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, remember, is one of three departments I run with a free hand to manage as I see fit. Call me a dictator.

From Fred Barnes in the Wall Street Journal: “What keeps Democrats in the mood for resistance after two years? Trump has become a fixation. No one arouses opposition the way he does. Democrats are like those Trump-loathing columnists who can’t write about anyone but the president. They’re obsessed with Trump.”

Comment: On one hand, I understand why so many Democrats and the media would be fixated on opposing Trump. The president deserves the derision for the way he handles the nation’s highest political office.

On the other hand, it appears that Democrats have no policy agenda other than to oppose Trump. In that way, they appear unable to assert positions on their own, other than, I suppose, left-leaning proposals such as Medicare for All and free college.

Consider the media. Many reporters or columnists appear fixated on Trump. One of the best examples is Dana Milbank who writes, mainly, for the Washington Post. Once in awhile, I wish he’d find other subjects than fulminating about Trump.

From Warren E. Buffett, in a 2006 book: “You can’t make a good deal with a bad person.”

Comment: Great quote. And, of course, it applies coherently to today when “bad persons” are in charge everywhere – Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. None of them would appear to know the first thing about cutting a real deal to end the government shutdown. So, all of us lose. [Even though there is now a three-week deal to end the shutdown.]

From a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal: “As the youngest female ever elected to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be forgiven a youthful blunder or two (visions of a 70 per cent tax rate).

“Her blunder is significant. Instead of focusing exclusively (like most socialists) on the physical, social and moral benefits of her ‘soft socialism,’ she mistakenly wandered into the forbidden socialist territory of how to pay for it.

“When socialists discuss the funding side of a vast social entitlement, they always get into trouble. Even Senator Bernie Sanders famously mumbles incoherently when asked the remotest of details about how his vision would be funded. At the very least, talk of funding will temper the scope of the utopian dream. And that is a downer for any exuberant political message.”

From hill.com: “A political neophyte from New York has an enormous Twitter following, punches back hard at the press, takes on critics within the party and has completely upended the Washington establishment.

“No, it’s not Donald Trump. It’s Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the self-described democrat socialist whose sharp tongue, take-no-prisoners approach and 24/7 presence on social media and TV has Republicans on and off Capitol Hill comparing the 29-year-old freshman to the 72-year-old president of the United States.

“Talk-show host Meghan McCain called Trump and Ocasio-Cortez ‘two sides of the same coin’ and said the liberal, Latina bomb thrower from the Bronx was ‘just like Trump on Twitter.’

“Representative Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois, said he, too, sees obvious parallels. Whether it’s President Trump or Ocasio-Cortez, it’s all based on ginning up anger and fear and it’s unfortunate.”

Comment: Ocasio-Cortez has demonstrated an ability – if you could call it “ability” – to garner media coverage, or generate hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. The fact that she doesn’t stick to facts doesn’t appear to matter, just as it does not for Trump. Nor does the fact that, contrary to left-wing political dogma, she ventures into the territory about how to pay for huge government programs.

No one can afford proposals from Ocasio-Cortez, nor Democrats such as Sanders or Senator Elizabeth Warren. They have grand plans to spend more of someone else’s money.

All of us in America should pay taxes to support government, especially public safety and international security. But, to pay for over-the-top, left wing ideas whose only rationale appears to be to garner more votes from the far left? No.

From Washington Post editorial writers: “President Trump’s temper tantrum over Congress’s refusal to fund a border wall paralyzed much of the government for five weeks, sapped the morale and wallets of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and low-wage contractors, left millions of Americans disgusted and dismayed, and diminished the United States in the eyes of the world. The impasse was proof of the president’s stark incapacity for leadership, which he reconfirmed Friday by threatening to re-shutter the government in three weeks.”

Comment: True. Trump does not know how to make a deal despite his assertions that he is a great deal-maker.

From George Will in the Washington Post: “When in 1994, Lindsay Graham, a South Carolina Republican, first ran for Congress, he promised to be, ‘one less vote for an agenda that makes you want to throw up.’ A quarter-century later, Graham himself is a gastrointestinal challenge. In the past three years, he had a road-to-Damascus conversion.

“In 2015, he said Donald Trump was a ‘jackass.’ In February 2016, he said ‘I’m not going to try to get into the mind of Donald Trump, because I don’t think there’s a whole lot of space there. I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy, I think he’s unfit for office. And: ‘I’m a Republican and he’s not. He’s not a conservative Republican. He’s an opportunist.’”

Comment: I wanted to include this quote from Will if for no other reason than it indicates I read the Washington Post, as well as the Wall Street Journal. Will, who often uses huge words whose definitions must be looked up, skewers Graham’s hard-to-understand duplicity. He says one thing one day and the opposite the next.

At the same time, without endorsing that kind of duplicity, I like the way Graham talks. You don’t have to focus deeply to know what he is saying, however much it may not be in line with his past comments.