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.

While all of us have been trying to adjust to the pandemic, a major issue lurks in the background, though it often jumps to the foreground.

It is this:

What should the role of government be and how big should it get?

The Washington Post published a story on the subject under this headline:

Crisis exposes how
America has hollowed
out its government

It was written by veteran Washington, D.C. reporter Dan Balz, who, for years, has been an excellent chronicler of events and trends in the nation’s capitol.

Here is the lead to his story:

“The government’s halting response to the coronavirus pandemic represents the culmination of chronic structural weaknesses, years of underinvestment and political rhetoric that has undermined the public trust — conditions compounded by President Trump’s open hostility to a federal bureaucracy that has been called upon to manage the crisis.”

This reminds me of several perspectives.

• One is that it was only a few months ago when anyone interested in federal politics heard several Democrat presidential candidates promoting ideas to expand hugely the role of the federal government.

Two of those candidates were Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the latter of whom remains in the hunt to join presumed Democrat nominee Joe Biden as his vice president running mate.

Sanders, Warren and others on the far left wanted government to do everything – provide free health care, forgive student debt, adopt a so-called “green standard” for all buildings, etc.

Today, while the issue is no longer the Sanders-Warren agenda, we have big government – and most of us would say it is a necessity to have it. The only way to respond to the pandemic is by relying on government, much as would be the case in any other kind of war.

• A second perspective is how Donald Trump and his minions have so botched the job of preparing for government obligations that those obligations cannot be carried out with any level of competence. If it could be contended that Trump is on the far right politically (I add that it is impossible to know where he stands on anything), various others on the right joined him in lofting an inflamed anti-government stance. To those on the far right, government was the enemy, the so-called “deep state.”

Now, the reality is that we need more than ever the kind of solid government Trump and his minions have destroyed.

• Another perspective relates to my own perceptions about the role and size of government. In part because of my work as a lobbyist for 25 years, I believe elected officials in government often fail to ask hard and pointed questions about government programs, including whether they should exist in the first place, and, if the answer is yes, whether they produce returns on the investment.

Those questions are still important and government officials should still ask them in the current pandemic.

In the Post piece, Balz expanded on the reality of Trump’s failure to understand anything:

“Federal government leaders, beginning with the president, appeared caught unaware by the swiftness with which the coronavirus was spreading through the country — though this was not the first time that an administration seemed ill-prepared for an unexpected shock. But even after the machinery of government clanked into motion, missteps, endemic obstacles and lack of clear communication have plagued the efforts to meet the needs of the nation.

“’A fundamental role of government is the safety and security of its people,’ said Janet Napolitano, the former secretary of homeland security. ‘To me that means you have to maintain a certain base level so that, when an event like a pandemic manifests itself, you can quickly activate what you have and you have already in place a system and plan for what the federal government is going to do and what the states are going to do.’

“That has not been the case this spring. The nation is reaping the effects of decades of denigration of government and also from a steady squeeze on the resources needed to shore up the domestic parts of the executive branch.

“This hollowing out has been going on for years as a gridlocked Congress preferred continuing resolutions and budgetary caps to hardheaded decisions about vulnerable governmental infrastructure and leaders did little to address structural weaknesses.

“The problems have grown worse in the past three years. Trump was elected having never served in government or the military. That was one reason he appealed to many of those who backed him. He came to Washington deeply suspicious of what he branded the ‘deep state.’ Promising to drain the swamp, he has vilified career civil servants and the institutions of government now called upon to perform at the highest levels.”

The question is whether the weaknesses and vulnerabilities exposed by the current crisis will generate a newfound interest among the nation’s elected officials in repairing the infrastructure of government and a sense of urgency on the part of the public to encourage them to do so.

Or will partisanship and public indifference lead to a continuation of the status quo?

Henry Olsen, also writing in the Post, provides a glum perspective.

Commenting on the next virus relief bill in Congress, if there is such a bill, he said recent action by the House to pass a bill that has no chance of being considered in the Senate “is not how a healthy democracy behaves in a crisis.”

“There will always be partisan differences over how to address a crisis,” he wrote. “But a healthy democracy would debate those differences directly and openly. Voters would know what each party’s values are, and legislators could decide whether there’s enough common ground to forge a compromise.

“With unemployment skyrocketing and state and local governments losing tax revenue by the bushel each day, one would think that something could be worked out that satisfies both sides even as neither is ecstatic. Instead, we have a partisan game that merely entrenches both sides in increasingly hardened silos.”

Only time will tell if supposed leaders in Congress will find a way to make reasoned and fair decisions in the face of a recession and calamity on nearly every hand.