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 is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The headline on this blog may not make much sense unless readers, like me, are political junkies.

Here is how the headline came to my mind.

I just finished reading a great political book, The Man Who Ran Washington:  The Life and Times of James A. Baker, III.  It was the story of a man who served multiple presidents, including as chief of staff, and managed three Cabinet departments.  It was when Baker led the Department of State that he oversaw the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Middle East peace (which, like all such deals in the Middle East, did not last very long).

By contrast, the current chief of staff for President Donald Trump is Mark Meadows, a former Member of Congress, who has made a negative name for himself by saying the Trump Administration (there’s that word again, administration, which cannot be used about Trump) has given up on efforts to control the pandemic, even as it is a major blot on Trump’s record, one that could cost him re-election.

Meadows also has failed, intentionally, to convey to the American people the severity of Covid-19 infections among the president’s and the vice president’s staff at the same time as he provided misleading information on Trump’s own infection.

Thus, the contrast:

James A. Baker is one of most competent chiefs of staff in history and Mark Meadows is one of the worst.

Now, reasonable observers could argue that it is impossible to serve as chief of staff for Trump who won’t let anyone do the job, much less abide any staff member who does not display unthinking and continual loyalty to the top dog. 

For Meadows, media reports say he spends little in his office in the White House and has little, if any, focus on managing the processes by which information flows to the president.  Of course, even if Meadows performed this normal chief-of-staff-gatekeeper role, the chances are Trump wouldn’t listen, a contention buttressed by the fact he has cycled through four chiefs of staff in the last three-plus years.

This issue – the role and performance of chiefs of staff – matters to me for at least two reasons:

• First, Baker’s performance underlined what should be true of politics in general these days, which, as it was put in the book, “politics should be more about pragmatism than purity.”
• Second, I have worked under several chiefs of staff in Oregon who served governors here, so have seen first-hand how the competent ones perform under intense pressure.

Operating from my post in the cheap seats in Salem, Oregon, I list these five qualifications for a chief of staff.

1.  Demonstrate the ability to bring disparate interests together to solve public policy challenges.
2. Demonstrate the capacity to provide leadership, which can be known when it is seen, not when it has described in words in advance of its existence.
3. Demonstrate the ability to distinguish between what you and what you don’t know – and, for the latter ,rely on other members of the management team.
4. Demonstrate that you have the wherewithal, first, to challenge the boss when you think he may be wrong, and, second, implement, with skill and dispatch, any decision once it is final.
5. Demonstrate the critical judgment to know that government is supposed to work FOR the people, not for those in office.

At the national level, Baker demonstrated all of these and more.  Meadows does not.

And, in Oregon, one of the best was Gerry Thompson who served as chief of staff for the last Republican governor here, Victor Atiyeh.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I worked for Atiyeh, too. 

Does my bias show?  If it does, good.