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 column by Wall Street Journal writer Gerald Seib yesterday got me to thinking about a very solid piece of advice to me from one of my former partners, Pat McCormick.

To emphasize the importance of the lost art of listening, he said this:

“God gave you two ears and one mouth, so spend twice as much time listening as talking.”

I often think about this sage advice – as well as try to follow it – during a time when, to repeat a phrase above, “listening is a lost art.”

Apply that to politics and you get the picture.  Those who claim to represent us usually spend much more time talking than listening.

So, here from columnist Seib are excerpts of a post that appeared under this headline:

A Listening Deficit Plagues America, From 2020 Vote to January 6 to Vaccines

“As this election year begins to unfold, Americans aren’t merely arguing about politics.  It’s increasingly clear they can’t even agree on what they’re arguing about.

“You want to debate political violence?  People on the left think instantly of the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021.  People on the right counter with the 2020 George Floyd summer of unrest.

“Refusal to accept election results?  On the left, that’s clearly a reference to former President Donald Trump’s false claims the 2020 election was stolen from him.  On the right, it might be a reference to Democrats’ attempts to oust Trump from office after 2016, or Democrat Stacey Abrams’ refusal to concede her loss in Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial election.

“Dangerous social trends?  On the left, that’s a reference to rising racism and anti-Semitism, and anti-vaccination trolling.  On the right, it’s about woke and cancel cultures run rampant, and vaccine mandates.”

In short, Seib argues, people are talking past one another.  And, he adds, it isn’t happening only in Washington, or in political circles, but increasingly within communities and even within families.

“Worse yet, people with differing views today don’t merely disagree; often, they can’t even comprehend how those on the other side could possibly think the way they do.  

“Yet, ironically, the problem isn’t so much that Americans aren’t talking enough.  They’re talking plenty.  A significant part of the problem is that they’ve stopped listening.

“That is to say, too often Americans aren’t listening to people on the other side closely enough to understand WHY they think what they think. Instead, the default position, fueled by the shouting on social media, has become to move immediately to anger, and then yell:  You’re just crazy.”

When I was a lobbyist a few years ago, I often worried that I would fall victim to the tendency to talk too much.  So, before meetings with legislators, as I walked down the Capitol hallways to meet with them, I told myself – “listen more than you talk.”

It was good advice then as a lobbyist.  It is good advice today in your family, your church, your neighborhood, with friends, or on the golf course.

Seib cites a consultant who says this: “Over the last several decades, we have become more and more entrenched in our own tribes, and those tribes are increasingly defined by what they are against.  As soon as I think of someone else as ‘the other,’ as a threat, they are no longer worth listening to.  We have gotten this almost religious fervor.”

So, today, I suggest that we need to find listening again as a key part of our character.  Who knows – if we all spent more time listening than talking, we’d be the better for it.  And, step-by-step, the character of our commitment could even improve political discourse.

Seib adds:

“Such steps can’t, by themselves douse a national fire of political anger—especially when much of it comes from people unwilling to try listening.  Getting Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs to come to the proverbial table and engage in that conversation is a tremendous challenge.  The reason is the lack of trust. The very problem we are attempting to solve by seeing our humanity across differences is preventing that solution.”  

So, with me, listen more than talk.