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 is easy these days, soon after the mid-term election, to criticize those who won and prepare to take their offices, but one fact remains: We put them there.

If we want better officials to represent us, especially in Congress, as well as the Oregon Legislature, then we should elect better candidates – candidates who will quit campaigning once an election is over and get about the important business of governing.

Too often, we will vote for candidates who agree with us and we with them.

I say it would better if we would vote for candidates who would pledge to do the “public’s business,” not hew to a particular set of propositions with which we might to happen to agree.

Here is one way to describe the dichotomy.

• Many of those who support Democrats believe Republicans only know how to say “no.”
• Many of those who support Republicans believe Democrats only know how to advocate for ever-expanding government.

To some, this gives rise to the idea of a third party candidate, though such a candidate probably would not have the wherewithal, including money, or the swath of support to surmount the two major parties.

That could begin to change, I suspect, if the two parties continue to fail to act in the general public interest and earn debits for only being interested in yelling on the street corner, figuratively speaking, and remaining in power.

Consider health care.

Those on the left often appear to want a single payer system, one that would turn over health care to the government at great cost, a cost no one, including taxpayers could afford.

Those on the right often appear only to be willing to say “no” to anyone’s proposal from the left, even the near left, because it would be likely to include a role for government – and, of course, government already is heavily involved in health care through, at least, Medicare and Medicaid.

Why not use two programs, already in place, as a basis for reforming health care?

One of my partners at the firm from which I retired believes that I am one of those who supports saying “no” to any health care idea.

“No,” again I say. But this time my “no” means I don’t have magic answers about health care policy, but want those from the left and the right to get together and hammer out a compromise, often a dirty word to party partisans.

I say “produce a process that produces a product!”

What this means is that reasonable elected officials from both sides of the aisle – yes, there are some left on both sides – would go into a room with their ideas, discuss them across the table (make it a round one) and strive to find middle ground.

Then, frankly, we would not have the current Affordable Health Care, which was passed in the Obama years without one Republican vote and, despite the title, is not affordable. The then then and possible new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, famously said she hadn’t even read the bill, but wanted it to pass.

When Republicans took control of the House and the Senate in Congress, they spent more time trying to repeal ObamaCare than working to find a middle ground replacement – and they paid for that negativity at the polls.

A pox on both sides. Their conduct reflects badly on a health care public policy process.

It is only one example that should prompt us, as voters, to support better candidates – candidates who would work to find, as I continually like to call it, the “smart middle.”