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.

As a person who was involved in and with government for about 40 years, I always had difficulty with many political labels in common use – then and now.

Labels never work well to describe fully someone’s political leanings.

For me, one of the best examples currently is the word “progressive.” Political writers usually attach the word to those on the left of the political spectrum, and on its face, the word conveys progress. Well, proposals from the left, especially the far left, do not represent progress, at least to me. They usually represent defeat for some aspect of our way of life in favor of more government.

Or, consider the word “democratic.” Many of those who fall under the label do not operate in a democratic way. They are more like autocrats who believe their way is best and it should be “the highway” for others who have the temerity to disagree.

I was reminded of all this when reading a column in the Washington Post by David Greenberg, a history professor at Rutgers University.

In his piece, he asked this question: Is any word misused more often in the news media than “liberal”?

He wrote: “Here’s one example from the New York Times last spring: ‘The House Democratic (there’s that word again) campaign arm is nearing open warfare with the party’s rising liberal wing as political operatives close to Speaker Nancy Pelosi try to shut down primary challenges before what is likely to be a hard-fought campaign next year to preserve the party’s shaky majority.’

“Hidden within this 46-word thicket is the strange idea that liberals are at war with the party’s leadership and seeking to oust its long-serving incumbents — who are themselves, of course, liberals.”

Greenberg claims that, for several years now, reporters and pundits have been incorrectly applying the word “liberal” when they mean leftist.

Liberalism, he adds, has been the governing philosophy of the Democrat Party since Franklin D. Roosevelt, if not Woodrow Wilson. Liberal could be assumed to be a doctrine of liberty, equality, justice and individual rights that relies, in the modern age, on a strong federal government for enforcement.

Most prominent Democrats, including established veterans like former vice president Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, are liberal.

So why, Greenberg asks, has liberal come to mean “radical” in seemingly popular usage? In recent years, what was once a left-wing fringe of the Democrat Party has grown significantly. Instead of describing these newcomers and insurgents as “further to the left” than mainstream liberals, reporters succumb to a convenient shorthand — politicians are deemed “more liberal” than the liberals.

More from Greenberg: “The muddying of the word ‘liberalism’ mirrors, in some ways, what happened to ‘conservative.’ As the Republican Party moved rightward, its most extreme members — whose politics were quite radical and once properly labeled ‘reactionary’— often were confusingly described as ‘more conservative’ than their cohorts.

“This reshuffling of terms is problematic, because both conservatism and liberalism are sets of ideas, not simply labels conveniently to identify one half of the political spectrum (itself an imperfect metaphor). Moving left doesn’t necessarily make one ‘more liberal.’ At a certain point, the traveler leaves the province of liberalism for one that is more correctly identified as socialism, radicalism or leftism.

“Not every politician or person fits neatly into one category or the other. The labels represent tendencies, not fixed identities.”

Some liberals – surely not Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or their ilk on the left extreme — also reject far left dogma by seeing a vital role for private business in generating wealth, economic opportunity and innovation.

The battle last year over bringing Amazon’s headquarters to Queens pitted liberal arguments from New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio against left-wing ones from the likes of Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

In the end, Ocasio-Cortez won and Amazon took its millions of dollars of investment and thousands of jobs elsewhere, which cost Ocasio-Cortez’ constituents a lot.

Further, terms like “centrist” and “moderate” (ones I claim for myself) are nowadays flung around as terms of insult or abuse, as badges of weakness or tepidness.

No, centrist or moderate should be viewed as badges of courage.

So, I say from my post in the cheap seats out West, eschew labels – including liberal and conservative – when they don’t reflect the complicated description of persons involved in politics or of citizens interested in political processes.

That’s a word to the wise for all of us in today’s tinged era of politics when the process is marred more by fighting and impugning the integrity of those with whom you may disagree than accepting differences and working toward middle-ground solutions.