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.

For those of us who are tired of today’s political antics, there is a prescription for doing better.

It was offered this morning by Gerald Seib, who has written for the Wall Street Journal for nearly 30 years and is heading into retirement, though he will write on occasion for the Journal.

Here is the prescription:

• An outbreak of political courage:  Specifically, the country needs the emergence of more lawmakers from both parties who are willing to risk their jobs by reaching out to the other side, and to take steps that displease the most extreme elements of their own base.  Such leaders are in depressingly short supply.

• Actual steps to revive the political center, starting with dramatic actions to curtail gerrymandering:  Both parties have taken brazen actions at the state level to re-draw congressional districts into uncompetitive sinecures, thereby empowering those on the ideological wings.

• A bi-partisan agreement on the rules for casting and counting votes, taking election integrity off the table as a divisive issue:  Both sides are wholly dependent on confidence in the system that brought them to office. If, as seems likely, power in Washington is to be shared by the two parties after this fall’s midterm elections, they will have an equal stake in the soundness of the system, and the moment to end this corrosive argument could be at hand.

• A decision by voters across the spectrum to reward rather than punish responsible behavior and compromise:  Voters aren’t powerless; politicians respond to the signals they send.

I agree with Seib, but I offer a couple additions.

First, Republicans should ignore Donald Trump and return to real conservatism.  Trump sycophants also should head south.

Second, Democrats should return to a position left of center, though not wackily so as evidenced by some on the far left who are as goofy on the left as Trump and company are the right…if they actually are on the right.

Here is Seib’s introduction to his prescription:

“Over the life of this column, the landscape at home appears in many ways to have become less healthy and more unstable.  America’s political system is fractured and polarized, and reasoned debate seems to have given way to mindless shouting.  

“Democrats seem unable to talk to older rural voters, Republicans unable to talk to younger urban voters.

“The unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 presidential election was somehow stolen from former President Donald Trump represent a dangerous cancer growing inside the body politic.

“Abroad, Russia has brazenly invaded a neighboring democratic state, Ukraine, simply because the autocrat in charge in Moscow wanted to do so. Nearly as distressing, some democratic nations—India most prominently—can’t bring themselves to condemn the action.”

So, it is easy, Seib writes, to be pessimistic about the future of democracy.

But, he advocates optimism.

“…there is another, more optimistic way to look at the landscape.  The genius of American democracy is that it isn’t static.  It adjusts and adapts over time to changing circumstances.  It renews itself.

“These adjustments usually are messy and disruptive, as they were when America evolved from slaveholding to abolitionist nation, from an agricultural to an industrial economy, from isolation to world leadership, from liberal dominance to a conservative arising.

“We are in the midst of another period of self-correction now, and that shouldn’t be surprising.  It turns out economic globalization and a technological revolution haven’t spread their benefits uniformly across society.

“The progress in racial equity wasn’t as thorough as many assumed. The coastal establishment’s disconnect from the heartland has invited cultural warfare.  Political leaders’ persistent failure to construct a more sane immigration system has undermined America’s powerful role as a magnet for talented and energetic people from around the globe.”

Seib’s optimism is worth considering. 

As America tries to deal with its future, including in the sense of its politics and governance, the stakes could not be higher.