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.

Letters to the editor of the Wall Street Journal are often a great place to find nuggets about public policy in this country.

The latest one appeared under the headline, “Democrats Shocked at What Comes Around,” with this subhead:

“The Democrats will create a policy that gives them some short-term advantage, and then appear truly shocked when the Republicans apply the same policy.”

The author, Donald W. Large from Green Valley, Arizona, was commenting on a recent political column in the Journal that criticized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for failing to hold a vote on Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. The author of the column called McConnell’s action “an unprincipled exercise of raw power” and further that it was “an act for which history won’t judge him (McConnell) kindly.”

I confess that I have had the same thought.

But Mr. Large sets the record straight:

“In 1992, Joe Biden, then chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that, if a Supreme Court vacancy occurred in an election year with a Republican president and a Democratic Senate, there would be no vote until after the election. Senator Chuck Schumer reiterated the same policy in 2007, and Senator Harry Reid, then majority leader, added the point that the Senate wasn’t obligated to vote on anyone.

“So,” the letter to the editor writer says, “all Senator McConnell did was to apply to the Democrats the same policy that the Democrats had applied to the Republicans for the previous 25 years. I am often amazed how the Democrats will create a policy that gives them some short-term advantage, and then appear truly shocked and upset when the Republicans turn around and apply the same policy.”

Point made.