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.

It tended to get lost in the shuffle of a long news conference, but President Joe Biden asked a good question the other day.

It was this:  What are Republicans for?

Karen Tumulty, deputy editorial page editor for the Washington Post, went on to write this:

“What are Republicans for?  Name me one thing they’re for.”

“When President Biden posed that question at his news conference Wednesday, he no doubt meant it rhetorically.

“But there is, in fact, an answer.  Today’s Republicans are for whatever they think can restore them to power.  When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked what agenda Republicans plan to run on in their bid to regain control of Congress in this year’s mid-term elections, he replied:  “That is a very good question, and I’ll let you know when we take it back.”

Now, national Republicans no doubt would dispute that they have no agenda.  So, they should announce what it is – if it actually exists.  Then, we could use that information to help us vote next year.

During my long career in and around state government, I always said it was important for the clients I represented to be FOR something, not just AGAINST something.

For that reason, I always counseled clients to come up with ideas to propose to the Oregon Legislature because I said it still mattered to “have ideas.”

• If clients had concerns about the rate of state spending, they should be FOR citing examples of what could be cut, not just oppose spending generally.   
• If clients had concerns about the regulation of health insurance, they should be FOR providing specific examples of how burdensome regulation boosted costs for policyholders.
• If clients had concerns that there wasn’t enough money being directed to low-income health care, they should be FOR finding innovative ways to show how low-income health care funding would benefit the entire state.

[In fact, that’s exactly what Providence Health & Services did by enabling nurses and doctors to advocate for the spending – call them investments – given their first-hand, on-the-ground knowledge of the benefits.]

• If a client wanted to advocate for funds to deepen the Columbia River channel to aid maritime commerce, it should be FOR showing how the project would benefit export or import businesses in every county in Oregon, as well as the region.

[In fact, that’s exactly what the main channel deepening advocate, the Port of Portland, did to illustrate benefits for businesses in every corner of the region.]

Back to Tumulty for comments on huge national “BE FOR SOMETHING” issues:

• In the coming months, national Republicans will have to come up with something that resembles an agenda, if only for appearance’s sake.  Questions abound about the seriousness of that effort and whether the Republican policy platforms will amount to much more than a messaging effort.
• The GOP once prided itself, justifiably, on an intellectual seriousness that had made it the “party of ideas.”  That label was bestowed on it in 1980 by a Democrat, New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Five years later, fresh off being re-elected in one of the biggest landslides in U.S. history, President Ronald Reagan declared:  “The tide of history is moving irresistibly in our direction.  Why?  Because the other side is virtually bankrupt of ideas.  It has nothing more to say, nothing to add to the debate.  It has spent its intellectual capital.”
• Now, pretty much the same could be said for the Republicans themselves.  There was a time when it was easy to define conservatism as a set of principles.  Republicans had their share of raging internal debates, but they always brought it back to a few big concepts — among them, limiting the size and reach of government, reducing taxes, strengthening national defense, and holding firm to traditional moral values.  
• That Republicans had become completely dismissive of policy was obvious at least by 2020, when the party didn’t even bother to write a platform for its convention. The one-page document the GOP produced asserted merely that the Republican National Committee enthusiastically supports President Trump and continues to reject the policy positions of the Obama-Biden Administration, as well as those espoused by the Democratic National Committee today.”
•  Shorter version:  We’re for whatever shifting sands Trump happens to be standing upon at the moment.

Now, Republicans seem to be retaining the same bankruptcy.  They have no ideas.  They just want, as Tumulty avers, to stand on the shifting sands of Trump positions.

As Americans, we should not let them get away with failing to announce  reasons why we should trust them with our national future.  The same expectation should exist for Democrats.