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.

If I have nothing important to say or to write – standard for me you may say – I often have decided to open the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering, one of three departments I run with a free-hand to do what I want.

If don’t what to say or write, others do, so, the Department is open again this morning.

From William Galston in the Wall Street Journal: “Are the matters that divide Americans today so momentous as to warrant a strategy of unending tit-for-tat escalation into the political equivalent (at least) of civil war?

“In an op-ed in the New York Times, David Marcus, a writer at the Federalist, urges fellow conservatives to end the epidemic of ‘gloating’ that broke out after Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation and adopt instead a ‘muted and conciliatory’ tone. The legitimacy of U.S. institutions and the ability of Americans to talk to one another is at risk, he rightly insists.

“In the same vein, if Democrats regain control of one or both houses of Congress in 2018, they should defend our democratic institutions while showing the American people they are capable of governing on a basis broader than partisanship. If they don’t, our descent into un-governability will continue, and even a victory in 2020 may prove hollow.”

Comment: Well written. To move toward a governable center will require both sides to adopt what Galston calls a “muted and conciliatory” tone. Hard to imagine, but, I submit, worth the effort.

From the Wall Street Journal: “This was a bracing and important moment. Senator Susan Collins (from Maine) was asserting that even by the enormously flexible standards of American political give-and-take, the case against Judge Kavanaugh had gone too far. The current atmosphere, she said, ‘would have alarmed the drafters of our Constitution. Her seriousness and thoroughness on the floor of the Senate notably contrasted with the superficial analysis of so many other senators of both political parties.

“This was in many ways an old-fashioned Senate floor speech espousing ideas about governance that obviously strike many today as old-fashioned. They are not. The senator from Maine deserves gratitude for drawing her colleagues and the rest of us back to the meaning of political responsibility.”

Comment: Senator Collins stood out in her response to the Kavanaugh circus. She did so, not so much by her final vote, but the rationale she provided for it. And, her vote in favor of Kavanaugh probably will earn her a challenge from the left if she decides to run again.

From Allen C. Guelzo a professor of history at Gettysburg College: If Sena story Feinstein was convinced that Ms. Ford’s allegations were serious, she should have shared them with the Judiciary Committee or law enforcement when they first came to her attention weeks earlier. That hesitation — and then the demand for a delay to conduct an FBI investigation — have combined to make Feinstein look uncertain and perhaps unscrupulous.

“Judge Kavanaugh’s critics did not make themselves look better by turning on the FBI itself when it did not find what they wanted, with Senator Richard Blumenthal making the McCarthyesque claim that it ‘smacks of a cover-up.’ Feinstein herself said ‘the most notable part of this report is what’s not in it, suggesting (again) that she has access to some secret knowledge about the case that she won’t share.

“Democrats have also cited Judge Kavanaugh’s angry testimony denying sexual assault as itself disqualifying — as if he had no business crying out while being stretched on the rack. He might not have been as deferential to the senators as norms of judicial gravitas would dictate, but he was certainly more poised than his inquisitors. In the end, even that line of attack accomplished nothing.

“This process has inflicted real damage to Judge Kavanaugh and Ms. Ford—enough to make any intelligent citizen wonder if it would ever be worth entering public service. But the most immediate casualty is likely to be the much-hyped November blue wave. If a vote for a Democratic majority in the Senate is a vote for the tactics of Senator Feinstein, or for the boorish behavior of Senators Blumenthal, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, then that vote may not materialize at all.”

Comment: A trenchant analysis.

More from the Wall Street Journal: “Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said the remarks (by Kavanaugh) were ‘so ludicrous and false that they’re not worth even addressing.’”

Comment: Well, Blumenthal ought to know – about falsehoods, that is. The last time he ran for election he said he had been to Vietnam in a bid to illustrate his military credentials. The problem? He never was there.

He was caught in that lie and still won. But the reality of his past dishonesty made him one of the most ironic questioners of Kavanaugh.