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 draw this blog headline from a opinion piece by Eugene Robinson that ran in this morning’s Washington Post.

Robinson’s post fits very well with a couple of blogs I have written, though surely not as well as he does.  My posts used the headline “You Can’t Fix Stupid.”

That’s right — and Robinson is right.

So, rather than edit or draw from his work, I simply post his column today with full and due credit to him.  It’s worth reading.

**********

T.S. Eliot wrote that the world ends “not with a bang but a whimper,” but I fear our great nation is careening toward a third manner of demise: descent into lip-blubbering, self-destructive idiocy.

How did we become, in such alarming measure, so dumb? Why is the news dominated by ridiculous controversies that should not be controversial at all? When did so many of our fellow citizens become full-blown nihilists who deny even the concept of objective reality? And how must this look to the rest of the world?

Read the headlines and try not to weep:

Our elected representatives in the U.S. Senate, which laughably calls itself “the world’s greatest deliberative body,” agreed Thursday not to wreck our economy and trigger a global recession — at least for a few weeks. Republicans had refused to raise the federal debt ceiling, or even to let Democrats do so quickly by simple majority vote. They relented only after needlessly unsettling an international financial system based on the U.S. dollar.

The frequent games of chicken that Congress plays over the debt ceiling are — to use a term of art I recall from Economics 101 — droolingly stupid. In the end, yes, we always agree to pay our obligations. But the credit rating of the planet’s greatest economic superpower has already been lowered because of this every-few-years ritual, and each time we stage the absurd melodrama, we risk a miscalculation that sends us over the fiscal cliff.

Today’s trench-warfare political tribalism makes that peril greater than ever. An intelligent and reasonable Congress would eliminate the debt ceiling once and for all. Our Congress is neither.

In other news, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) was speaking to a crowd of Republicans at a country club in his home state Saturday when he tried, gently, to boost South Carolina’s relatively low rate of vaccination against the coronavirus. He began, “If you haven’t had the vaccine, you ought to think about getting it because if you’re my age — ”

“No!” yelled many in the crowd.

Graham retreated — “I didn’t tell you to get it; you ought to think about it” — and then defended his own decision to get vaccinated. But still the crowd shouted him down. Seriously, people?

Covid-19 is a highly infectious disease that has killed more than 700,000 Americans over the past 20 months. The Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines all but guarantee that recipients will not die from covid. I have, or had, an acquaintance who refused to get vaccinated, despite pleas from his adult children to protect himself. He got covid-19, and it killed him. Most of the deaths the nation has suffered during the current delta-variant wave of the disease — deaths of the unvaccinated — have been similarly needless and senseless.

Covid-19 is a bipartisan killer. In the tribal-political sense, the safe and effective vaccines are a bipartisan miracle, developed under the Republican Trump administration and largely distributed under the Democratic Biden administration. People in most of the rest of the world realize, however, that vaccination is not political at all; it is a matter of life and death, and also a matter of how soon — if ever — we get to resume our normal lives.

Why would people not protect their own health and save their own lives? How is this anything but just plain stupid?

We are having other fights that are, unlike vaccination, partisan and political — but equally divorced from demonstrable fact.

Conservatives in state legislatures across the country are pushing legislation to halt the teaching of “critical race theory” in public schools. I put the term in quotes because genuine critical race theory, a dry and esoteric set of ideas debated in obscure academic journals, is not actually being taught in those schools at all. What’s being taught instead — and squelched — is American history, which happens to include slavery, Jim Crow repression and structural racism.

I get it. The GOP has become the party of White racial grievance, and this battle against an imaginary enemy stirs the base. But the whole charade involves Republican officials — many of them educated at the nation’s top schools — betting that their constituents are too dumb to know they’re being lied to. So far, the bet is paying off.

And then, of course, there’s the whole “stolen election” farce, which led to the tragedy of Jan. 6. Every recount, every court case, every verifiable fact proves that Joe Biden fairly defeated Donald Trump. Yet a sizeable portion of the American electorate either can’t do basic arithmetic or doesn’t believe that one plus one always equals two.

How dumb can a nation get and still survive? Idiotically, we seem determined to find out.

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 answer to the question in this blog headline:  1986.  Yes, 1986!          

So, it’s been more than 35 years since a Republican held the state’s top political job.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I had the privilege of working with and for the last Republican governor, Victor Atiyeh, who was elected for a second term in 1982, thus serving until his term ended in 1986.

I remember the 1982 election well.  As votes were tabulated, I was up in the governor’s suite at the Hilton Hotel with the governor, his wife, Delores, and campaign manager, Denny Miles, among others.

Before all the votes were counted in days before mail voting in Oregon, Miles, a friend then and a friend to this day, whispered in my ear that the final tracking poll had Governor Atiyeh up with 62 per cent of the vote.

The final result?  62 per cent.

As coincidence would have it, the Democrat Atiyeh  beat, Ted Kulongoski, became a friend many years later as both of us worked in state government together, including in relation to management’s side of state employee strikes.

For Atiyeh, I had various obs for several years, with some of that time being his press secretary.  It was a highlight of my professional career.

So, as we approach the next gubernatorial election in Oregon – and it is almost assured that a Democrat will win again — I thought about three major credentials Governor Atiyeh exhibited:

• With the Governor, what you saw was what you got
• For the Governor, truth and context were always key barometers for his actions
• And, with the Governor, there was no concern about who got credit

Just think if those were considered important credentials for public office today.  We’d have better persons in those offices.

I also remember that a partner of mine in our lobbying and public relations firm, a long-time Democrat, said Atiyeh was the easiest governor to approach on issues.  He didn’t ask or care about political party affiliation.  And, I add that, when I came to work for state government in Oregon, he nor anyone on his staff about my political label. 

Coming as I did from working on the staff of a Democrat congressman, they could have asked.  They didn’t.  And it didn’t matter.

A far cry from the dissension-riddled party affiliation issue these days.

I thought about the Atiyeh record because we are entering the time when there will be a new statewide election – and there will be a new governor in 2023 because the incumbent, Democrat Kate Brown, is term-limited.

Several individuals have announced they are running and a number of others have said they are thinking about it.

So, as we take note of those who enter the ring, it makes sense to consider issues beyond party affiliation, gender, political platforms.  It also makes sense to consider the type of person we want to serve in the state’s top political job where he or she could become a leader.

Given the three credentials listed above, as well as many others I could cite, it would be good if we could end up with someone like Governor Atiyeh.

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.

A few months ago I wrote that you can’t fix stupid because, for me, being stupid was why certain folks continued opposing the Covid vaccine.  At the risk for themselves, their families, and their friends.

But stupid goes beyond vaccines.

Today, I recycle that headline after reading a column by Max Boot that appeared in the Washington Post.

Here are a couple examples of what he wrote:

• “Is there a purer, more perfect expression of the Trumpified Republican Party than the press release that  Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert sent out on September 24?

“It demanded that President Biden be removed from office for ‘colluding with the Taliban.’  This was flagrantly hypocritical because in February she criticized Biden for not withdrawing from Afghanistan fast enough — and then in August she praised the Taliban for building back better.’  But what truly made the release so priceless and preposterous was the logo: “IMEACH BIDEN.”  Boebert is showing her contempt, not just for political norms, but for spelling norms, too.

“No one should be surprised that Boebert, who has expressed support for the QAnon cult, as well as Biden’s impeachment, is a rising star on the right.  Former president Donald Trump’s Twitter feed — back when he still had one — was rife with glaring misspellings,  as well as absurd lies.  Some even suspected the misspellings were deliberate — intended to signal his contempt for eggheads who might care about such niceties.

• “In the 1980s, when I (Max Boot) became a Republican, the GOP took pride in describing itself as the ‘party of ideas.’  But under Trump’s leadership, Republicans have reclaimed their old reputation, dating back to the 1950s, as the ‘stupid party.’  What’s even more telling: This is not a source of shame or embarrassment for the party’s populists.  They’re the stupid-and-proud-of-it party.
• “The covid pandemic has brought forth a corresponding pandemic of right-wing inanity.  Representative Marjorie Greene and other Republicans have compared efforts to vaccinate Americans — i.e., to save lives — to the Nazis’ mass murder of Jews.  Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said he would support vaccine mandates only if ‘there’s some incredibly dangerous disease.’

Covid-19, which has already killed at least 700,000 Americans, doesn’t qualify.  Johnson just introduced the Prevent Unconstitutional Vaccine Mandates for Interstate Commerce Act.  This raises the obvious question (obvious, that is, to everyone but Johnson):  If mandates are unconstitutional, why is legislation needed to stop them?  Won’t the courts overturn them?

Boot’s work illustrates that there are many – yes, many – examples of stupid these days.  You don’t have to work hard to find them.

And, incredibly, stupid prevails when we need vigorous and reasoned discussion of major issues facing this country.

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.

A friend of mine told a story the other day – I forget the exact context of why the subject came up – but he said he got in a bit of trouble a few years ago when he called a group of “persons” girls.

Surely, they were of that gender, but the question then was what appropriate term to use – girls, women, ladies, or whatever.  It remains a question today, though, as I report below, not for me.

When I was a manager in Oregon state government many years ago, I faced the same challenge.  At that time, I used the term “woman,” believing it was the best term, one without, for me, a tinge of discrimination or humiliation as I related to “women” with whom I worked.

As a person who loves words (more than, say, numbers, charts and graphs), all of this came back to me this morning as I read a column in the Wall Street Journal by Nicole Ault, an assistant editorial page writer at the newspaper.

Her work appeared under this headline:

The ACLU Decides ‘Woman’ Is a Bad Word

The group bowdlerizes a Ruth Bader Ginsburg quote to refer to a ‘person’s’ pregnancy.

She reported that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has now apologized for excluding the word “woman” from a Ruth Bader Ginsburg (the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice) quotation in a tweet the organization posted on September 18:

‘“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] well-being and dignity,” as the organization rendered the statement.  

ACLU executive director Anthony Romero told the New York Times that in the future the group “won’t be altering people’s quotes.”  In this case, he meant restoring the use of the term “woman.”

“But,” Ault wrote, “the ACLU will surely find ways to hedge the word, because doing so has become a progressive point of order.  House Democrats qualified the word ‘woman’ in a September bill by saying the term reflects ‘the identity of the majority of people’ who might seek an abortion.

“This Act is intended to protect all people with the capacity for pregnancy — cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, those who identify with a different gender, and others.”

Say what?

This is only another instance of what so-called “progressives” have found enough time to pronounce.  Use “they,” not “him” or “her,” they say.

Use “person” instead of “woman.”

Well, forgive me, if you must, but I refuse to cater to the ACLU or left-wing directives. 

I intend to continue to use word “woman” to describe my wife, my daughter, my grand-daughters, and my friends.  For that is what they are – women.

And guess what?

The Wall Street Journal’s Ault agrees with me.  She wrote this as a conclusion to her column:

“A meaningful feminism would promote the dignity of women and recognize that the word ‘woman’ connotes a reality that transcends — but isn’t separate from — a female reproductive system.  The word should remain part of our language and hold its original meaning.”

Ditto.

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.

Even as President Joe Biden headed down to Capitol Hill a day or so ago to try to rescue key tenets of his political strategy — the infrastructure bill and a far larger expression of his priorities — it is unclear whether he made progress or not.

What is clear is that he is asking for more time to try to cut a deal with various factions of Democrats who, at least for now, are not committing to “yes.”

Frankly, from my post in the cheap seats out West, I have a hard time understanding why some Congressional Democrats are making it so difficult for Biden.

It’s one thing, of course, for Republicans to oppose the Democrat president.  They feel it is their obligation not to give the president any kind of political victory, for they believe such victories will translate into fodder for his re-election campaign.

But, when Democrats pile on, it lacks rationality.

Now, of course, as a political centrist, I do wonder how this country can afford everything Biden and some of the Ds want to do, especially if the proposals cater to those on the far left as appears to be the case.  Paying for more government, including with new taxes, raises questions for me. 

Still, from a purely political standpoint, Democrats ought to try to find a way to band together in a spirit of compromise.  Which means no one gets everything they want all the time, but everyone gets something.

That  means Biden, the president who claimed bi-partisan negotiating skills as he ran for office, will now have to engage in partisan negotiations.

Washington Post writer Michael Gerson made similar points in a column late last week, so, for some of what appears below, I credit Gerson.

• TAKE CREDIT FOR INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS:  Senate passage of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package, with the bi-partisan support of 69 members, is an achievement that eluded Biden’s predecessor and a testament to Biden’s negotiating skills.  

The results include one of the largest investments in roads and bridges since Dwight D. Eisenhower’s creation of the National Highway System, the expansion of broadband to millions of the bypassed, the modernization of public transport, the revamping of the electrical grid and the upgrade of water systems.

There is enough prime, grade-A political pork — needed pork, justified pork, moral pork — in this package for members of Congress to claim credit from now till Doomsday, or Election Day (whichever comes first).

• TAKE CREDIT FOR “SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS:  People call the $3.5 trillion social spending package the “$3.5 trillion social spending package” because there is no more specific way to characterize legislation that includes universal pre-K, dental benefits in Medicare, an extension of the child tax credit, promotion of agricultural conservation, improvement to Veterans Affairs hospitals, an allowance for Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, two free years of community college, increased spending on home care, consumer rebates for weatherization, investment in affordable housing, a federal medical leave benefit, etc., etc., etc.  All of which can be explained to the public.

Take credit for that, or….

• FIND A WAY TO AGREE ON SOMETHING SMALLER – AND EXPLAINABLE:  Wouldn’t it have been more useful for Democrats to pick one ambitious element of their agenda — say, making the child tax credit permanent — and force a national debate on its merits?  This is the most dramatically “pro-family” initiative by the federal government in recent memory.  Parents would continue to receive $3,000 per child, per year, paid out as a monthly benefit (with an additional $600 payment for children under the age of 6). This one measure would keep more than 4 million children out of poverty and cut the overall poverty rate by 40 percent.
• THEN TAKE CREDIT FOR SMALLER INVESTMENTS IF THAT’S WHAT OCCURS:  Take the slimmest possible win as a massive political mandate…take a few large wins — say, on the infrastructure package and the child tax credit — and explain them to the public. In this case, the overarching message would be a focus on tangible things such as roads, bridges, and children.

So, as Biden continues to work the process, Gerson has good advice.  Take credit for smaller wins and explain them to the public.

But, first, Biden has to gain buy-in from his own party in Congress.

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 word “peril” in this blog headline comes from a book I just finished reading.

It is “Peril” by Washington Post writers Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

If you want to have nightmares, read the book.  Or, better said, if you want to understand recent political history in order to avoid repeating it, read the book.

It is a well-researched account of how former President Donald Trump behaved so badlyin office, as well as how he hopes to be able to rise again as president.

In the last days of his presidency, various figures in government, including chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, worried that Trump would initiate military action to try to save himself in office.  So, Milley and others took action to make sure that any attempt by Trump to adopt a “wag the dog” strategy, including pushing the nuclear button, would not succeed.   

Now, if Trump succeeds in doing what he appears to be doing, which is working to become president again, we will have to contend with his “it’s-all-about-me” narcissism.  And that could lead, literally, to the end of democracy in this country.  After all, he wants to “the leader” – albeit a despot.

The authors, in a note at the end of the book, report that all interviews were conducted under the journalistic rule of “deep background.”  This means, they say, that all the information they gleaned could be used in the book, but they would not attribute comments to specific individuals by name.

They drew “Peril” from more hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 200 firsthand participants and witnesses to events of Trump’s loss and President Joe Biden’s win.

Does “deep background” taint the work?  I say “no” and I say that as a former journalist myself, though I lay no claim to being in the same major league with Woodward and Costa.

One excerpt from the book quotes Republican operative Karl Rove as saying this:

“Look, I’ve been through a couple of presidential elections.  The president (Trump) was given over 50 times to make this case (a stolen election) in court.  The pleadings don’t match up with rhetoric.  But we have a number of people who believe that it was stolen from him and that’s their first touch point.

“Moving forward, the question is going to be, are there people whose lives depend on division and dissension and disruption in the party (the Republican party), who fight for the sake of fighting?  Who say, you know that you can’t disagree with me unless – if you’re not with me, you’re a zero and I’m going to punish you.”

I won’t report other excerpts from “Peril,” thus leaving that to you, if you choose to read the book.  In doing so, you will learn more about the terrifying events of our recent past – and, perhaps, of our future.

Kudos to Woodward and Costa for giving us a glimpse of what all of us managed to avoid, which is more Trump.  Let’s hope Trump remains in our past, not in our future.