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.

It will not be a surprise to readers of this blog to hear me say that one of my favorite columnists is Peggy Noonan, who honed her skills writing speeches for former president George Bush.

She had been absent from the Wall Street Journal for some weeks, but the good news is that she returned to her post just in time to provide excellent analysis of the battle over Brett Kvanaugh’s elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In particular, Noonan gave plaudits to Senator Susan Collins, Republican from Maine, who was in the eye of the storm in the Kavanaugh circus – to mix metaphors. Collins came in for severe criticism from the left when she announced that, on the merits, she would vote for Kavanaugh.

On October 11, Noonan’s piece appeared under this headline:

Voices of Reason—and Unreason

Susan Collins put on a clinic in thoroughness and justice. Democrats need to stand up to the screamers.

Then Noonan went on:

“What did the Kavanaugh controversy tell us about our historical moment? It underscored what we already know, that America is politically and culturally divided and that activists and the two parties don’t just disagree with but dislike and distrust each other.

“We know also the Supreme Court has come to be seen not only as a constitutional (and inevitably political) body but as a cultural body. It follows cultural currents, moods, assumptions. It has frequently brushed past the concept of democratic modesty to make decisions that would most peacefully be left to the people, at the ballot box, after national debate.

“So citizens will experience the court as having great power over their lives, and nominations to the court will inevitably draw passion. And this was a fifth conservative seat on a nine-person court.”

The Kavanaugh hearings, Noonan averred, contained some new elements.

“There were no boundaries on inquiry, no bowing to the idea of a private self. Accusations were made about the wording of captions under yearbook photos. The Senate showed a decline in public standards of decorum. A significant number of senators no longer even pretend to have class or imitate fairness. The screaming from the first seconds of the first hearings, the coordinated interruptions, the insistent rudeness and accusatory tones—none of it looked like the workings of the ordered democracy that has been the envy of the world.

“Two Republican senators this week wrote to me with a sound of mourning. One found it ‘amazing’ and ‘terrifying’ that ‘seemingly, and without very much thought, nearly half the United States Senate has abandoned the presumption of innocence in this country, all to achieve a political goal.’ The other cited ‘a truly disturbing result: One of the great political parties abandoning the Constitutionally-based traditions of due process and presumption of innocence.’

“At the very least, Senate Democrats overplayed their hand. “

As for Collins, Noonan said she “redeemed the situation.”

“In her remarks announcing her vote, she showed a wholly unusual respect for the American people, and for the Senate itself, by actually explaining her thinking. Under intense pressure, her remarks were not about her emotions. She weighed the evidence, in contrast, say, to Senator Cory Booker, who attempted to derail the hearings from the start and along the way compared himself to Spartacus. Though Spartacus was a hero, not a malignant buffoon.

“She (Collins) judged him (Kavanaugh) as centrist in his views and well within the mainstream of judicial thought. He believes the idea of precedent is not only a practice or tradition, but a tenet rooted in the Constitution.

“It (the Collins speech) was a master class in what a friend called ‘old-style thoroughness combined with a feeling for justice.’”

So, kudos to Collins for conducting herself with reason and skill. And kudos to Noonan for returning to her commentator position to provide reason – instead of, as she says, “unreason.”

We need more people of the stature of Collins and Noonan to be involved in our political life.