s election—which, presumably, proved the system wasn’t rigged against him—Democrats have been the ones more likely to say the system is rigged.

More from Seib: “As the nation prepares to celebrate its Independence Day (his piece was written before July 4), it is worth considering the dangers embedded in these grievances. A functioning democracy depends on the belief that the system is fair, that votes count, and that the proper recourse for unhappy citizens is the electoral process. If that faith is lost, the chances that citizens will resort to other, darker means for venting their frustration go up significantly.”

How to turn this around, Seib asks? For starters, he says the nation “needs leaders who, rather than stoke grievances, show they are committed to making the political system fair and effective.”

So, in conclusion, there is much to lament as U.S. democracy appears to be, at least to a degree, on the decline. What’s needed, as Seib said, are leaders who won’t stoke grievances, but work to make the American system of government fair and effective. That would give citizens some assurance that democracy works.

But that, to me, will require a change in the top political office in this country – the one, unfortunately, that Trump now holds.