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.

One of my favorite columnists, Peggy Noonan, wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) a few days ago advocating for what she called the a new brand of conservatism, which acknowledges a role for government without always adding bigger government.

Call this the philosophy of President Ronald Reagan. At least, that’s how I remember Reagan as he led the country.

However, several writers of letters to the editor of the WSJ took Noonan to task as if she was an advocate of more and bigger government.

She isn’t.  She is an advocate of better government.

Here is a sampling of what the letter writers said, with, at the end, my conclusion:

From Maryland: “Peggy Noonan calls for a new conservatism to reunite the Republican Party, but it appears to me that her new conservatism is driving the party apart and disenfranchising the silent majority of moderate voters.

“These voters simply want to focus on what Noonan refers to in her opening paragraph as ‘old conservatism.’ Many people still agree on limiting government power and entitlements, encouraging free enterprise and reducing our worrisome level of debt. Far fewer subscribe to new conservatism’s social values, many of which should be regarded as personal matters of faith rather than part of a party platform.

“Imposing a conservative social litmus test is quite apparently keeping the most qualified candidates from running on the Republican ticket. Consequently, this is keeping away moderate voters, many of whom, like myself, used to call themselves and vote Republican.”

From Alabama: “It is big government that is tearing the nation apart. When Noonan urges people ‘to spend your energies on a battle not to make government significantly smaller, but to make it significantly more helpful,’ she merely sets the stage for another round of debate on who deserves the most help, who should be forced to pay for it and which new agencies should be created.

“She asks, ‘What would a large government harnessed toward conservative ends look like?’ She should know that, to the other party, it would look like a weapon to be snatched back at all costs. As long as there is big government, we will be at each other’s throats for control of it.”

From Michigan: “It is impossible to conserve an order that is already broken, as Abraham Lincoln concluded about the Whig Party in his day. We are on the verge of a crisis that demands a new party with a vision to steer us through this crisis. That party must be committed to restoring constitutional limits on the powers of the federal government.”

From New York: “Many of the challenges we face aren’t due to an undersized government, but are the result of an increasingly polarized political atmosphere. Rather than a large government being the solution, what we truly need is bi-partisanship. Thomas Jefferson once stated big government’s true effect, ‘The course of history shows that as government grows, liberty decreases.’”

Now, from me out West.

I share concerns about more and bigger environment, though I readily recognize that there is an appropriate role for government.

I just think elected officials should demand more performance from government these days before supporting more government. Imagine if government programs were given specific performance requirements and, then, if the performance requirements were not met, they would be terminated.

Instead, what we have in Salem, Oregon and Washington, D.C. is support for more taxes and more government without apparent regard to producing, even guaranteeing, results from current programs.

It would be good if government performed more like the private sector. Produce results or fail.