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.

Some of the words in the headline for this blog appeared in Washington Post editorial over the weekend.

It makes a good point – the need for verifiable testing if we are to get out from under the pandemic.

But I think there is another missing ingredient in all face in these days of the pandemic – trust.

Trust – in two ways: (1) Trust in government officials who often cash in trust as they behave in unethical ways (just look at Donald Trump, for whom building trust is never an issue), and (2) the loss of mutual trust on the part of citizens who often favor self-centered ways of behaving (just look at those who flocked to beaches and other venues on Memorial Day no matter if they risked infecting others).

Here is the first paragraph on the Post editorial favoring more testing.

“The current approach to the coronavirus pandemic in the United States is based on wishful thinking — that a vaccine or drug therapy will be available by the end of the year, or sooner; that death and illness will taper off with the summer heat, and not come back next fall. But what if none of this happens? What if the novel coronavirus sticks around for a year or two or longer? In that case, diagnostic testing will be critical to our ability to manage lives, jobs, schools and health. Yet, we still lack a federal strategy to get there.”

True.

For me, cultivating trust is a second ingredient in surviving the pandemic — and without it there will be no way to move forward.

Trust in and about government can be built in several ways:

• By telling the truth and saying you don’t know when you don’t know. That was normally a principle when I worked in and around state government here in Oregon for about 40 years.

But, while Oregon is nowhere near as bad as the federal government, building trust has receded as a critical factor in the state.

• Bi-partisanship for the public good. When I see Democrats and Republicans find a way to act together – as they did in the first pandemic relief bills in Congress – it gives a sense of hope that bi-partisanship is possible. Bi-partisanship, however, has tended to recede in view of the next relief bills.

Bi-partisanship is hard to achieve, but possible…except for Trump, as well as those on the far left who wouldn’t know bi-partisanship if it hit them full in the face.

• Deploying a “your word is your bond ethic.” When I worked as a lobbyist in Oregon for about 25 years, I always had this ethic in the back, if not the front, of my mind.

If I told a legislator or another lobbyist something, I stuck to it come hell or high water. If I had to change position because of the inherent tension of issues confronting each other, I would only do so if I told those to whom I had spoken earlier that I had to change.

If the “your word is your bond ethic” existed, it would improve the operation of government.

In my work on an Ethics Committee for Oregon Common Cause, I encountered the following quote from Walter Shaub, the retired director of the Federal Ethics Office. It dealt with the question of ethics, but could just as well have been about the subject of “trust.”

Here is the quote:

“The current ethics program, at least at the federal level, was developed in response to Watergate. The system worked well for 40 years. There was room for improvement, but, for the most part, the system worked well as a preventive mechanism. The flaw was that it was completely dependent on the president’s administration to comply and set an example. The current administration has signaled that it does not want the system to work.”

Building trust in and around government will take concerted work by all involved. It won’t be easy, but nothing worth doing is ever easy. Just worth it.