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 (Les AuCoin), 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.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that it what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions like.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The Wall Street Journals’ Gerald Seib made the point in the headline in a piece he wrote for the Journal yesterday.

It was more than just a play on words.  It was a comment about the growing tendency in this country that indicates, as Seib wrote it, “a partisan divide reflecting a broad intolerance of opposing views.”

Seib’s commentary appeared under this headline:

Crises Lay Bare a Goodwill Deficit in America

This spring’s discontents have heightened a partisan divide reflecting a broad intolerance of opposing views

Here are more of his words:

“The brutal shocks hitting America this spring have opened up a variety of financial deficits.  Perhaps more important, though, they have revealed a more pervasive underlying condition:  A goodwill deficit.

“Put simply, too many Americans have stopped giving the benefit of the doubt to those with whom they disagree.”

Seib said what is happening, both in the pandemic and the protests, as well as the lead up to both, reflects “a growing tendency to see those with whom you disagree as not merely wrong, but evil.  There is a diminishing willingness to believe that the person on the other side of the debate—any debate—is well intentioned.

“This is one of the reasons racial justice on the one hand and law and order on the other have come to be seen as opposing goals—much as stopping the spread of the coronavirus by social distancing on the one hand and re-opening the economy on the other came to be regarded as opposing goals.

“Such attitudes helped produce the partisan divide that now colors almost every issue.  This absence of goodwill didn’t begin amid these crises.  The trend was present and documented before, setting the stage for this spring’s discontents.”

Seib, I think, is right.

If someone disagrees with you, it is not possible usually even to discuss that difference of opinion in civil terms.  So, often, even with friends, you don’t discuss certain subjects for fear of offense.

This inability “to disagree aggreeably” marks our politics, as well our friendships.

A 2019 survey sponsored by the Brookings Institution, for example, found that 82 per cent of Republicans think the Democrat Party has been taken over by socialists.  On the other side, 80 per cent of Democrats think the Republican Party has been taken over by racists.

Other statistics show that nearly 60 per cent of Republicans and more than 60 per cent of Democrats agreed that the opposing party is a serious threat to the U.S. and its people.  Just over 40 per cent of those in each party thought the opposing party wasn’t just worse for politics, but “downright evil.”

Those who lead us politically often lead the charge to consider disagreement as being evil.

That’s how President Donald Trump, the epitome of narcissism, acts as a matter of course.  Those on the left are not much better as indicated by such officials are U.S. Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who conducts herself like Trump by seizing every soapbox to ridicule the country where she lives.

As a long-time lobbyist, I have often argued for finding the smart middle ground on the issues we face.  It is tough to do, but that’s where the best solutions, not on either the right or left extremes.

I also have to admit that it is hard to imagine finding middle ground with such antagonists as Trump and Ocasio-Cortez.  They are so over-the-top that middle ground doesn’t exists for them or those who fawn over them.

For others, finding the smart middle will require everyone to consider viewpoints other than their own as at least being worth considering.   That will require a change of heart and mind.

As Seib put it at the end of his commentary:

“A political dialogue that suggests those who disagree with you are morally inferior inevitably widens and deepens the political divide—and that is exactly what we are seeing today. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, released over the weekend, shows the partisan divide appearing on almost every question of public life, and increasingly in private life as well.

“’There are really powerful signs that our partisan filter is the way we see everything in this country.”

And goodwill, Seib writes, has become a casualty of the process, which is a sad state of affairs.