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.

In case you didn’t notice, President Joe Biden held a stand-alone news conference this week on the date of the end of his first year in office.  It lasted, incredibly, two hours.

Various commentators and pundits were quick to rate his performance, both in his first year, as well as in the press conference.

Not surprisingly, he got both credit and debit.

But there is one fact that rises above all others.

We should be grateful every day that Biden is in office rather than former president Donald Trump and the band of incompetents who used to run the government.

Washington Post editorial writers put it this way:

“One can only imagine how much worse off the country would be if Trump were still dispensing bizarre medical advice from the White House, running a Russia-friendly foreign policy as the Kremlin prepares to invade Ukraine, or continuing to deny climate change.

“Biden also has restored integrity to the Oval Office, neither lying nor abusing his authority the way Trump did.  And the president can claim some important accomplishments.  Most Americans are vaccinated.  His covid-19 aid bill alleviated child poverty during the worst of the pandemic. The country is only beginning to see the benefits of the $1 trillion bi-partisan infrastructure bill that will fund massive investments in green energy, highways, bridges and rail, which passed under his leadership.”

[As an aside here, I add that some Republicans who voted against the infrastructure bill are now lauding its benefits where they live.]

Further, the Post made a very salient point what it said that “a president controls only so much.  He or she can do little about inflation and even less about the viral genetic mutations that lead to new coronavirus variants.”

Too often in my experience, we expect presidents and governors to fix things, as if they had ultimate power to do so. They don’t.

As a state lobbyist, I often concluded this when I saw governors get credit for economic growth and debit for economic failure.  Mostly, they deserved neither…at least not full credit nor full debit.

What’s true now, according to several media analysts, is that Biden needs to tack toward the practical.  That could mean finding a way to endorse a smaller “Build Back Better” bill.   It could mean, despite a U.S. Supreme Court setback, continuing to advocate for virus vaccination mandates (though his vaccine initiative suffered another setback yesterday when a judge rules that a mandate for federal workers should not be allowed).

Washington Post commentator E. J. Dionne put Biden’s challenge this way:

“Here is where middle-of-the-road critiques of Biden are right: 

• “He needs to focus incessantly on the virus and inflation — twin challenges that are top of mind for most Americans.
• “He needs to settle on a strategy that reaches toward as much normality as is consistent with the virus threat, and he needs to put an end to confusing messaging from various parts of the government.
• “On inflation, he needs highly visible efforts to unsnarl the supply chain.
• “He needs to resolve the core contradiction of his presidency — between his longing to be the great unifier and his desire to do big things Republicans were bound to oppose.”

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson added this point:

“It must be deeply frustrating for President Biden to take stock of his underappreciated successes. His economic performance is being trashed after the creation of 6 million jobs. His economic stewardship is being questioned in a country with 3.9 per cent unemployment. His pandemic response is being broadly criticized even though more than 75 per cent of American adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine (compared with fewer than 20 per cent 10 months ago).”

“These claims< Gerson says, “are Biden administration talking points. They have the added virtue of being true.”  Which, I add, is a huge contrast with lies and exaggerations under Donald Trump.

Will Biden be able to strike this middle-of-road re-set?  No one knows.  But, what hangs in the balance as we approach the mid-term elections is, in fact, the future of his presidency.