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.

FROM HILL.COM: “Joe Biden is proud he can get along with Republicans — and that could be a problem if he enters the 2020 race.

“The former vice president seems to see comity and decency as the antidotes to the fractious Trump era. But his approach can look too timorous to a swathe of the Democratic primary electorate — especially those who have come to view the GOP as the enemy, not just the opposition.

“Biden, who was first elected to the Senate in 1972 and served six terms, often hearkens back to an era of greater civility among lawmakers, even if they represented diametrically opposed viewpoints.”

Comment: I have not been much of a Biden fan in the past, though I have a lot of respect for how he has handled huge life difficulties, such as the deaths of members of his family. There is very little question but that Biden would be far better than the current clown in the White House.

Note the phrase above: “The former vice president seems to see comity and decency as the antidotes to the fractious Trump era.”

A number of Democrats, including some of those running for president, as well as a bloc of left-wing voters, ridicule “comity and decency,” as, of course, does Trump.

My view is that our political system needs to find a way to go back to the era when compromise was not a dirty word – to a time when those who might disagree with each other did so agreeably, with “comity and decency.”

Fat chance, you say. Probably. But that’s why I am preparing to support either Biden or a centrist third-party candidate in 2020.

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: “Dick Cheney: “We’re getting into a situation when our friends and allies around the world that we depend upon are going to lack confidence in us… I worry that the bottom line of that kind of an approach is we have an administration that looks a lot more like Barack Obama than Ronald Reagan.”

“The former vice president uncorked one of the most searing conservative critiques to date of Trump’s foreign policy while conducting a Q&A with Vice President Mike Pence at a recent donor retreat.

“Cheney respectfully but repeatedly and firmly pressed Pence on a number of the president’s foreign policy moves. He expressed concerns that such actions are taking a harder line toward U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and deciding to withdraw troops from Syria during in what he fretted was ‘the middle of a phone call.’ Cheney expressed alarm over news reports that Trump ‘supposedly doesn’t spend that much time with the intel people, or doesn’t agree with them, frequently,’ as well as the high staff turnover rate at the intelligence agencies.

“He worried aloud, again and again, that, for Trump, foreign policy boils down to a crude dollars-and-cents transaction… He worried about Trump’s decision to cancel the decades-long U.S. military exercises with South Korea and referenced a recent Bloomberg News Report about the president’s directive ‘to pursue a policy that would insist that the Germans, the Japanese, and the South Koreans pay total cost for our deployments there, plus 50 percent on top of that.’ … ‘I don’t know, that sounded like a New York state real estate deal to me,’ Cheney quipped.”

Comment: Many voters dislike Cheney, despite his long record of public service, which, clearly, has been marked by various controversies, some of his own making. Without commenting on that either way, Cheney has a good point this time around. Allies around the world won’t have confidence in the U.S. if the country continues to operate with off-the-top-of-his head views by Trump, which, as Cheney averred, seem more attuned to a real estate deal than international relations.

Time to move Trump out of the Oval Office so, perhaps, he can spend time in prison for his crimes once he exits the nation’s top political office. It remains a mystery why he holds that office when he treated his campaign for it as an infomercial in favor of the so-called “Trump brand.”

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST: “…Biden also continued his running argument with the Democrat Party’s ‘new left,’ returning several times to the idea that politics had been broken by people who refuse to seek consensus. He referred to Delaware’s election tradition of ‘returns day,’ where victorious and defeated candidates literally bury a hatchet together and ride in a parade, as an example of the way politics should be.

“’We don’t demonize our opponents,’” he said. ‘We don’t belittle them. We don’t treat the opposition as the enemy. We might even say a nice word about a Republican if they do something good.’”

Comment: As hugely different as they are and have been, we need more Bidens and Cheneys in politics these days. As Biden well said, “our politics has been broken by people who refuse to seek consensus.”

We need to elect leaders who will seek just that – consensus motivated by compromise and a zeal for middle ground, which is where most good solutions like anyway.

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And this footnote: I almost included quotes relating to Representative Alexandra Oacasio-Cortex, but couldn’t bring myself to do so. She is so far left that she doesn’t show up on any political spectrum. Yet, she still appears to reflect a growing tendency in this country – let’s have socialism. Enough said!