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.

There may not be a good reason to write about the shutdown again, but I feel compelled to do so, if only to criticize the tendency of many in the media to score the recent fiasco by naming winners and losers.

There is a tendency for these shutdown watchers to contend that President Donald Trump lost and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won as the federal government prepared to re-open next Monday.

That’s unfortunate because, for me, it was Americans who lost as both Trump and Pelosi, augmented by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, behaved like immature juveniles as they took the country through a needless process to define what they wanted. They wanted winners and losers, not what many in the country wanted, which was smart negotiators who would keep the public interest first and foremost.

Smart public officials should want to do the public’s business and, when they cannot win outright, find the smart middle ground.

Trump, Pelosi and Schumer are not smart officials. They are stalwarts for their side of the political spectrum and the general public be damned.

All of this occurred as the president signed a short-term funding bill late yesterday without money for his border wall. He had little political choice. Most voters blamed him for the shutdown, and the costs to the public had begun to build. Flight delays multiplied as air-traffic controllers called in sick while the White House’s leading economist said the shutdown was hurting the economy. Perhaps someone told Trump that presidents get the blame when the economy suffers.

All of this was predictable, since shutdowns never work politically for the party seen to trigger them. Trump’s strategy, to the extent he had one, was to hold his breath until Pelosi gave in. She merely had to do nothing to win, but I give her no credit for her juvenile behavior.

As it ended and even as we face another shutdown three weeks down the road, what can we learn from the recent one.

A possible answer to the question is headline is – nothing.

Another possible answer is that we now now that “our” leaders in Washington, D.C., on both sides of the aisle, are not leaders in the true sense of that word. They only want to WIN for their side.

And, a final answer – one I hope D.C. “leaders” would learn – is that stalemates such as the shutdown can only be solved by compromise in the middle.

That should be the nature of politics in the first place – the “art of the compromise.”

Compromise would require leaders of all persuasions to get into a room – make it a round table to be sure — and hammer out a deal in the middle. On one side, you give something and get something. On the other side, the same.

The result is a move forward, not stalemate.

To provide an idea of compromise, let me cite one example during my 25+ years as a lobbyist at the State Capitol in Salem.

It dealt with taxes on hospitals and health insurers that the governor and legislative leaders in Salem wanted to impose in order to come up with a trove of new “state general fund” dollars that could garner federal match under the Medicaid program.

A critic could say that the goal of the proposal was just “to get the federal dollars.” A supporter could say the goal was to obtain state and federal money to expand care for low-income Oregonians.

As a representative of both hospitals and insurers, I was involved in negotiations over whether to move forward on the taxes, and, if so, how to move.

My starting point, along with other health care lobbyists, was not to move forward at all. Once in place, we knew the taxes would never go away and that hospital and insurer tax money would be diverted to non-health care purposes. Plus, taxes would increase health care costs.

The starting point for legislators who had proposed the bill was that low-income health care mattered, so they wanted to get the “new money.”

With a stalemate in view, a decision was made to convene a group of negotiators from both sides who would try to hammer out a deal in the middle. I supported the approach and that’s what happened – a compromise, which ended up being approved by the House and the Senate and signed by the governor.

What this example shows is that, if persons involved in the public process would commit to working to find the smart middle, that middle could be found.

I wish the “leaders” in Washington, D.C. would cultivate their own commitment to compromise for the benefit of the country, not just their own political bases.

A footnote: In the above example, lobbyists like me insisted that the compromise be memorialized in a“memorandum of understanding” that would be signed by all parties. Good idea, but unfortunately, in the end, the governor and legislators failed to live up to their end of the deal, which proves two things – (a) a deal might be fashioned properly, but is only as good as the commitment of those who signed up for it, and (b) it is almost impossible for the private sector to reach agreement on a deal with government because a “new emergency” always crops up. This issue – the incredible obstacles to cutting a deal with government that remains in place is a top for further blog. To her credit, the only legislator who expressed misgivings about not living up to a deal she signed was Senator Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose. She deserves credit for her honesty and ethical behavior.