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.

I currently serve as the director of several departments – the Department of Pet Peeves, the Department of “Just Saying,” the Department of Inquiring Minds Want to Know, and the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering.

I have chosen to leave the latter department closed for a few weeks, but, now, despite the heat, I am opening the department again.

So here goes.

TENSIONS OVER THE INFRASTRUCTURE DEAL IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:  The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell writes this:

“President Biden’s bi-partisan infrastructure deal was on, and then possibly off, and now seems back on again.  But there are at least three major issues that could still blow things up.

“Biden announced last Thursday that he and a group of 10 bi-partisan senators had hashed out a deal on infrastructure.  Almost immediately, there were clues that the White House was anxious about how this compromise would play with the Democratic Party’s left flank.

“One red flag was the apparent attempt to inflate the size of the package.”

So, Rampell noted that Biden, only two hours after endorsing the deal, created a quagmire by saying that he would only support and sign the deal if Congress passed other issues on his agenda, issues that would appeal to the left.

Soon, recognizing the dissonance, the Administration tried to walk back the threat, but some Democrats in Congress wouldn’t let it die, which risks the entire infrastructure package.

Rampell also posts three additional risks for the package:  The size of it, what else the Biden Administration and Democrats want, and how to pay for it.   

MORE ON CRITICAL RACE THEORY: Also in the Washington Post, columnist Eugene Robinson writes this about “critical race theory,” a notion that is getting a lot of media attention these days:

“Republicans’ hissy fit over critical race theory is nothing more than an attempt to rally the party’s overwhelmingly White base by denying documented history and uncomfortable truth.

“This manufactured controversy has nothing to do with actual critical race theory, which, frankly, is the dry and arcane stuff of graduate school seminars.  It is all about alarming White voters into believing that they are somehow threatened if our educational system makes any meaningful attempt to teach the facts of the nation’s long struggle with race.

“The Republican state legislators falling over themselves to decide how history can and cannot be taught in schools — and blowhards such as Senator Ted Cruz from Texas who warn that children are being taught “every White person is a racist” — know exactly what they’re doing. They seek to create a crisis where none exists in hopes of driving up GOP turnout in next year’s midterm elections.”

COMMENT:  If you want to read more about the critical race theory subject, go to Atlantic Magazine.  There, writer Adam Harris performs a service by providing background on a theory that has moved from academic circles to political controversy.

TRUMP AND LAWYERS:  Washington Post contributing columnist George Conway writes this about former and disgraced president Donald Trump and lawyers:

“Donald Trump could never really count on the lawyers.

“No matter how many cynical or craven congressmen, toadying aides, grifting consultants, unhinged activists, disinforming talking heads and deluded cultists he may have had, Trump still needed the lawyers. He needed serious members of the bar to provide at least some semblance of a legal justification for his attempted self-coup.

“They never did.

“Nearly six months after Jan. 6, as Trump’s private business stands on the verge of indictment, we’ve been learning more about how lawyers stood in the way of his attempt to commit the ultimate abuse of public trust during his final days in office.”

RATING AMERICA:  In the Wall Street Journal, retired executive editor Gerard Baker asks this question:

“This July Fourth, that sacred day when we commemorate the hijacking of the American continent by a gang of white supremacists in a desperate bid to hold onto their slaves, I have a question for progressives:  What do you want this country to be?

“I understand the many frustrations with its flaws.  We all have those.  I understand anger at the myriad inequalities and injustices. The work of progress is never even close to complete.

“But is there anything that would actually make them love this country? Do they understand why so many people—not only in America—admire it?”

COMMENT:  I don’t always agree with Baker, but this time, I do.  He is right.  America has flaws.  But reasonable people in this country – yes, there are some left – are working to support and make improvements.  Of necessity, that requires looking backward to assess failures – including, for example, in race issues where there is so much more to do — but it does NOT require denigrating the country that has played such major role in supporting freedom.