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 and to do as I please as the director – read, dictator.

The others are the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of “Just Saying.”

Here is a set of new good quotes worth remembering.

FROM PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, REMEMBER HIM?: I was only about eight years old when former president Dwight D. Eisenhower included this quote in a March 6, 1956 speech:

“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is moral and right, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”

Comment: I wish I would remember hearing that quote in person. At eight years old? Probably would not have recognized what the good words meant.

But, as applied to today, it resonates.

And, I think both major political parties – the Republicans and the Democrats – are more interested in seizing power and, then, if they have such power, finding ways, good or bad, to keep it.

If that means good public policy suffers, so be it.

A SO-CALLED GREEN NEW DEAL: “Today’s Democrat presidential candidates sound like late-night infomercials: ‘A Green New Deal! Medicare-for-all! Reparations for some! Free college for the young! Increased Social Security for the elderly! BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! At no additional cost, you get Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).’

MMT, which supposedly banishes nitpicking worries about how to pay for things, is the Democrats’ intellectual breakthrough du jour. Although the theory remains somewhat hazy (or, as Democrats say about their un-empirical flights of fancy, MMT is beautifully ‘aspirational’), it is this:

The nation has fiat money — currency whose issuer will not convert it into something valuable (e.g., gold) but that the public accepts is a reliable store of value. A government that controls its currency need never run short of it. Therefore (non sequitur alert), the government can borrow and expand the money supply sufficiently to allow spending to proceed without reference to government revenue, as long as interest rates are, and are apt to remain, low. In the words of three MMT believers (Stephanie Kelton, economics professor and former Bernie Sanders campaign adviser; Andres Bernal, doctoral student and adviser to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.); Greg Carlock, a climate researcher): “Anything that is technically feasible is financially affordable.”

Comment: Sounds like Bernie Sanders and other far left-wing wackos run wild. Spending other people’s money is great fun!

HOW DEMOCRATS COULD WIN IN 2020: Two Democrat consultants, James Carville and Jim Messina, told this to the Wall Street Journal: “If Democrats run our numbers up—which we’re sure to do in what will likely be the largest presidential turnout in history—we only need to peel off some of these voters to put us over the top in the states that will decide the election.

“This president is no Barack Obama, no Bill Clinton. Trump didn’t bring about the largest increase of college opportunity since the GI bill, get an unprecedented number of Americans health coverage, or dig us out of a great recession. His daily circus of corruption has failed the working class. That is a vital message we need to get to these voters and we need to start now. The longer we wait, the more daunting our prospects become.

“There’s a great saying: “When your opponent is drowning, throw ’em an anvil.” Trump is already underwater. So as a party, while Democratic candidates are out trying to make a name in the primary, we need to get to Waukesha, Wisconsin, Scranton, Pennsylvania., and Macomb, Michigan, look voters in the eye, and throw Trump that damn anvil.”

Comment: Readers of this blog – both of you – will know that I am no Trump fan. I think character counts for something in the nation’s highest political office and Trump has none.

But, I also think Carville and Messina have out-lived their usefulness as they have advocated for years for left wing candidates who are no better than Trump.

I say, “through Carville and Messina an anvil, too.”

SOMETHING GOOD IS GOING ON: The deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger, scores again with his “Wonderland” column. He writes this:

“The great political challenge of our time is sorting out what matters from what’s just chatter. The din of distracting statistical noise is overwhelming. A Democrat governor named Inslee announces he’s going to run for the U.S. presidency on one issue—climate change. Days later, the real president delivers a speech of immeasurable length to a conference of conservatives about pretty much everything rattling around in his head. The new week dawns with a Democrat House committee chairman named Nadler demanding that 81 of the president’s “associates” provide him with a document dump.

“Serious people would like to believe something real in politics is going on. The good news is . . . something is.

“This past weekend, The Wall Street Journal published a series of stories titled “Inside the Hottest Job Market in Half a Century.” As far as I’m concerned, this jobs record is the story of the year. The Journal’s articles transformed a year of economic data into the new daily reality of getting paid to work in America.

“All sorts of people who have previously had trouble landing a job are now finding work,” the Journal reported. “Racial minorities, those with less education and people working in the lowest-paying jobs are getting bigger pay raises and, in many cases, experiencing the lowest unemployment rate ever recorded for their groups. They are joining manufacturing workers, women in their prime working years, Americans with disabilities and those with criminal records, among others, in finding improved job prospects after years of disappointment.”

Comment: A solid economy matters to all of us. And, for me, as I have written before, I cannot believe that most political figures these days ignore “the jobs issue.” Having one – a job – solves many problems. Therefore, creating a system where the private sector can create more jobs – as well as save the ones they have – strikes me as political proposal worth selling.

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And this footnote: In blogs such as this when I write the word Democrat, I refuse to use the word “Democratic.” That’s because most of those who call themselves Democrats are definitely not “democratic.” So, I avoid the use that word just as an expression of personal preference.