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 to 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 press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as 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.

The leading Democrat candidate for president in 2020, former U.S. Senator and Vice President, Joe Biden, has come in for strong criticism recently from those running against him.

The issue?

He said that, when in the U.S Senate, he found a way to work with such colleagues as James Eastland, an avowed segregationist. Biden wanted produce compromise on issues in Congress – compromise, not on racist issues, but on other topics before the Senate Judiciary Committee which, back in the day, was chaired by Eastland

No would one say Biden is, himself, a segregationist, but the criticism was lodged nevertheless, no doubt in part by other Ds running for president who believe there is no alternative but to rake Biden over the coals, given his large polling lead.

Advance their own cause by tearing Biden down.

As one observer of all from my position in the cheap seats out West, I abhor the criticism Biden has received lately.

To me, all he said was that, in Congress, he tried to find middle ground by working with others, even if he disagreed wholly with their general views and background.

In the Wall Street Journal today, Ryan Clancy, now a strategist for the group “No Labels,” and a former speechwriter (not affiliated in any way with Biden’s current presidential campaign), put it this way.

Democrats, Give Biden a Break

The pile-on over James Eastland epitomizes everything that’s wrong with politics.

“Robert Byrd was the Democratic Senate majority leader from 1977-81 and again from 1987-89,” Clancy wrote. “He was also once in the Ku Klux Klan.

“What should we think of the admired and even iconic Democrat senators who worked with Byrd? Dined with him? Even said nice things about him? Ted Kennedy. Al Gore. George Mitchell. Bill Bradley. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Should they be discredited and tarred with the sins of their Senate colleague?

“It’s a question worth considering in light of the attacks on Joe Biden for saying at a fundraiser that he ‘got things done’ with two southern segregationist senators even though he vehemently disagreed with them on civil rights and other issues.”

Clancy says that “durable progress in Washington requires consensus, sometimes with people whose views you find objectionable. No doubt Biden would have been better off citing his bi-partisan work with someone like Bob Dole or Dick Lugar rather than Eastland.

“You could argue there was little good in a man like Eastland—that he wasn’t caricatured as a racist, but was one—and I’d agree. But when Biden arrived in the Senate in 1973, Eastland chaired the Judiciary Committee. To serve his constituents and the country, Biden had to forge working relationships with powerful senior colleagues.”

The problem is that Democrats talk about Republicans and Republicans talk about Democrats, not as fellow citizens to be debated, but, rather, as enemies to be destroyed. Increasingly, Clancy adds, the same thing – acrimony — is happening within the parties “as purists and pragmatists battle for primacy.”

“Citizens often prefer politics as performance art and never miss an opportunity to take something an opponent said, twist it and present it in the worst possible light.

The rule in politics these days is a cycle of outrage and denunciation that never ends and makes our government and our lives worse. It is no wonder Americans have such a low opinion of our politics and politicians.

For me, the shrinking middle ground – the shrinking ability to work together to solve the nation’s problems — signals that the future of America as a democracy is literally at stake.