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 have never been to Ukraine in person.

But, I feel as if I am there every day as I read stories about the terrible war.

Started by the immoral Vladimir Putin, what is happening in Ukraine is tearing apart that country, as well as Russia itself.  The West may be more united than ever as it faces the Putin challenge, but there will be price to pay for the West, as well.

For my part, I read the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Atlantic Magazine every day in an effort to make sense of what I cannot see in person. 

I also try to avoid drowning in information, for, as one citizen far from the war, there is not much I can do about it individually, so better to get an overall perspective than too much information.

So it was that I read with interest two recent columns – one by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal and one by Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post.

Here are excerpts from each.

FROM PEGGY NOONAN:  Under this headline – “The World, Moved, Needs to Move Cautiously in Ukraine; We admire Zelensky and want to help his country. But escalation poses threats far beyond its borders” – here is what Noonan wrote.

“It is good to be moved.  It feels good to admire without ambivalence.  The West is united, suddenly and surprisingly, and that feels good too.

“Volodymyr Zelensky stirred the world not only by what he said but what he did.  He has put it all on the line, including his life.  Early on he told the press the intelligence services had informed him he is Russian target No. 1, his wife and two children target No. 2, but they’re staying, they won’t leave.

“It is reminiscent of the summer of 1940 and London bracing for the blitz. Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked if the children of the British royal family, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, shouldn’t be sent to safety overseas.  This was the answer of Queen Elizabeth, wife of King George VI: ‘The children could not go without me, I could not possibly leave the king, and the king would never go.’  So they stayed. Princess Elizabeth has been queen now for 70 years.

“The West must try with everything it has to end this.  Cease-fires, talks, negotiations that become serious, possible compromises, efforts at ‘deconfliction’—every attempt has to be made and made again.  That’s what diplomats exist to do, find a way out when history turns hard.

“We must do what we can without sparks flying, and Lord knows we should be talking to Russia about Ukraine’s 15 nuclear reactors.  It’s not only a matter of ‘don’t hit them,’ it is that human beings have to work there to keep them safely operating—showing up each day during a war, sustaining their professionalism, not being unnerved and making mistakes while they’re being shelled.

“The West must feel what it feels and not compromise our judgment.”

FROM KATHLEEN PARKER:  Under this headline – “Why Russia won’t soon recover from Putin’s Ukraine blunder” – here is what Parker wrote.

“I can’t stand it.  Nobody can stand it.  We’re dead.

“These were Nina Khrushcheva’s first words when I called to ask how she was faring as Russia’s war on Ukraine escalates and civilian death tolls rise.

“A friend of several years, Khrushcheva has taught me much about the country she loves and the leader she loathes — Vladimir Putin.  An author and professor at the New School in New York with dual U.S.-Russian citizenship, she’s the great-granddaughter of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

“She’s stressed out, just as are more than 80 per cent of Americans recently polled by the American Psychological Association.  While most Americans cite the cumulative effects of inflation, the two-year-old pandemic and a European war with no end in sight, Khrushcheva’s demons are more personal and specific to Putin.

“’How could a country that defeated the Nazis do this?’ she asks.

“Khrushcheva also finds Putin’s actions out of character.

“I kept arguing that the invasion of Ukraine couldn’t happen because, if you deconstruct Putin, he doesn’t do crazy, big things, she says.  He does small stuff — Crimea, Belarus.  Invading Ukraine was entirely out of the Putin-judo-master-KGB character.

“Americans have wondered what could explain Putin’s error in judgment. Is he ill?  Perhaps mentally ill?  French President Emmanuel Macron’s report that the Russian leader didn’t seem himself during a phone conversation just before the invasion gained traction because it seemed plausible when nothing else did.

“Putin the Monster will join not the greats but the murderers in Russia’s history.

“In his pursuit of a nationalistic, patriotic, moral Russia with himself as czar, Putin has put his country in reverse.  Economic sanctions might be the least of what he has wrought.  People including Khrushcheva are equally concerned about social sanctions, manifested in the loss of identity, society, and culture.

“’As a country, Russia is ruined for decades to come,’ she says. ‘The whole world is behind Ukraine.  The rest of the world will never, ever be normal with us.  Not even a handshake.’”

So, what do I surmise in all of this – if anything?

Well, my answer is the same as it has been for a couple weeks now.  It is that Putin is a criminal, more in line with Adolph Hitler than anyone else, so he should be repudiated and vilified, not made into some kind of weird hero.

What he has done in Ukraine is reprehensible.  So is what he has done to his own country.

The West, led forcefully by U.S. President Joe Biden (by the way, I continue to be glad that he is in the White House instead of his predecessor), must work to find the best answers in the current conflict. 

Not the magic answers, for there are reverse spins to every potential action.  And there is no magic.  The best answers.