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.

Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib proposed a good question in his column this week.

He asked what Democrats really want as they draw closer to a decision about who will run against Donald Trump.

Do they want someone like Bernie Sanders who, Seib contends, wants to overthrow the system?

Or, do they want someone like Michael Bloomberg who, Seib says, wants to overthrow Trump?

How Democrat voters make this decision over the next weeks will tell two tales:  The first, obviously, is who will run against Trump; the second, perhaps a bit less obviously, is who will have the best chance to beat the person who sits in the Oval Office.

The fact Seib mentions only Sanders and Bloomberg could sell short other competing for the D mantler– Joe Biden, Amy Klobucher, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg.

But, regardless of the specific candidate, Seib asks a very central question. He is what he wrote:

“To say that Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg are different is one of those statements that is at once both entirely true, yet woefully insufficient.

“For all the differences that separate the Vermont senator and the former New York mayor, though, the most profound one is very simple:  They offer divergent theories of what the 2020 presidential election is all about.  Sanders believes Democrat voters are ready to overthrow the system.  Bloomberg thinks they merely want to overthrow President Trump.

“The question of which approach Democrats are buying is central to the fate of these two unconventional candidates, and to the whole scrambled Democrat presidential race.

To buttress his point, Seib cites a bit of history.

“One of the most important aspects of any presidential campaign is the theory of the race:  What is it that voters are really looking for that year?  Ronald Reagan won in 1980 because voters were ready, after an ineffective Democrat presidency, for a turn in a conservative direction.  Barack Obama won in 2008 because voters were seeking, in the midst of a deep financial slide and a depressing war in Iraq, a candidate who represented both hope and change.  Donald Trump won in 2016 because voters wanted somebody who would defy the establishment of both parties.

“This year, the Democratic primary fight turns on the question of what the party’s rank-and-file are most yearning for: a genuine revolution, or a simple change in command.

It also is instructive to see how Sanders and Bloomberg are treating Trump, either directly or indirectly.

The Sanders campaign, Seib says, “proceeds from a belief that Trump won because he captured the anger and dissatisfaction of working Americans, but now is vulnerable because he hasn’t really made working-class concerns the center of his presidency.”

More from Seib:

“Still, the fact that Sanders is running against Trump is almost secondary; the Sanders view of society’s economic injustices is the same one he would be offering regardless of who was on the Republican line.\

“It’s similar to the one he offered four years ago—and, indeed, is similar to the one he has been offering for four decades. Sanders believes that the Democrat Party is finally ready to buy in.”

By contrast, Seib says the Bloomberg candidacy exists for one reason — to defeat Trump.

“Bloomberg’s argument is that he is both tough enough to do it, and has the wherewithal to do it.  Bloomberg’s disdain for the president oozes from his every ad and every appearance, as does his belief that he, as a fellow New York big shot, and a more successful one than the president at that, has Trump’s number.

“Nowhere was that more clear than in the tweet Bloomberg fired out a few days ago, after he had been belittled by Trump.  Speaking directly to the president, Bloomberg declared:  ‘We know many of the same people in NY. Behind your back they laugh at you and call you a carnival barking clown.’”

No doubt Trump hated the reference, along the coming campaign trail, he’ll get more from Sanders, Bloomberg or whomever wins.

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.

A national newspaper story a few days ago describes the tension for Democrats as they could be poised to do this:

Nominate a socialist who wants the government to control energy production and health care, who wants nationwide rent control, and who calls America a “racist society from top to bottom.”

That’s Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

So, in a potential winnable race against Donald Trump later this year, Democrats may be lurching so far left as to promote Trump’s re-election.

Here’s the way the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) wrote about the issue:

“The Vermont revolutionary’s victory portends a long primary battle, unless Democrat voters elevate a single mainstream candidate who can challenge him.  Sanders will get his 25 to 30 per cent of the vote in primary after primary, racking up delegates on his way to the convention.

“If other candidates keep dividing the other votes, he will be hard to stop, as Trump was for Republicans in 2016.  Even if a single alternative emerges, Sanders won’t go down without a ferocious intra-party fight.”

The WSJ asks this question.

“So, how did this happen?  How did Sanders move from the socialist fringe to the brink of controlling the Democrat Party?  The senator’s dogged persistence across decades and especially the last four years is part of the explanation.

“Yet, Sanders wouldn’t be this close to the White House if not for the complicity of Democrats and the liberals who dominate the academy and media.  Rather than fighting the ideas that animate him and his millennial voters, they have indulged and promoted them.  They created the political environment in which he could prosper.”

The WSJ cites several “intellectual currents” Sanders is riding – and, to me, as an observer of federal politics in my cheap seat out West, the currents strike me as exactly on point.

• The attack on capitalism and markets. Sanders wants America to become a socialist state so there is no reward for hard work and enterprise.
• The rise of left-wing intolerance on campus. From the late 1960s on, the political left flooded into the academy and rewrote the curriculum to fit its ideological fashions. First the humanities, then the social sciences and now even the sciences have been forced to bend to identity politics.  Race, gender, class and sexual orientation became preoccupations in scholarship and tenure.
• The critique of America as irredeemably racist. Identity politics took an especially sharp turn on race with the police shootings of 2014 and 2015. Equity and honesty compel calling out racism in all areas where it exists, but it does not exist everywhere.
• Climate change as religion, not science. A generation of apocalyptic climate education has made what was a matter of temperatures and scientific modeling into a cultural identity. No dissent is tolerated, and the solutions must be radical and immediate.

These, the WSJ says, “are among the beliefs feeding the radicalism and resentment of the Sanders campaign.  Yet, rather than challenge Sanders, the other candidates have given him a pass on everything besides Medicare for All.  They have adopted his tax and redistribution arguments, if not all his policies.  They mimic his denunciations of America as racist.

“This year, even more than most years, the country needs a sensible and centrist opposition party and nominee.  Millions of Americans like the results of Trump’s policies, but not his divisive brand of politics and personal behavior.  They are looking for an alternative who doesn’t scare them.”

Count me as one of those looking.

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 headline in this blog – not necessarily new news in this day of the prevalence of social media – is not good news for me.

You see, I am a newspaper junkie.  I like to get ink on my hands!

When I was growing up, I thought I wanted to be a newspaper reporter, perhaps with the beat of covering sports.

That never materialized as a career, though I did work for a daily newspaper in Oregon, the Daily Astorian, where I covered local governments — the city council, the county commission and the Port of Astoria, augmented by covering local, high school sports on evenings or weekends.

It was a good life in my first professional position after college.

When, from Astoria, I returned to Portland where I had grown up and later went on to Salem, I always retained my love for newspapers.

It was a few years ago that even that changed – at least a bit.

When the Oregonian and Statesman-Journal newspapers became mostly nothing more than small print versions of what was already on-line, I went with the flow.  I cancelled my subscriptions and went on-line, albeit with cleaner hands.

I also added the on-line editions of two national newspapers, which still participate in solid journalism – the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post – sometimes with the additions of the New York Times and Atlantic Magazine.

I also read the fairly new Salem Reporter, an effort led by my friend Les Zaitz to develop real news about Salem – don’t forget it’s the state’s Capital, which means there is lots of news there, despite the demise of the Salem Statesman-Journal.  Zaitz, by the way, is one of Oregon’s best journalists, having worked for the Oregonian for many years.

If I read all of these on-line (it should be said that I still get the Wall Street Journal in our mailbox at home, not just on-line), I think I get a good cross-section of solid journalism – quality writing and different takes on issues roiling this country, including its political process, a democracy under attack.

So, it was that I read a piece in PEW Research Reports, which chronicled the demise of newspapers, an unfortunate development in this country.  Here is the story’s lead paragraph:

“Newspaper chain McClatchy filed for bankruptcy this week, the latest bad headline for the struggling U.S. newspaper industry. McClatchy owns media companies in 14 states, including the Kansas City Star, Miami Herald, Charlotte Observer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Sacramento Bee.”

A few more excerpts:

• Newspaper circulation fell in 2018 to its lowest level since 1940, the first year with available data. Total daily newspaper circulation (print and digital combined) was an estimated 28.6 million for weekday and 30.8 million for Sunday in 2018. Those numbers were down 8 and 9 per cent, respectively, from the previous year. Both figures are now below their lowest recorded levels, though weekday circulation first passed this threshold in 2013.
• Newspaper revenues declined dramatically between 2008 and 2018.
  Advertising revenue fell from $37.8 billion in 2008 to $14.3 billion in 2018, a 62 per cent decline.
• Newsroom employment at U.S. newspapers dropped by nearly half (47 per cent) between 2008 and 2018, from about 71,000 workers to 38,000. Newspapers drove a broader decline in overall U.S. newsroom employment during that span.
• Layoffs continue to pummel U.S. newspapers. Roughly a quarter (27 per cent) of papers with an average Sunday circulation of 50,000 or more experienced layoffs in 2018. The layoffs came on top of the roughly one-third (31 per cent) of papers in the same circulation range that experienced layoffs in 2017. What’s more, the number of jobs typically cut by newspapers in 2018 tended to be higher than in the year before.

My hope is that such great newspapers as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post will continue to practice solid journalism – in print, as well as on-line.  I also wish success for such local efforts as the Salem Reporter.  I intend to remain a subscriber of all.

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.

On the golf course the other day – no surprise, yes, I was there – a friend asked me what lobbyists really do.

The fact is that there are a lot of misconceptions about the role of lobbyists who function much like attorneys with the phrase “everyone deserves representation.”

Good lobbyists can have their general reputations tarnished by the misdeeds of the few, some of whom carry around bags of money to buy their way into results.  Plus various disreputable figures gaining notoriety by selling access in Washington, D.C.

To be sure, as is true with any profession, there are – to use an old phrase – “rotten apples who spoil the barrel.”

Most of the lobbyists I know well – and, remember, I was one in Oregon for about 25 years when my company also ran an office in Washington, D.C. – do their best to represent clients with skill and honesty.

To my friend on the golf course, I make the following points to define lobbying:

• Lobbyists are like lawyers. They represent clients.  Their “courtroom” is the Capitol building or anywhere else they can meet with elected legislators or Executive Branch officials.
• Lobbyists have contracts with clients, which are negotiated in advance of representation.
• Lobbyists help clients understand the context of the legislative process. One client I represented for a number of years called it “understanding the guardrails of the legislative process,” something he would not have understood without a lobbyist — me.
• Lobbyists help clients put their best feet forward in the process of making new laws. Sometimes that means working to pass a bill that would be acceptable to a client.  Sometimes that means working to kill a bill that would harm a client’s interests.  But good lobbyists also work to help a client find middle ground compromise, which, after all, is the definition of politics.
• Lobbyists help clients deal with Executive Branch agencies, for it often is agencies, who, at the behest of the governor, introduce various pieces of legislation. And, it is agencies that engage in administrative rule-making processes to implement bills that have passed.  So, a lobbyist’s task relates both to the Legislative and Executive Branches.
• Lobbyists help clients by advising them about political contributions, which is part of the cost of doing business in the making public policy. As we helped our clients deal with this issue, we kept what I call “relationship records,” as opposed to what some others do, which is to keep “voting records.”  Our view was that we wanted to advocate contributions to candidates who were willing to listen to our perspectives, then make their own decisions.

Without adding more to the list, let me just add that there can be a perception that the only actions lobbyists take is to kill or pass bills.  As I noted above, that is not always the case.

Here is an example of what a federal lobbyist in the firm I helped to found in 1990 did for the City of Pendleton just the other day.  The lobbyist is Kirby Garrett and here is what he wrote to summarize what happened:

“Good win for Pendleton today.  It has been working to attain the laundry list of state and federal approvals needed so sediment can be removed from McKay Creek (which flooded last spring), and restore flow capacity to avoid another flood this coming spring.  Pendleton needed to start work today to remove the 800 dump trucks’ worth of sediment by the end of the six-week in-water work period.

But, the Army Corps of Engineers informed the city yesterday the approval would be delayed until next week. The City Manager relayed this to me yesterday and asked for our help.

“I worked with Congressman Greg Walden’s office to explain the issue and solicit its help to apply pressure on the Corps to meet the original timeframe that had given the City.  After a lot of back and forth all throughout yesterday among me, the City, Walden’s office, and the Corps, Pendleton received the permit this afternoon and will start work today.  This is a welcome piece of good news for the community amidst all the other local flooding occurring now (from the Umatilla River – separate from McKay Creek).”

So, for lobbyists and their clients, the work can involve big and little stuff.  It’s all important.

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.

Hard to believe all of the following is happening in the arena – state government – where I made my living for almost 40 years, 15 as a government executive and 25 years as a lobbyist.

But, here is a summary of what I rate as “bad news.”

DEPARTMENT OF FORESTRY:  The department has so mismanaged its two-year budget that it is heading to the Legislature to get relief, which means an infusion of cash.

So, if approved, this means that mismanagement will be rewarded.

Back in the day when I was in state government, this would never have happened.  First, the managers of a state agency would have been expected to manage their budget, except for real emergencies such as, in this case, an unexpectedly brisk fire season.

Second, a state agency would never be allowed to head to the Legislature – or, between legislative sessions, to the Emergency Board – for a bailout.  The “never be allowed” point refers to the fact that the governor would have to approve all forays to the Legislature, not this kind of Forestry Department venture.

DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES:  The Department has so mismanaged one of his major assignments – running the foster care system – that the governor has found it necessary to create several task forces to oversee the department’s functioning.

For me, the best approach would be to expect Department managers to do their jobs to protect foster kids and, if they cannot, find new ones who could perform.

Foster care mismanagement has gone on for several years now – and it’s unconscionable.

STATE TRAVEL AGENCY:  Speaking of questionable management decisions, a recent Secretary of State audit showed that pay rates for the director and other managers of Oregon’s travel bureau are among the highest of any state agency, even though Travel Oregon’s top brass oversee a much smaller staff and budget.

Since 2012, the audit showed, managers’ salaries ballooned by 76 per cent.  As of June, the state paid the CEO $381,624, including a car and cellphone allowance, up 129 per cent from approximately $167,000 a decade ago. Further, the Oregon Tourism Commission has since granted a 3 per cent raise.

I am all for state government managers getting paid for their hard work, assuming it’s hard, but these salaries appear way out of line.

THE LEGISLATURE ITSELF:  The short legislative session – something that occurs in the even-numbered year after voters approved it several years ago – was supposed to deal with emergencies, such as adjustments to the two-year state government budget halfway through it.

With credit to my friend and blogger, Dick Hughes, here is a summary of beyond-the-pale actions in Salem:

• Late Thursday afternoon, the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee passed the climate change bill, Senate Bill 1530 with major changes — a 177-page amendment posted Wednesday evening, only a day before the vote.
• The “safe storage” firearms bill, House Bill 4005, drew passionate testimony on both sides, although few people talked about how the bill actually would work. Advocates had introduced a major amendment about two-and-a-half hours before the hearing, but they struggled with explaining how the details would work in real life.
• House Judiciary Committee Chair Tawna Sanchez, D-Portland, added an informational meeting on HB 4005 this week so members could ask questions of a legislative lawyer. The discussion lasted only 25 minutes before Sanchez moved on to other bills.
• Also on Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee shipped Senate Bill 1538 to the Senate Rules Committee — on a party-line vote, without ever holding a public hearing on the measure. The bill probably is dead, although nothing is certain until the Legislature adjourns.  SB 1538 would allow governments to prohibit anyone, including holders of concealed handgun licenses, from carrying firearms in such public buildings as schools or the State Capitol.
• Senator Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, was gracious to the dozens of people who were allowed one-and-a-half minutes each to testify Saturday on SB 1530 (the climate change bill) at the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee. More than 130 people asked to testify during the three-hour hearing.   Can you imagine driving to the Capitol from throughout Oregon for the chance to talk for 90 seconds, if at all?
• In another example, a Senate committee held hearing last week on a bill to allow church parsonages on rural land. It occurred on the same morning as the Timber Unity rally, which drew thousands of people — and loud, horn-blaring trucks — to the Capitol to protest the climate change bill.  Public testimony on SB 1555 — the only item on the agenda — was limited to three minutes per person.

These examples remind me of a sad chapter in my past.  When I was dealing with health care issues as a lobbyist for Providence Health & Services, the chair of the House Health Care Committee had managed to hire a staff analyst who would do only his bidding, with, apparently, no responsibility to honor normal legislative processes.

The worst case came when a huge amendment – more than 200 pages – was printed only a few minutes before the hearing where it was to be voted upon.  There were not even enough copies for those who would be interested.  Lobbyists didn’t know anything about it.  Neither did their clients.  And, worse, neither did the public.

To me, these are examples where legislators, faced with tight time frames, are working too fast and, thus, limiting public comment on important, not to mention controversial, issues.

If it were up to me, I’d do either of two things:  Scrap the short sessions as an experiment that didn’t work, or return to the original limits on what can be done in only 35 days in Salem.

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

I read a foreboding article in The Atlantic a few days ago that catalogued major, billion dollar disinformation campaigns that may affect our next presidential election…disinformation campaigns by all sides.

Without belaboring the text of the article, let me just posit this as the takeaway: Be Skeptical about everything you read or hear these days – yes, everything – and be sure that you develop positions on issues facing this country by relying on various sources of information, not just one or two.

Enough said!

Otherwise, as a director of the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering, I am opening the department again today. Remember, it is one of three I run, the others being the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of Just Saying.

So, here are the good quotes.

From columnist Max Boot in the Washington Post: Maine Senator Susan Collins bless her heart, claimed Donald Trump had learned a lesson from impeachment. She later admitted that such talk was “aspirational” — delusional is more like it — because the only lesson Trump has learned is that the Fifth Avenue Republicans will let him get away with anything.

Trump is un-chastened, un-chained and un-hinged. I fear for the future of our democracy with such a vindictive bully wielding the awesome powers of the presidency with less and less restraint. He is making an example of all those who have exposed his misconduct in the past to ensure that he can get away with even greater wrongdoing in the future.

Comment: I also fear for the future of American democracy, given that disinformation is so rampant.

From Karen Tumulty in the Post: This is the better Biden (what we have seen over the last couple weeks as his poll numbers have dipped, raising the possibility that he might even withdraw from the race), embracing personal vulnerability over electoral invincibility. He is perhaps the most authentic tribune of empathy in public life today — and the starkest contrast imaginable from the man who sits in the Oval Office.

“We have a president who has not an ounce of empathy in his body,” Biden said at a campaign stop Sunday in the ocean-side town of Hampton. “I don’t think he can connect in any way. It’s not about him being a Republican. There’s just simply no empathy. What in God’s name are we doing?”

Comment: Columnist Joe Scarborough also writes recently to credit Biden for rising from the huge personal tragedies, including his own where a tumor almost killed him years ago. The ability to rise may not take him to the presidency, but it does bring him credit as a genuine human being.

From Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal: By ceding moral authority to the far left, the Democrats have lost the power to counter bizarre proposals with simple common sense. When a freshman congresswoman proposes a wildly improbable Green New Deal, instead of responding as Democrats of an earlier day would have —“Whaddya, kiddin’ me?”— they now take it seriously and several adopt it.

When two other freshman Democrats make anti-Semitic pronouncements, no one in a party overwhelmingly the choice of Jewish voters has the authority to tell them to knock it off. When Democrat presidential candidates propose to provide free health care for all, or eliminate college tuition and college debt, or enlarge and pack the Supreme Court, or eliminate the Electoral College, all this is taken in earnest.

And the Democratic Party is being held hostage to identity politics, so that no national ticket can ever again be without a black or female candidate.

Donald Trump’s aggressive personality has hastened the Democrats’ radicalization. Party members measure the intensity of their idealism by their hatred of Trump. The tone and temper of the contemporary Democrat Party encourages — indeed fully supports — this sad condition.

Comment: By adopting so many far left big government proposals, Democrats effectively may be taking themselves out of the chance to win the presidential election later this year.

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:

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.

The National Prayer Breakfast, a tradition in Washington, D.C., used to be a time of conciliation and comity.

For some it still is.

But this time, a few days ago, President Donald Trump turned it into a political rally for himself as he went after those who disagreed with him, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Utah Senator Mitt Romney who, he said, were not really praying for him.

Here is a summary of the contrasts:

• On one hand, Trump avoided any indication – any indication – that he had learned anything from the recent impeachment process. Instead, he USED the forum – as he uses every forum – to tout himself and denigrate others.
• On the other hand, Arthur Brooks, a social scientist and a university professor, delivered a thought-provoking summary of what he called “America’s Crisis of Contempt,” calling on all those listening – yes, that included Trump – to a set of personal commitments to avoid contempt.

Trump’s purpose at the Prayer Breakfast was the exact opposite of conciliation and comity.  In fact, he put his enemies on notice.  Those who pursued impeachment, he said, were “very dishonest and corrupt people.”  “They know what they are doing is wrong,” he continued, “but they put themselves far ahead of our great country.” Congressional Republicans, in contrast, had the wisdom and strength “to do what everyone knows was right.”

Instead of railing against Trump, let me focus the rest of this blog on what Brooks said.

In summary, Brooks told the Prayer Breakfast audience that he was there “to talk about what I believe is the biggest crisis facing our nation — and many other nations — today.  This is the crisis of contempt — the polarization that is tearing our society apart.

“As leaders, you all know that, when there is an old problem, the solution never comes from thinking harder in the old ways; we have to think differently — we need an epiphany. This is true with societal problems and private problems.”

Here are bullet points to capture Brooks’ message:

• To start us on a path of new thinking to our cultural crisis, I want to turn to the words of the ultimate original thinker, history’s greatest social entrepreneur, and as a Catholic, my personal Lord and Savior, Jesus. Here’s what he said, as recorded in the Gospel of Saint Matthew, chapter 5, verse 43-45:  You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”
• Love your enemies! Now that is thinking differently. It changed the world starting 2,000 years ago, and it is as subversive and counterintuitive today as it was then.  But the devil’s in the details.  How do we do it in a country and world roiled by political hatred and differences that we can’t seem to bridge?
• First, we need to make it personal. I remember when it became personal for me as I was giving a speech. “My friends, you’ve heard a lot today that you’ve agreed with — and well you should.  You’ve also heard a lot about the other side — political liberals — and how they are wrong.  But I want to ask you to remember something:  Political liberals are not stupid, and they’re not evil.  They are simply Americans who disagree with you about public policy.  And if you want to persuade them — which should be your goal — remember that no one has ever been insulted into agreement. You can only persuade with love.
• Political polarization was personal for me that day, and I want it to be personal to you, too. So let me ask you a question:  How many of you love someone with whom you disagree politically?  Are you comfortable hearing someone on your own side insult that person?
• This reminds me of a lesson my father taught me, about moral courage. In a free society where you don’t fear being locked up for our opinions, true moral courage isn’t standing up to the people with whom you disagree. It’s standing up to the people with whom you agree — on behalf of those with whom you disagree.  Are you strong enough to do that?  That, I believe, is one way we can live up to Jesus’ teaching to love our enemies.
• What is leading us to a dark place that we don’t like? The problem is what psychologists call contempt.  In the words of the 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, contempt is “the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.”  In politics today, we treat each other as worthless, which is why our fights are so bitter and cooperation feels nearly impossible.
• In politics today, we have a contempt habit. Don’t believe it?  Turn on prime-time cable TV and watch how they talk.  Look at Twitter — if you dare.  Listen to yourself talking about a politician you don’t like.  We are guilty of contempt.  It’s a habit, and it’s tearing our society apart.
• How do we break the habit of contempt? Even more, how do we turn the contempt people show us into an opportunity to follow the teachings of Jesus, to love our enemies? To achieve these things, I’m going to suggest three homework assignments.

First: Ask God to give you the strength to do this hard thing — to go against human nature, to follow Jesus’ teaching and love your enemies.  Ask God to remove political contempt from your heart.

Second: Make a commitment to another person to reject contempt.  Of course you will disagree with others — that’s part of democracy.  It is right and good, and part of the competition of ideas.  But commit to doing it without contempt and ask someone to hold you accountable to love your enemies.

Third: Go out looking for contempt, so you have the opportunity to answer it with love.  I know that sounds crazy, to go looking for something so bad.  But for leaders, contempt isn’t like the flu.  It’s an opportunity to share your values and change our world, which is what leadership is all about, isn’t it?

As a lobbyist in the past, what I called this was the “ability to disagree agreeably.”

It’s a lost art today – in politics and in life.

So, with Arthur Brooks, I call on all of us to make this personal.  Avoid contempt to today.  Practice conciliation and comity.

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.

The latest impeachment process is now over, but, as a political junkie, I cannot get the subject out of my head – or, for that matter, off my blog posts.\

So, here, using one of the departments I run, the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering, I waft onward.

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:  Democrats said Mr. Trump’s acquittal amounted to a defeat for the institution of Congress, and they warned that leaving Trump in office would free him to try to cheat again in this year’s election.

COMMENT:  There is little doubt but that the Democrats fear will become reality.  Just consider this next quote.

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST…AGAIN:  More ominously, this (the impeachment decision) leaves the president free to try to cheat in the very election that is supposed to provide the remedy for his cheating.]

COMMENT:  Exactly.  Trump acolytes want us to ignore his illegal acts and wait until the 2020 election.  Right.  Wait until an election that already has been tainted and will be tainted again by the president who is above any law and acts like it.]

FROM WASHINGTON POST ANALYSTS CATHERINE RAMPELL:  Worried that President Trump might use the power of his office to punish personal enemies?

Hate to break it to you, but you’re three years too late.

In a bilious hour-long rant, Trump ranted against the “scum” and “very evil and sick people” he blames for his impeachment.  And he was not the only West Winger making ominous comments about what might become of those who’ve wronged him.

Our vindictive president, now unshackled by his frightened followers in Congress, may well be teed up to punish his perceived political enemies. And we needn’t exercise much imagination to envision how this loaded-gloved counterpuncher might weaponize his executive authority.

Because he’s done it already. Many, many times.

COMMENT:  Rampell is exactly right.  Trump uses the presidency for his own ends and, in fact, as an accomplished narcissist, views his interests and the nation’s interests as identical.

FROM WASHINGTON POST ANALYST DANA MILBANK:   “You can’t trust this president to do the right thing,” lead House manager Adam Schiff said this week in his final plea before the Senate’s impeachment vote. “He will not change, and you know it.”

But even Schiff couldn’t have known how quickly President Trump would prove these words true.

The morning after his acquittal in the Senate, Trump attended the National Prayer Breakfast where political opponents have always set aside their differences.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged the assembled to “raise our voices in prayer as one.”  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) prayed for his colleagues, including Pelosi, and said God couldn’t have “picked a better day to bring us all together.”

And then there was Trump. He complained that he was “put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people.”

Referring to Mitt Romney, the lone Republican to support impeachment, Trump said, “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.” Referring to Pelosi, just a few feet away, he added: “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you’ when they know that’s not so.”

COMMENT:  For Trump, the impeachment process – yes, the stain on his record is that the fact is that he has been impeached – should have been a moment for introspection.

But, Trump is incapable of such thought.  He is motivated only by getting even with those he believes have slighted him.

That’s amounts to a lot of people these days.  Count me among them as I wish for something better for this country – better than Trump.

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.

“In this abundance of distractions and dramas, the political fate of the nation oscillating between extremes, a fairly subdued President Trump delivered his annual address to Congress in a monotone. From time to time, he would cock his head in a quizzical, half-challenging way, working his smiles and freeze-pose grimaces.

“Behind him sat Vice President Mike Pence, as mysteriously impassive as always, and the woman who stage-managed Trump’s impeachment.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi compulsively worked her teeth with lips and tongue, her fidgeting countenance alive with fury. When the president was finished, she emphasized the theater of the evening by dramatically ripping up the text of the speech, as if to say, like Samuel Johnson kicking a stone to dismiss that bishop (Berkeley) who preached the unreality of things: I refute him thus!”

This is how essayist Lance Morrow described the scene in the U.S. House as President Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union address only a day before the U.S. Senate stooped to new depths by acquitting him of impeachment, even in the face of substantial evidence that he demanded that a foreign country intervene in the next presidential election.

Does the way I wrote the previous paragraph indicate my bias?  Yes.

Trump compromised the good of this country – an open and fair election – for his own good because he relates the two as being equal.  What is good for him is good for the country.

With impeachment acquittal, it is useful to consider the long-range implications of what has happened in Congress over the last couple months.

The main implication:  Abuse of power by the president has now been ruled entirely appropriate.

As for the State of the Union address — normally a time when the country comes together to review the past and look toward the future — I didn’t watch Trump’s reality show appearance where again he took credit for everything even when he doesn’t deserve it and ridiculed everyone who does not bow at his altar.

Many Democrats in the chamber couldn’t stand his bluster, so walked out.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in what had to be a planned demonstration, tore up a copy of
Trump’s speech just as he finished — and all of it was caught by TV cameras.

As I write this, I cannot help but remember the governor I worked for in Oregon, Victor Atiyeh.  A hallmark of his style was that he did not seek credit for good things he did or that happened on his watch.  Rather, he deflected credit and took solace in the simple fact of the good things.

A contract to Trump?  Yes.

After impeachment acquittal, we, as Americans, face several realities:

• One is that Trump, emboldened by what has happened, will continue abusing his power because, after all, even he has said there are not bounds — zero — and the Senate has now concurred with him.  Would he ever learn from a failure — being impeached is a failure — and change his behavior.  No.
• A second reality will be that new presidents — and I hope there is a new one after Trump, either in 2020 or 2024 — will face no guardrails on their actions.
• A third reality is that the U.S. Senate has lost all claim to being the “world’s greatest deliberative body.”  It will take years to reclaim that standing, if it ever will happen.

Here’s the way Washington Post political writer Philip Rucker put it in last weekend’s edition of the newspaper:

“The evidence of President Trump’s actions to pressure Ukraine was never in serious dispute.  After a systematic presentation of the facts of the case, even some Senate Republicans concluded that what he did was wrong.

“But neither was the verdict of Trump’s impeachment trial ever in doubt.  The impending judgment that the president’s actions do not warrant his removal from office serves as a testament to Washington’s extraordinary partisan divide and to Trump’s uncontested hold on the Republican base.

“The expected acquittal also has profound and long-term ramifications for America’s institutions and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, according to numerous historians and legal experts.

“In effect, they say, the Senate is lowering the bar for permissible conduct for future presidents.”

Speaking of lowering the bar, consider what Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz told the Senate (yes, I have written about this before, but I do so again because the comment still stuns me).

If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected “in the public interest,” Dershowitz intoned, “then that cannot result in impeachment.”  So, Trump can demand that Ukraine interfere in the U.S. election and can ask China to do the same.

No problem,  Dershowitz says.

George Washington Law School attorney Jonathan Turley wrote this:

“That idea provided the most dramatic — and damaging — moment of the trial.  Dershowitz’s argument produced audible gasps.  It was an argument that would have made Richard Nixon blush and suggested that any abuse of power short of a criminal act would be by definition unimpeachable.

“The damage had been done. The president’s defense was then tied inextricably to this extreme and chilling argument.”

We, as Americans, are victims of Trump and it is possible, if Democrats don’t get their act together by proposing a candidate who can appeal to folks who don’t reside in Trump’s alternate universe, then we’ll face four more years of presidential abuse.