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. 

As a golfer, if you think about what might be the hardest tee times in golf, Augusta National Golf Course, the annual site of the Masters’ Golf Tournament, could come to mind.

Or, you might think of Pebble Beach in California where, if you could get a time, the green fees would be in the range of $500, enough for many golfers to say they’d rather watch TV golf at Pebble than to pay the high fee.

Well, from my perch here in the California desert, one of the toughest tee times is at The Palms where I play my winter golf.

A tough tee time, you might ask, when I play at The Palms all the time. There is a catch.

The Palms does not schedule tee times. Those who play – members like me, as well as guests – don’t get tee times. The pros at the course work you in off the first tee when you show up at the course.

It’s part of what the course calls, without much modesty, the place where “golf purists play.”

Pure golf, as defined at The Palms, says there are not tee times and that you play your 18-hole round in less than three hours and 50 minutes. That’s usually tough to do in the desert where golf rounds at resort courses often stretch to about five hours.

But do these “pure” expectations give The Palms a feel as only place for the elite? No.

It’s easy, without tee times, to play and I have found the membership, to a person, to be friendly and welcoming.

All of this about tough tee times came to mind this morning as I read a story in my on-line edition of Links Magazine, which appeared under this headline:

5 OF THE HARDEST TEE TIMES IN GOLF

The writer, Graylin Loomis, started his piece with these two paragraphs:

“Some of the most exclusive courses in the world are also the most famous. Think Augusta National, Cypress Point, Shinnecock Hills, and others. Thanks to ‘best lists’ and hosting major championships, those courses are well known even if extremely difficult to get on.

“But then there’s another level of exclusive courses—those so restrictive you likely don’t even know they exist. They may be on private estates or open only to the owner’s family and friends. Or they have deliberately small memberships and no plans to open the doors.”

Loomis cited five such clubs.

Ardfin:  The rocky terrain and expanses of peat bogs of Scotland’s inner Hebridean islands make them perfect for whisky but a tough place for a golf course. That didn’t deter Australian hedge fund manager Greg Coffey, who purchased 12,000 acres on the isle of Jura and had Bob Harrison build a course along the picturesque coastline. Since its completion in 2018, rumors have flown regarding outside access and whether Coffey will ever bring on members. For now, he seems happy to have the place to himself, tough news indeed since by all accounts Harrison built a stellar course on a very difficult and beautiful site.

Cherokee Plantation:  Cherokee Plantation, located in Yemassee, S.C., dates back to the late 1600s when it was established via royal grant. In the late 1990s the property was purchased by British entrepreneur Peter de Savary and he established a private club on the site. The club was initially limited to 50 shareholders, but word is there are only around two dozen members and no plans to grow. The first U.S. design by Brit Donald Steel, it has no out-of-bounds, but live oaks and Lowcountry wetlands border many of the holes. The very few members also can enjoy hunting, fishing, hiking, and other activities befitting a Southern-style estate.

Congaree Golf Club:  Our business is to know when new courses are being built, so it was a shock when a course opened near LINKS HQ that few in the industry knew of. When I visited the Ridgeland, S.C., property, I asked the director of golf how they’d kept it under wraps: “We worked very hard to keep it that way.” Billionaires Dan Friedkin and the late Bob McNair hired Tom Fazio to build a links-y sand-based course on a 2,000-acre southern plantation. Instead of members the club has “ambassadors,” all of whom are powerful figures that support the philanthropic efforts of Congaree (centering around young people and education).

Ellerston Golf Club:  A photographer I know visited Ellerston and was asked prior to teeing off to sign a non-disclosure agreement, agreeing not to take any photos or share any details from the day. It’s that private. Located on the estate of the late Australian media mogul Kerry Packer north of Sydney, the course was designed by Greg Norman and Bob Harrison. The designers were able to build anywhere on the 70,000-acre site and they chose an undulating area with a fast-moving stream that’s incorporated into many of the holes. Very difficult, it’s often ranked among the top 10 in Australia.

Golf de Morfontaine:  Should Morfontaine be on this list? Located in northern France, the club has a membership numbering in the hundreds (although when it opened in 1913 it was the private playground of the 12th duc de Gramont). Yet it’s still one of the hardest tee times in the world, particularly for Americans, who don’t often mingle with France’s golf illuminati. Also, Morfontaine is the highest ranked course on this list, often appearing among the world’s top 100. If you’re one of the lucky souls who gets to visit, you’ll find a charming heathland course, Grand Parcours, designed by Tom Simpson and renovated recently by Kyle Phillips. There’s also a Simpson-designed nine, the Valieres, that many visitors say is the most enjoyable nine of the day.

For my part, I’d like to find a way to play all of those hard-to-get-a-tee-time courses, though, frankly, I have not heard of them until this Links Magazine article – which may be exactly like the courses want it.

Probably won’t get to travel far and wide to these courses, but still find it fun to contemplate doing so.

I’ll just have to settle – very willingly, I add – to play The Palms here in La Quinta, as well as my home track in Salem, Oregon, Illahe Hills Golf and Country Club.   At the latter, there are tee times.

Great venues, both.

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.

Karl Rove asked this question in a recent piece for the Wall Street Journal.

I answer yes based, at least in part, on some of the statistics Rove provides.

Now, I know some will question Rove’s perspective because, in the past, he was a political consultant who helped get George Bush get elected, then served in the White House. Frankly, that experience doesn’t bother me; I consider it to be a credential, though there is little question that he still operates right of center.

What does bother me is the rationale from the left – perhaps even the far left from those who favor socialism over capitalism – as they make a case for a fully government-run health care system.

I don’t favor such a government-run system based on my 25 years as a private sector lobbyist in Oregon, which included representing several private health care enterprises.

To come up with improved health care policy, I also favor a bi-cameral, bi-partisan process at the Capitol in Salem – a process that takes all sorts of good idea from the left and the right and molds those ideas into a consensus product from the middle.

In Washington, D.C. that has not happened to the discredit of both parties. The Affordable Health Care Act, one of President Obama’s major achievements, passed without one Republican vote. Then, to retaliate, Republicans spent several years trying to tear down the act. No one tried to improve overall health care policy from the middle.

In Oregon, I believe a solution from the middle is still possible, though this blog will focus on federal issues.

Here is a summary of the points Rove makes to raise questions about Medicare for All:

• Democratic presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris made her party’s left-wing base happy this week. But in doing so, she might have made Democrats less attractive to general-election voters.  In a CNN town hall Monday, Harris endorsed “Medicare for All.” Pressed about whether the proposal would abolish private health insurance, the California senator breezily declared, “Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.” After Republicans jumped on her for this policy’s radicalism, a Harris adviser said the attacks were “good trouble” for her.

• A January 14 Kaiser Family Foundation poll seems at first glance to support that view. It found 56 per cent of Americans favor “a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare for All, where all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan,” compared with 42 per cent who opposed the idea. Thirty-two percent strongly oppose it, roughly matching the 34 per cent who strongly favor it.
• Yet, these results come before this deeply flawed policy gets scrutinized and picked apart. Medicare for All becomes less popular when people hear more about its possible effects. Support dropped to 37 per cent, with about 60 per cent opposed, when respondents were told it would “eliminate private health-insurance companies” or “require most Americans to pay more in taxes.” Support fell to 32 per cent when respondents were alerted it would “threaten current Medicare.” And it crashed to 26 per cent if those polled heard it would lead to “delays in people getting some medical tests and treatments.”
• Names matter, too. A November 2017 Kaiser poll found that, without mentioning negative effects, “Medicare for All” drew a 62 per cent favorable rating. But labeling the same idea “single-payer health insurance” dropped support to 48 per cent. Calling it “socialized medicine” produced a nearly even split, 44 per cent favorable to 43 per cent negative.
• Medicare for everyone may sound good to voters at first. But after sustained reflection—and Republican attacks—it will likely be soundly rejected. Most Americans do not want to surrender control of their health-care decisions to an impersonal bureaucracy in Washington.
• Just wait until Republicans raise questions about how much single-payer health care will cost. In an analysis last summer, Charles Blahous of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center pegged its price tag at $32.6 trillion over the first decade. The total federal budget for this fiscal year is only $4.4 trillion.
• Congressional supporters of the plan fear that nearly doubling the federal budget could sink their proposal. That’s why Senator Bernie Sanders, the father of Medicare for All, refuses to say how much it will cost. One of the plan’s principal cheerleaders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calls fiscal concerns “puzzling.” She told Jorge Ramos on Univision last November, “You just pay for it. We’re paying more now!” The following month, she tweeted that two-thirds of Medicare for All could be paid for by cutting wasteful Pentagon spending. The total Pentagon budget is about $700 billion.

In a column this morning, Wall Street Journal writer Holman Jenkins put his finger on one of the main notions from the left on Medicare for All – that, if it works for Scandinavia, it can work for us.

The problem, Jenkins contends, is that Scandinavian countries may have excellent medicine because they import innovations that wouldn’t be developed and proven if the U.S. weren’t developing them.  So there is free-riding in the Nordic system after all.  On us.

So, what is the future of Medicare for All?

The rush by Democrat presidential candidates to embrace free government-run health care — and measures like “free” college, guaranteed jobs and universal basic income—may make the 2020 election a contest between promise-them-anything Democrat socialism and free enterprise. The stakes don’t get much higher than that.

And, as for me, I vote for free enterprise.

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’s a lot of confusing information these days about what I’ll call “the lobby game.”

Much of it comes from publicity about bad actors, especially at the federal level who don’t play the game marked by honest and ethical conduct. Usually the reverse. They are in the game to get what they can — and policy and even politics be damned.

When that happens, the media goes nuts, reporting all of the misdeeds with major headlines and, at least to a degree, the reporting may be appropriate, given the depth of the misdeeds.

Such a focus, of course, obscures the reality that most lobbyists work hard and honestly to represent clients before elected officials and government agencies. That’s what I tried to do in Salem for about 25 years as a private sector lobbyist, preceded by 15 years working for state government where one of my responsibilities was to represent the agency where I worked before the Legislature.

All of that said, this blog posits a range of credentials, which I think are traits of solid lobbyists at the State Capitol in Salem.

But, first, let me provide a quick definition of what a lobbyist is, definitions which I used with my late mother to help her understand what I did for a living.

I had three definitions to explain my role as a lobbyist.

• The first was that I was like an attorney. I had a client or clients and my courtroom was the State Capitol. My client paid for my services, usually pursuant to a contract where I pledged to do the work of lobbying and the client pledged to cover the cost.
• The second was that I was like a trader on a busy commodity-trading floor. I had compete to get attention against a host of others who wanted to make their views known.
• The third was that I was like a salesperson. In my case, I was selling ideas, not, for example, a house or a car. I was looking for those who might accept or endorse those ideas.

Let me go on now to a list of important credentials and I will do so by using one of my favorite tactics to organize large bodies of information – the Top 10 List made popular by late-night entertainer David Letterman.

3. Know your audience: This is important for anyone in the sales game. You don’t need to change your basic proposition, you just need to tailor your approach to the audience.
4. Take time to understand where someone lives, where that person works (if he or she has a job outside the legislature), why he or she ran for office, and why he or she won. Answers to all of those questions will help to develop the sales-pitch to prompt them to consider the points you advocate on behalf of your client.
5. Persevere to achieve an outcome: Consider the long legislative session in Oregon to be a marathon, not a sprint. Work hard to achieve objectives for your client. Be at the Capitol early every day. Stay late. For you never know when you will get an opportunity to make a solid impression on a legislator or an Executive Branch official.
6. Don’t just try to win or avoid losing; be open to middle ground: This is critical because lobbying for clients should not just be a win-or-lose proposition. There is middle ground to be sought, which is the very definition of politics in the first place. In today’s lobby game, many will want to produce wins and losses as the primary objective. As a good lobbyist, don’t.

Recognize one of my pet phrases: “What goes around comes back around.” It is a saying meant to indicate that you, as a lobbyist, may disagree with a legislator on one issue on one day, but agree on an issue on the next day. It pays to understand this reality of process at the Capitol in Salem. Don’t make an enemy one day and try to win the person as an ally the next.

5. Respect the process: It can be easy to assume that the legislative process is only designed to be just that – a process with no product. But the process exists for a reason – good government, which, in Oregon, includes public notice of meetings, public meetings themselves, and on-line copies of all pieces of legislation available to members of the public. Plus, there is a process by which bills are considered in the House and the Senate and, then if a bill passes, it goes on to the governor. Lobbyists should be familiar with and respect the process.

Further, there are ins and outs in the process. Know them. You can use legitimate process variations to achieve objectives for your client. As an example, when our firm was trying to pass a bill to require insurance companies to cover environmental damages to property (yes, that should have been a given, but many insurance companies were reneging on what could be considered their obligations), our bill failed to move in the Oregon House. So, I headed over to the Senate to find a bill with an appropriate “relating clause” (the first words in any bill that limits what it can include, even by amendment). With the help of the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I found one and asked for our insurance regulatory language to be “stuffed” into that bill. The Senate chair agreed. The bill passed the Senate, then after a close battle, ended up passing on the House floor and the governor signed it.

6. Maintain your credibility: Maintaining credibility by action and style is critical for any lobbyist. If you lose credibility, you will no longer be effective. For instance, if you convey a point, then have to change your position, explain the change to all who heard you the first time, and the correction will enhance your credibility.
7. Recognize the importance of ideas: As you help your client decide whether there is an “ask” in the Legislature, don’t forget that, as the process works in Oregon, good ideas still matter. If you can translate your idea into a story – perhaps with interesting graphics that illustrate your point of view – good. Stories about good ideas are a solid way to drive your point home to legislators who may not have a lot of background, understandably, in the subject area your client espouses.
8. Don’t accept clients when you disagree with their views on the basis of principle: This was one of the keys to my 25 years as a state lobbyist. My firm did not accept clients when we disagreed with those clients based on principles. There was no way we could speak for such a client.

As examples, we never represented pro-tobacco interests, pro-abortion interests, pro-homosexual interests or pro-gun interests. Didn’t. Couldn’t.

9. Communicate as much with your client as with legislators and agency officials: Clients need to understand the context of the Legislature and they are likely to get most of that context from you. So keep in touch with them.
10. There is no replacement for solid ethical, honest behavior as a lobbyist. Those you are lobbying should be able to respect you and your word. I like to say that a lobbyist’s favorite axiom should be, “my word is my bond.”

What follows could be #11, but I’ll stick with 10 and make this a conclusion. Good lobbyists are ready to tout their successes and explain their failures in communications with clients at the end of a legislative session. I often used the tactic of a “Top 10 List” to summarize work over the previous six months, as well as to set the stage for the next session.