PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19TH 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 question in the headline arose as I read a column last weekend by Michel Gerson who writes for the Washington Post.
The issue also crossed my mind as I note how mad Americans appear to be at each other. Nowhere is this more apparent than in
Congress where Republicans hate Democrats and Democrats hate Republicans.
Here’s how Gerson started his piece:
‘If we were to judge the health of our republic by the sanity and stability of Fox News hosts, these would be dark times indeed.
“After Army General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently defended the academic study of critical race theory at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Laura Ingraham vented: “Why is Congress not saying, ‘We’re not going to give you a penny until all of this is eradicated from the military budget? Nothing.’” She is asserting, in essence, that the military should be defunded if it doesn’t share her latest culture-war mania.
“It’s true that our nation is more than the sum of its ideological grifters and bottom feeders. But Ingraham’s remarks are relevant because conservative media has reshaped one of the United States’ political parties in its angry, ignorant image.”
Gerson posits that “significant actors in our political life have lost something important. They no longer care about the integrity of our constitutional process or accept the existence of a shared public reality. They care only about achieving their preferred political outcomes. This was the motivating spirit behind the January 6 Capitol revolt and is the continuing inspiration of former president Donald Trump’s big electoral lie: If American systems and institutions don’t deliver the results we seek, burn them down.”
He also suggests that what can be done about threats to American democracy is not to respond in kind. Anyone, he writes, “who believes that the primary object of politics is to discredit and crush your political enemies is contributing to the crisis.”
Rather, Gerson advocates two responses:
- Individual action to make the country better, inasmuch as all of us are not able to control big-picture trends.
- What he calls “do-gooderism, which means, he says, activities such as civic education, a year of national service, ranked choice voting, or independent redistricting commissions.
“Let me rise in defense of do-gooderism as a defining American characteristic. Our civic crisis of vicious polarization can yield only to efforts at civic healing. Our social crisis of fragmentation and declining social trust can be confronted only by efforts to reknit social ties. Our spiritual crisis of rising depression, addiction and suicide can be opposed only by community institutions that are in the business of meaning.
“Civic healing is possible only with a measure of civic idealism. It has worked in the past. Thousands of influential institutions were created in the late 19th century to fight political corruption, advance civil rights, promote democratic character and respond to the suffering and dislocation of urbanization and industrialization. And there are currently thousands of institutions attempting the civic, social and spiritual healing of the United States.”
Regarding civics education, I agree with Gerson. That’s why, for last year or so, I have served on a committee created by Oregon Common Cause to explore ways to promote ethics in government. We have arrived so far at two conclusions: (a) School districts should, without a requirement do so, improve the content of civic education in their curricula, including an emphasis on ethical behavior and conduct; and (b) public officials should be asked to sign contracts pledging to act in ethical ways.
Still, in addition to the work of ethics committee on which I have served, a requirement is this: Conduct yourself as an individual with a commitment to ethical behavior and don’t consider someone who disagrees with you to be your enemy.
For one thing, you might learn something from those who differ with= you. For another, differing should not be an excuse for making enemies.
To close, Gerson says this: “… do-gooderism on steroids is exactly what our nation requires. We need the social return of love — love of country and love for our impossible, invaluable neighbors. This may be sentiment, but it is also sanity.”
Agreed.
Perspective from the 19th Hole 