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.

A couple points strike me as I reflect on the headline to this blog.

• One is that, as Americans, we are addicted to It has become the signature emotion of American public life.
• The second is reflected in the following paragraph from a recent column by one of my favorite writers, Peggy Noonan, whose work appears in the Wall Street Journal.

“Here is my concern,” Noonan writes “Politics is part theater, part showbiz, it’s always been emotional, but we’ve gotten too emotional, both parties. It’s too much about feelings and how moved you are. The balance is off. We have been electing magic ponies in our presidential contests, and we have done this while slighting qualities like experience, hard and concrete political accomplishment, even personal maturity. Barack Obama, whatever else he was, was a magic pony. Donald Trump too. Beto O’Rourke, who is so electrifying Democrats, also appears to be a magic pony.”

So, instead of real political perspectives, we – and I know it is a generalization to use the word “we” because not all Americans fit into the box – operate out of outrage and looking for magic ponies.

Lance Morrow, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a former essayist for Time, wrote recently about the outrage addiction.

“People have been mad as hell for much of the 21st century, starting roughly with the stalemated Bush-Gore election in 2000, followed quickly by 9/11. Fundamentals have been changing fundamentally: marriage, sexual identity, racial politics, geopolitics.

“Outrage flourishes also because of the rise of social media— the endless electronic brawl—and because it plays so well on our screens. Cable news draws pictures in crayon, in bold primary colors that turn politics into cartoons. On the left, ‘stay woke’ means ‘stay outraged.’ Trumpians want to ‘lock her up’ or ‘build a wall.’ Outrage is reductive, easy to understand. It is an idiom of childhood—a throwback even to the terrible twos (of childhood).”

Reflecting on good points by both Noonan and Morrow, I believe we, as citizens, we need to move beyond outrage and the magic ponies. We need to identify honest, forthright and ethical political leaders who won’t stoop, figuratively or even literally, to yelling on the street corner to attempt to get their way. And who won’t assume that anyone who disagrees with them is nuts.

We need political leaders who will pledge, once elected, to do the public’s business – to take actions designed to find, as I like to say, “the smart middle.”

We don’t need magic ponies or intentional outrage. If both continue, it is not an exaggeration to say that the future of our form of democracy is literally at stake.