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 days after national TV addresses by three persons who fancy themselves as “political leaders,” this blog could be about shutdown politics again.

No.

Wall Street Journal editorial writers had it right when they wrote this:

“The obvious deal is for Democrats to provide border money to Trump in return for legal status for Dreamer immigrants and others like Haitians on temporary visas facing deportation soon. But neither side showed any interest in such common sense on Tuesday. Back to your regularly scheduled political morass.”

Instead of more on the stupid shutdown, I write today about a different subject.

When you hear or see good words that convey a stout image, you realize that it is not the number of words you use, but how you use them that counts.

Consider this quote from former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher:

“… the problem with socialism is that you always run out of other people’s money. The trouble with resisting socialism is that until the money runs out, free-spending progressive policies are remarkably seductive. Their appeal comes from what economists call lying prices: Advertised prices that don’t reflect the full cost of what you’re buying.”

Kudos to Thatcher.

In only a few words, she skewers all those who believe that more government will answer every problem – but the real “problem is that you always run out of other people’s money.”

Look no farther than avowed socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders, who, no doubt, is burnishing his credentials for another run at being president.

He says he wants at least two things by taking “other people’s money.”

1. He wants a so-called “Medicare for All” program that would bankrupt the federal government bank, even though that “bank” always prints new stuff when it runs out of the old.
2. He wants a plan for the government to pay the cost of higher education for every individual.

As such ideas generate buzz – probably not from another left wing candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren — from many others on the left — remember Thatcher’s sound advice:

“Pretty soon you run out of other people’s money.”

I wish I would have been as smart as Thatcher to use those few words so well.