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 phrase in a story about President Joe Biden going off-script in a speech in Brussels, Belgium, caught my attention this week.

One seasoned observer analyzed it this way: “It reminds us that message discipline has its virtues.  It was reportedly very clearly an unscripted moment.”

Here is what Biden said:

“Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot remain in power.”

This illustrated the tension in this blog headline — sticking to a script or going off-script.  And Biden is paying a price for his candor and so is the country as a whole as some suspect that Biden’s ad lib actually represents U.S. foreign policy, which is does not.

In the Washington Post, columnist Eugene Robinson wrote what many may be thinking in the aftermath of Biden’s candor.

“Biden said what many people around the globe, including world leaders, are surely thinking.  Putin has turned Ukraine into a charnel house and his own Russia into a pariah state.  He has violated the principle of respect for internationally recognized borders that for more than seven decades has kept us from somehow stumbling into an unimaginable World War III.”

In a column in the Wall Street Journal, retired senior editor Gerard Baker wrote under this headline:  “Biden at the Improv:  Ukraine and the Dangers of Foreign Policy by Open Mic; What if someone takes seriously his talk of U.S. troop deployments or regime change in Russia?”

“… some words have larger consequences than others—especially when you’re the president of the United States,” Baker wrote.  “It’s one thing to misidentify your vice president as the first lady, but quite another to call for the ouster of an autocratic and bellicose leader of a nation with nuclear weapons.  That is the kind of thing that can trigger wars that could result in the annihilation of much of humanity.”

[I include this comment even though I have been generally surprised by Baker’s writing since he left his Wall Street Journal post.  He has been almost uniformly critical of Biden, thus appearing to long for the days of Donald Trump.]

Administration officials and Democrat lawmakers said last weekend that Biden’s off-the-cuff remark was an emotional response to the president’s interactions in Warsaw with refugees — some of whom had fled violence in Mariupol, a Ukrainian southern port city under weekslong Russian bombardment and attacks on civilians.

For his part, Biden chose not to apologize.  He said his comments were an “expression of moral outrage,” not an expression of formal U.S. policy.

Forgive me, for a moment, as I reflect on my own professional life, which, obviously, was not advising presidents, but was advising clients in Oregon and the region.

If they were preparing to testify at the Oregon Legislature or submit to a major media interview, I regularly advised them to develop a script, then stick to it.  I called it “message discipline.” 

I also practiced the discipline myself as I prepared to speak to legislators, editors, or reporters.  Script notes were especially critical when I handled media relations for Oregon’s prison system or when I represented the State of Oregon in negotiations with its public employee unions.  Same with testimony to Oregon legislators.

Here’s the tension:

• Some argue for candor and transparency, which sounds good, but can create trouble for any speaker who wants to deliver a message, when that speaker may not be good at off-the-cuff riffs.
• Others argue for staying on a message to make a point, emphasize it, and not deflect from it by straying off subject.

Which is right?

Depends on your bias.  Mine is this:  Practice message discipline unless you are good at ad-libbing, including with a recognition of the potential future consequences of any candid remark.

Back to Biden.  I am glad he is in the White House instead of his predecessor, Donald Trump, whose stock-in-trade was going off-script, even though there was probably not a script in the first place.  He usually refused to use notes for interviews or a teleprompter for his speeches.  So, it would be impossible to say he was going off-script because there was no script..

Overall, at the risk of appearing to advise a president, I contend Biden should stay on message – stick with a script –because ad-libbing gets him in trouble.  Us, too.