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 – the Just Saying Department — is a new one I run because I am doing well with the others which gives me enough time to create a new enterprise.  The others are the Department of Pet Peeves, the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering, and the Department of Bits and Pieces.  I am the director of each, with full and complete authority to do what I think needs to be done, without regard to the perspectives of others, though it is important to add that I benefit from the well-written perspectives of my favorite newspaper columnists.

In the case of the new department, I will point out what, for me, are basic questions swirling around life these days.  The cases will begin with the phrase “there ought to be a law,” then will end with a usual post-script  – “Just saying.”

CASE #1: There ought to be a law against using the word PROGRESSIVE when it does not deserve to be used, such as in relating to persons, who, on a political spectrum, new to the left, often the far left.

The word conveys contains far more positive impressions than the left deserves.

You are a progressive – so that means you want to move forward, to progress. But, when the term is used to describe politicians on the left, moving forward is one of the last things they want to do.

Let’s limit the use of the word progressive to instances where it is deserved.

Just saying.

CASE #2: There ought to be a law about what words you can use in the TITLES OF PIECES OF LEGISLATION as they being moving through the process in Salem or Washington. D.C.

If you are an elected representative intent on passing a piece of legislation, you want to attach a name that will achieve at least two objectives: First, it will roll off the tongue in order to be memorable, and, second, it will convey a positive image.

Consider one example – the “Affordable Care Act,” which came to be known, perhaps a bit derisively, as ObamaCare.

To put a point on it – whatever else it was, it was not and is not affordable.

Just saying.

CASE #3: There ought to be a law against using the word NEGATIVE when you get a call from your medical provider reporting results of your recent test.

Here’s the likely sentence: “Hello, Mr. Fiskum, I want to report to you that your test was negative.”

When I hear that, I flinch.

There are at least two meanings for the word negative. One, in medical parlance, is that the tests do not show anything negative, thus the report that “they were negative.”

In everyday usage, however, the word negative can mean something else. It can mean that there is something bad or foreboding to report to you about your test.

I know the medical professionals mean well and are just doing their job. But perhaps a better phrase, if there is nothing bad to report, would be:  “I have good news about your recent test.  There is nothing wrong.”

Just saying.

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 topic came to mind earlier this week as I read a story in one of my favorite golf magazines, Links. It detailed what the author called the “Five Toughest Walks in Golf.”

A summary of the five appears below, but it got to me to thinking about tough walks on golf courses I have played in Oregon.

Two stand out.

• One is The Oregon Club in West Linn, a track designed by Oregon’s own, Peter Jacobsen.
• The other is Chehalem Glenn in Newberg, a public facility that says it is one of the most difficult courses in Oregon measured by what golf uses to make such measurements – “slope and rating.”

There may be other tough walking courses in Oregon, but, for me, these two rank as the toughest, so much so that, if I have a choice, I will not play them again. There are so many excellent courses in Oregon that allow, if not encourage, walking, so why, I ask, go places where walking is so difficult.

Here is a bit more information on both courses, along with a memory or two from my own experience.

The 18-hole Oregon Golf Club was designed jointly by Ken Kavanaugh and Peter Jacobsen. It measures 7,052 yards from the longest tees and has a slope rating of 145 and a 74.8 USGA rating. The course features six sets of tees for different skill levels.

But all those statistics don’t tell the whole story. The course is built on a series of hills in the West Linn, which make it a tough walk. When the Fred Meyer Challenge was based there for several years, I always was impressed by the fact that the late Arnold Palmer, then an “old golfer,” managed to walk the entire 18.

Of course, he had a caddy to carry his big, but, still, a tough walk. And the last hole, #18, goes uphill for its entire length.

The other tough walking course, Chehalem Glenn, is nowhere near as good a course as The Oregon Club. It, too, is built on hills, this time west of Portland.

Further, as is the case with some other courses, there often are long walking distances between a green and the next tee. Here’s an on-line description of the course:

“Chehalem Glenn Golf Club sprawls across beautifully hilly terrain, providing a course that is not for the faint of heart. The course is defined by the dramatic changes in elevation, which can make it tough to walk. The steep hills make this a tough golf course even for high handicappers. Uphill, downhill, and side-hill lies abound and you’ll also face forced carries to narrow landing areas as well as blind layup shots. The more open front nine is player friendly and the back nine is where it gets tougher with mostly tree-lined holes and more strategically placed bunkers. The golf course is as scenic as it is challenging with elevated tees and greens that overlooks the surrounding hills and valleys.”

For me, the trouble with Chehalem Glenn is the hills, some of them extreme. They make for tough landing areas for your golf ball, not to mention for your next stance.

The first time I played the course with my golfing buddy from Salem, Dick Haglund, we did take a golf cart, so, obviously, we weren’t walking, but still, to put a point it, “it was a difficult ride.”

With options for other courses in the area, Dick and I decided then and there to try to avoid Chehalem Glenn in the future.

For all the hilly, Northwest beauty of The Oregon Club and Chehelem Glenn, my view is that there are better options, especially if you want to do an important golf two-step – have fun and play well.

As for the Links Magazine, it rates the toughest walks around the country as:

PIKEWOOD NATIONAL/You can’t help but take a few minutes to admire the views from the highest points at Pikewood National, which not only sits atop a mesa in the mountains near Morgantown, West Virginia, but has been continually climbing in national course rankings. The panoramic pit stops aren’t just because you’re treated to views of three states – Pennsylvania and Maryland as well as West Virginia – but also because you’ll probably need to take the occasional breather during your round.

Pikewood National is regarded as one of the most challenging courses in the U.S., with a 155 slope rating, a 78.9 USGA course rating and a brutal 109.4 bogey rating from its championship tees. It’s also one of the toughest walks in golf – a 9-mile hike up and down a mountain; and that’s if you’re hitting it straight. The course, which is spread over 650 acres and features elevation changes of hundreds of feet in just a few holes, is as taxing physically as it is on your scorecard.

BETHPAGE BLACK/There’s a sign just behind the first tee at Bethpage State Park’s Black Course warning that the layout, a two-time U.S. Open site, is an extremely difficult course and should be reserved for highly skilled golfers only. There should probably also be a disclaimer on the sign about how challenging it is to walk the A.W. Tillinghast-designed course that takes on the rough-and-tough personality befitting its New York location. There are plenty of golfers who won’t play the Black because of its walking-only nature. Fairly substantial elevation changes are found on almost half of the holes, including a handful of memorable climbs. Among them is the approach to the green at the 15^th hole, one of the hardest par-4s in the game. Several years ago, I was playing the Black with a good friend who, winded (and humbled) after the hike up the hill at No. 15 and over to the 16^th tee box, plopped down on a bench and said simply, “Never again will I play this (bleeping) course.” He would, of course… because it’s a taxing, yet utterly intoxicating stroll in the park.

CHAMBERS BAY/The first thing you’ll notice on the drive into Chambers Bay, which was built in an old sand and gravel mine on the Puget Sound outside Seattle, is the sheer size and scale of the layout and its topography. Course architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. has proudly boasted that the walking-only links-inspired layout is a 10-mile hike, with more than 600 feet of elevation change and significant distances between greens and the next tee. The views are spectacular – from the sparkling waterfront to the snow-capped Olympic Mountain range – and the steep climbs are equally impressive. When the U.S. Open was held at Chambers Bay in 2015, then USGA executive director Mike Davis described the course as an “endurance test,” and other tournament organizers said it would test both the physical and mental capabilities of competitors. If you go, bring comfortable shoes, and possibly a Sherpa.

I have played Chambers Bay several times and have vowed not to make a special trip to do so again. I also was there for the U.S. Open a couple years ago and, without trying to come across as a golf course architect, I thought the course was not worthy of hosting an open. It also has a links style, but, for me, it was, at best, a faint imitation of real links-style courses in Scotland.

WHISTLING STRAITS/Sculpted into two miles of uninterrupted shoreline of Lake Michigan in Kohler, Wisconsin, Whistling Straits can be an unforgiving brute. Designer Pete Dye isn’t known for his warm and fuzzy layouts, but if a golfer is errant on The Straits, which has roughly 1,000 sand bunkers, an already challenging walk can quickly become grueling. When looking at the bluffs and massive sand dunes, it’s hard to conceive that the site in the 1950s was flat farmland used by the U.S. Army as an anti-aircraft training facility. More than 7,000 truckloads of sand – approximately 105,000 cubic yards – were brought in to create the rugged, windswept terrain seen today that’s hosted three PGA Championships. You may need to be as sure-footed as the Scottish Black Sheep that call Whistling Straits home.

ERIN HILLS/The first time the USGA’s Mike Davis saw Erin Hills in Wisconsin, the site of the 2017 U.S. Open, he said it looked like Shinnecock Hills on steroids. The brawny course is routed over the kettle moraine areas left by receding glaciers that formed the property’s rolling and undulating terrain. A walking-only course on 652 acres, Erin Hills is immense in scale. While you don’t have to play the tees that made it the second-longest U.S. Open course in history, you’ll still have many substantial walks past those other teeing grounds. And plenty of golfers have talked about the shin splints they’ve experienced after tackling the course’s uphill approach shots. The website for Erin Hills says to plan on a 4 hour, 55 minute round, and when the wind is blowing – and it often is – the walk can feel even more exhausting.

For me, I feel forever privileged to be able to play my home course in Salem, Illahe Hills, which, to put a twist on a common golf quote, “is a good work not spoiled.” I play Illahe to my heart’s content and I mean that in two ways – golf is a great past-time, plus it helps my heart.

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.

Everyone wants better health care and that includes me as I have traversed the present system so many times in recent years.

In this country, the health care solution, whatever it could be, appears out of reach. Political leaders can’t find the middle ground.

The best approach would be for smart people on both – or all – sides of the political aisle, to gather around a table (yes, make it a round one) and devise a solution from the middle.

If you are involved, leave your biases at the door. Come prepared with your best ideas worthy of consideration, not absolute adoption. Purpose to give something and get something in the transaction, the true definition of compromise in politics.

Republicans become good as just saying no. Democrats advocate for huge government solutions.

Where do the two meet? Nowhere.

All of this came back to my mind this week as a read a piece in the Wall Street Journal by James Freeman who writes about issues from the perspective of what he sees on the Internet.

This time, he is seeing what he calls “BernieCare.”

Freeman starts this way:

“Former President Barack Obama doesn’t draw crowds the way he used to do. But Democrats are fortunate to have another political rock star hitting the trail for candidates in swing-state races. And just like the former President, he’s giving voters inaccurate information about his plans for their health care.

“Bernie Sanders may have been mistreated by the Democratic National Committee when he sought the 2016 presidential nomination against establishment favorite Hillary Clinton, but the party is now fully embracing him.”

Among other things, Sanders is advocating a so-called “Medicare For All” health care plan, which really is not Medicare at all, but a new, very broad government-run health care system.

But public opinion surveys show that support erodes when people hear the arguments that the plan could increase taxes or government control. And nearly half of adults surveyed last October falsely assumed they could keep their current insurance under a single-payer plan, which is not true.

“The notion that it’s popular is premised upon people knowing almost nothing about it,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist Democratic think tank, Third Way. “That’s a problem for a very complicated thing that would transform one-fifth of our entire economy.”

Along with ending the Medicare program in favor of a new government-run plan, the Sanders bill also prevents competition against the government system, which, I suppose, is not surprising for a avowed socialist.

Will the Sanders’ plan make progress toward enactment? Well, who knows in the current world of politics where a carnival barker, Donald Trump, can get elected president and a socialist, Bernie Sanders, can make a run for the country’s top political job.

According to the columnist, Freeman, the White House Council of Economic Advisers is explaining the gargantuan costs of government-run health care in particular and socialism in general.

In a new paper, Freeman reports, the council notes that, in order to pay for BernieCare, “with the same spending cuts across all existing Federal programs, cuts would need to be 53 per cent across the board in 2022. In other words, without additional taxes, all other programs of the federal government would need to be cut by more than half.”

Beyond the enormous spending burden, the council also explored the impact on patient care. The paper notes the better survival rates after a cancer diagnosis for patients in the U.S. compared to various European countries often presented as models of more socialized medical systems.

Embedded in the text of BernieCare is the one Sanders’ promise voters can be confident he will keep: If you like your health plan, you won’t get to keep it.

Democrats running for office, by the way, have been advised not to use the phrase “single payer” in any of their advertising. Call it something else like, I guess, health care for all.

Now, lest someone say that all I do is criticize someone else’s proposal without any ideas of my own, let me replay the four ideas I have that I think should be discussed and resolved:

1. Require all citizens to have health insurance. [Think of this way. All of us who drive cars are required to have automobile insurance. If we don’t, we pay a price. The same policy should exist for health insurance – if you have insurance, you will pay a price.]
2. Provide a catastrophic health insurance plan for those who cannot afford regular insurance and who need a lower-cost option.
3. Accommodate people with pre-existing health conditions.
4. Allow broad access to health-savings accounts.

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 have often thought about leadership, a trait we look for in politics, but rarely see.

That’s the point. Leadership is hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

Now, we see so-called political leaders competing for our time and attention without standing on principles that deserve our attention. As voters, we often don’t opt support real leadership when we see it , believing that, unless someone agrees with us, they are wrong.

We opt to support someone who happens to believe as we do, or who stands on a street corner, figuratively, and shouts for attention.

As a private sector lobbyist in Salem, Oregon, I looked for political leadership for about 25 years in the business.

I defined leadership this way:

1. First, you can tell a leader because he or she has followers. In other words, leadership requires followership – not as blind puppets, but as those who recognize that someone is worth following.
2. Second, leaders are office-holders who have the ability to bring disparate parties together to solve public policy problems. Call it the ability to lead toward compromise – or as I often call it, “the smart middle” – a lost art in the way politics is played these days.
3. Third, leaders demonstrate a sense of honesty and ethics, which, so often, appears to be missing from politics these days. They also have the ability to admit when they are wrong, which should be a credential, but often gets trumpeted by the media as an indication that a political leader doesn’t know what he or she is doing…otherwise, why the revision.

One of my favorite columnists, Peggy Noonan, whose work most often appears in the Wall Street Journal, wrote about leadership this weekend.

Her analysis was telling. Here are the points she made:

• A leader is someone who first of all means it, and you can tell. He or she sincerely holds the views he or she espouses: He or she is serious. Advancing them is his or her project and purpose.
• The ideas he or she stands for are not merely policy points on an issues matrix. They are held together by a central overarching intention. The new nation called America will survive and thrive while holding to its liberties. The Union must hold. The Cold War will be won, and we will win it. The intention springs from a general, but discernible political philosophy.
• Politicians who can’t turn the dots into a picture are not artists but failed pointillists. They don’t present a full picture. In the end it’s all just dots. No one ever voted for long for a dot.
• Great leaders are capable of arguing for the things they believe in. They can make the case. They can make you think along with them, logically, from point A to point B and beyond. Their words aren’t emotional, as politicians’ tend to be now in an attempt to make a sated audience feel something. (And also because they’re confused about what eloquence is; they think it means fancy.) When leaders rely on logic and fact, voters do feel something: gratitude at the implied respect, and a feeling of warmth at membership in a community of thought and belief.
• Eloquence in political leaders is desirable but not necessary. Too much is made of it even as the real thing disappears. It’s good if you can make the case in a way that is memorable, and that voters can hold in their heads. FDR and Reagan were great and eloquent. But Dwight Eisenhower led American forces through World War II, managed the early days of the Cold War, and built the interstate highway system. Yet listening to him talk was like making your way through children pillow fighting—lots of noise but nothing that made an impression. His actions were eloquent.
• Good leaders live in the real world. They don’t insist on grand ideologies they can squish down on your heads. They know the facts and work within them. They respect reality.
• A leader is aware he or she is the object of many eyes. This puts a responsibility on him or her to act in a certain way—with respect for his or her own dignity and yours. Even if he or she is not in the mood, he or she must uphold standards of presentation. Children are watching and taking cues. That means the future is watching.
• A leader isn’t just trying to survive for himself or herself, to hold on to power. Yet ,a leader tries always to survive. Good leaders are survivors: That’s part of how they show loyalty to what they stand for, by being there to stand for it. How to survive? Shift strategies and tactics but not principles. And admit when you’re wrong, in part because it’s refreshing. Politicians so rarely do it.
• A good leader knows the difference between stubbornness and perseverance. When you’re afraid to look like you backed down, to yourself or others, it’s stubbornness. When you’re willing to pay a price for where you stand, every day, it’s perseverance.

Noonan asks: “When you, the voter, aren’t presented with candidates who look like real leaders, what do you do? Pick the closest to the ideal. Fall back on the practical. Make do with what you have, which is what we usually do. “

In an excellent new book, “Presidents of War,” Michael Beschloss, says this about voting (even as we prepare to do so, or already have cast our ballots in Oregon’s vote-by-mail state):

“Choose a candidate whose values and heart and life experience you feel comfortable with, so that you can feel confident about the vast majority of political decisions they will make, if elected, that you will never hear about.”

So, as I vote, now that I am retired from lobbying, I am looking for aspirants who value leadership. The question is whether they can lead, not whether they agree with me or me with them.

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.

When you read this blog, you may reach what, I guess, may be an obvious conclusion: I have too much time on my hands.

So, with that time, I have thought lately about some of my language biases. They are as follows:

1. USE OF HYPHENS

I fall down on the side of over-using hyphens because I think doing so contributes to readability.

Consider just one example.

The word bi-partisan, which is used a lot these days as we anticipate another national election in only a few days. If you don’t use a hyphen, someone could pronounce the word as bip – artisan. What is a bip – artisan anyway?

2. USE OF COMMAS

I am one who no doubt could be accused of over-using commas. As with hyphens, I do so because using commas contribute to readability.

3. SPACES BETWEEN TYPED SENTENCES

This is very arcane issue, I know. But I started my professional career as a journalist. Using the Associated Press Stylebook, we always were taught to put two spaces between sentences.

Then, for some reason, AP Stylebook writers decided recently that one space would so. Well, not for me. I got used to two spaces and so that’s what I continue to do – just because I have the freedom to do so.

4. CAPITALIZATION

This is one of the least understood aspects of language. Some people over-use capital letters. Others under-use them.

I try to err on the side of over-use. Examples are the uses of the words governor and legislature. Often, they are not capitalized. But I believe there is a solid rationale to do so, so I do.

5. ABBREVIATIONS

As a journalist, I was taught to abbreviate a lot of words. Representative, when attached to a person, became Rep. _______. Senator became Sen. ___________.

Names of states were abbreviated in almost every circumstance.

As a master of my own destiny in retirement, I choose to avoid most abbreviations because, again avoiding them contributes, I believe, to readability. 

6. SPLITTING INFINITIVES

The advice here is, don’t. If you remain focused as you write, it is relatively easy to avoid this common, but, for me irritating, tendency.

7. LINKING NOUNS AND VERBS

This is another of the most common violations of solid language use.   Think only of this sentence: The committee did ______ work. Should the pronoun be “its” or “their.” It should be “its,” but many people, either in talking or writing, end up using “their.”

If, in this example, you think the word “their” sounds better, then change the sentence to read, “The committee members did “their” work.” In this case, “their” is accurate.

Enough already. Those are, for me, a collection of seven hot-button language issues. With so much time on my hands, I may find more.