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 past-time  – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Motivated by a Washington Post editorial, I ask the question in the headline again.  It also is based, for what it’s worth, on my long history in politics…never as a candidate, but as a state government executive and a lobbyist.

In the past, I always valued the center because I felt that neither the far right or the far left held reasonable views about how to solve pressing public policy problems – or, for that matter, that they cared much about solving problems.

As I look at the field of candidates bidding to run for president – it is still taking shape – I fear that there is not much at or near center.

On one hand, President Donald Trump defies description as he preens for re-election.  To call him a candidate from the right does an injustice to the right.  He is a candidate who values only himself, believing he can solve every problem and, if you don’t agree with him, be damned.

Candidates on the Democrat side clearly are from the political left, but it is often hard to decide how far left they lean or, more to the point for this blog, whether there is a center.

So it was that the Post editorial appeared under a headline that declined to label two D candidates – Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden – as centrists, though both campaigns claim that designation.

Here are excerpts from the Post editorial, which, as you read the excerpts, were no doubt written to compliment all of the campaigns running against Trump, including emphasizing that those trying to find the center have ideas worth considering:

“It has become an unchecked assumption about the Democrat presidential race:  The candidates are fighting an ideological war between ‘left’ and ‘center.’  This narrative is false, and it is hardly benign.  It minimizes the bold policy ambitions of those in the mislabeled ‘centrist’ lane and falsely characterizes those on the left flank as braver or more committed to reform.

“Yes, some candidates in the race are to the left of others.  Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren not only want to make sure that all Americans have access to health care, as do all the Democrats, but they want maximum government control in achieving that goal.

“But the fact that Sanders’s and Warren’s positioning puts them decidedly to the left of others in the race does not make their competitors ‘centrist.’  All, in fact, have put forward ambitious, progressive platforms for reducing inequality and promoting access to health and education.”

Still, I would rate Buttigieg and Biden – and perhaps Senator Amy Klobuchar, as well – as trying to carve out a center.

For me, though, their policy proposals, even if they could be described as not as far left as Sanders and Warren, still involve way too much government – spending we cannot manage as we cede ever more control to government bureaucrats.

Even so, as I anticipate the 2020 election, I make these commitments:

1. I will never vote for Trump for anything because, to me, character still matters as we choose political leaders and Trump has none.
2. I will continue to look for candidate who values the center, talks like it, and acts like it.
3. And, if that doesn’t work, I may end up like the writer of a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal last week who said this: