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.

This is one of three departments I run with a free hand to manage as I see fit.  The others are the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of “Just Saying,” which was open earlier this week.

See, I can run two departments at the same time.

Here are good quotes worth remembering.

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  Is Joe Biden up to the job of being president?  That’s a question being asked by some political commentators, as well as, I suspect, by some voters.

Wall Street Journal pundit James Freeman got into the act this with a column entitled, “Don’t Laugh — Biden 2024.”

Freeman wrote:

“In a column recently, I suggested that President Joe Biden avoid public speaking, at least on weighty topics such as weapons of mass destruction. There’s no constitutional reason he can’t limit his communications to written statements, and his spontaneous remarks have proven to be especially troublesome.  

“Even before his disturbing recent series of misstatements on highly consequential issues, many voters had already decided that Biden is not up to the job of being president.”

Comment:  I understand why some questions have arisen about Biden’s capability to serve as president.  It’s not just age; it’s that sometimes he slips up and says stuff he doesn’t fully mean.

If we could be assured that there would be a real, genuine contest to see who would be the next president in 2024 – Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, another Democrat, or a slew of Republicans – then I’d be okay with the normal election process to choose our next leader.

But, a real election is not likely to occur with former president Donald Trump waiting in the wings.  He will stoke division, dishonesty, and hatred as he tries to rise again to the nation’s top political job without regard to the country he wants to lead.

As one voter, that prospect is more than I can tolerate.

MORE FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  The newspaper carried a piece by columnist Peggy Noonan under this headline —  “Joe Biden Has a Presentation Problem; voters would be grateful if he stopped talking down to them and learned to be straightforward.”

Noonan went on:

“I want to talk about Joe Biden and his unique problems presenting his presidency.  You’re aware of his political position and the polls.  The latest from CNN has him at 39 per cent approval.  Public admiration began to plummet during the Afghanistan withdrawal.  That disaster came as it was becoming clear the president was handing his party’s progressive caucus functional control of his domestic agenda, which fell apart and never recovered.

“All politics grows from policies, and policies are announced and argued for through presentation, including, crucially, speeches. Joe Biden has a presentation problem.

“When he stands at a podium and reads from a teleprompter, his mind seems to wander quickly from the meaning of what he’s saying to the impression he’s making.  You can sort of see this, that he’s always wondering how he’s coming across.  When he catches himself, he tends to compensate by enacting emotion.

“But the emotion he seems most publicly comfortable with is indignation. An example is his answer to a reporter’s question in November about the Administration’s plans to compensate illegal-immigrant parents who’d been separated from their children at the border.

“Suddenly he was angry-faced; he raised his voice, increased his tempo, and started jabbing the air.  ‘You lost your child. It’s gone! You deserve some kind of compensation, no matter what the circumstances.’  Then, catching himself, he added mildly, ‘What that will be, I have no idea.’  He was trying to show presentness, engagement.  But there’s often an “angry old man yelling at clouds” aspect to this.

“There are small tics that worked long ago.  He often speaks as if we are fascinated by the family he came from and that formed him. Thus, he speaks of the old neighborhood and lessons.  And my mother told me, Joey, don’t comb your hair with buttered toast.

“This was great for a Knights of Columbus pancake breakfast in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, but not now.  For all the mystique of the presidency, people hired you to do a job and want you to be clear and have a plan. They aren’t obsessed with your family, they’re obsessed with their family.”

Comment:  Biden has some time to sharpen his approach and his delivery.  I agree with Noonan who says, “He should commit, when speaking, to ‘Be Here Now.’  He should be straightforward and modest.”

Biden’s entire presidency rides on his ability to change – and, whether he does or not, his re-election would be better than one of the alternatives, Donald Trump.

NEW YORK TIMES:  Columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a piece in the NY Times ridiculing “soulless” leaders in America – and I add that most of them label themselves as Republicans.  Here’s a summary of Friedman’s column.

“So, here’s my bottom line:  Several years ago, a Hebrew biography of Ariel Sharon was published with the title “He Doesn’t Stop at Red Lights.”  It is a fitting title for our times, too.

“What is so unnerving to me about the state of the world today are the number of leaders ready to shamelessly, in broad daylight — and with a sense of utter impunity — drive through red lights.  That is, to drive through the legal and normative gates that have kept the world relatively peaceful over the last 70 years, during which we had no great power wars, and have enabled more people to emerge from extreme poverty faster than at any other era in history.

“We will miss this if it ends.  To maintain it, though, it’s necessary that we help all those unnamed Ukrainians fighting for their freedom to succeed.  And it is necessary that we make sure that Putin’s quest to find dignity by crushing that Ukrainian freedom movement fails.

“But none of that is sufficient if all those politicians in America who also think that they can run through any red light to gain or hold power succeed.  Who will follow our model then?

“I can’t think of another time in my life when I felt the future of America’s democracy and the future of democracy globally were more in doubt.  And don’t kid yourself; they are intertwined.  And don’t kid yourself; they both can still go either way.”

Comment:  Friedman has it right.  One of my good friends has lamented lately about the tendency of some Republicans running for office (including in Oregon) to express fealty for the soulless Donald Trump as they – the Republicans – campaign.

Better if they would express honesty, forthrightness, and a soul, even if in so doing, they could lose an election.  Better to be honest that a soulless winner.

If they don’t rise to the occasion of better government for the people, they will have catered – or, read, cratered – to unethical behavior.  As Friedman writes, this will come at the risk of the America we have known for 70 years.