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.

Every once in a while, it makes sense for me to devote one of my blogs to someone else’s writing.

In this case, the someone else is Dana Milbank, a columnist for the Washington Post.

Over the years, I have not always agreed with Milbank’s opinions, but he is a good writer, especially when he goes after Donald Trump and his ilk.

This one of those times.  The subject is U.S. Representative Kevin McCarthy who wants almost more than anything to be Speaker of the House….if Republicans take over control after the next election.

On my own, the other day I wrote that McCarthy has shown the ability to do anything – lie, cheat, and steal to get what he wants, with no regard for the country.

Milbank agrees with me – or, perhaps better said, I agree with him.  This time, he writes about McCarthy’s trip to the Rio Grande to rail against immigrants.  He used the trip to deny again that, after January 6, 2021, he said Trump had committed such heinous acts that he ought to resign.  Yet, the New York Times has a tape recording of McCarthy’s comments.

No matter, McCarthy still denies he said what he said as he bows to the altar of Trump.

Enough from me.  Here is what Milbank wrote.

**********

The Great Prevaricator stood on the banks of the Rio Grande and released a mighty river of deceit.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in a news conference Monday afternoon with fellow Republican lawmakers at the southern border and in a separate interview with Fox News, misrepresented the source of illicit fentanyl.  He grossly distorted a description of phones the federal government is using to track immigrants who crossed the border illegally. He teased the dubious notion that Democrats somehow obtained and leaked the audio of a private meeting he had with fellow Republican leaders.

And then there was this showstopper:  He dissembled about his own lie.

First, he claimed he wasn’t lying when he falsely denied a New York Times report that he had told colleagues after the January 6, 2021, insurrection that he would suggest President Donald Trump resign.  He suggested he misunderstood the question.

Yet McCarthy then appeared, in his garbled syntax, to repeat the original lie that he never told colleagues he planned to ask Trump to resign:  “If you’re asking now, ‘Did I tell my members that we’re going to ask?’  Ask them if I told any of them that I said to President Trump.  The answer is no.”  (According to the audio recording of that meeting, McCarthy in fact said he was “seriously thinking” of telling Trump “it would be my recommendation you should resign.”)

Telling a bald-faced lie, particularly one of such magnitude, is a sign of low character.  But repeating the very same lie just seconds after explaining you hadn’t told the lie in the first place is a sign of low brain activity.

Alas, this may well be the next Speaker of the House.

In the kerfuffle over McCarthy getting caught on tape saying exactly the thing he adamantly denied saying, the only surprising component is that some speculate that this flagrant dishonesty might somehow cost him the speakership if Republicans retake the House.

That’s crazy talk.  In this Trumpified Republican Party, lying is not a liability.  To the contrary:  The only truly career-damaging move a Republican lawmaker can make at the moment is to tell the truth.

McCarthy knows this firsthand.  He told the truth once in 2015 — and it cost him the speakership then.  He had been next in line for the job until he inadvertently said something truthful to Fox News’s Sean Hannity:  That Republicans launched a probe of the Benghazi terrorist attack for the purpose of harming Hillary Clinton.

Since then, it has been fairly easy to tell when McCarthy is lying:  His lips are moving.  He even banished fellow Republican Rep. Liz Cheney from leadership for telling the truth about January 6.

There was a time when getting caught on tape lying might have ended a career.  Sam Rayburn, the legendary House speaker of the mid-20th century known for his integrity, famously said that “any fellow who will cheat for you will cheat against you.”

McCarthy is the sort of man Rayburn warned of.  He has been a torrent of disinformation — about his statements immediately after January 6, about Biden’s tax proposals, about the January 6 committee, about the economy, about covid-19 relief and about the 2020 election.

In the caucus he leads, such deceit is standard.  McCarthy was joined at the border by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in sworn testimony last week flatly denied calling Nancy Pelosi a “traitor to the country.”  A lawyer then displayed the quote of Greene saying exactly that.

“Oh, no, wait, hold on now,” Greene said, revising her account.  She also said she didn’t recall whether she advised Trump to impose martial law after he lost the election; text messages reported Monday by CNN show her telling Trump’s chief of staff that “several” lawmakers “are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall (sic) law.”

Yet even Greene had a hard time keeping up with the Great Prevaricator on Monday.  As Greene hovered off McCarthy’s shoulder, the Republican leader declared that “all” fentanyl is coming “across this border” — which must be a surprise to China and to traffickers who bring most of their product through legal entry points.  

McCarthy announced he had seen just-apprehended migrants “opening up the iPhones that the government was providing them” and on which it would “pay for their calls”; in reality, the devices aren’t iPhones and don’t work for purposes other than monitoring.

McCarthy then moved on to repeat last week’s lie about January 6 and Trump’s resignation — which he dismissed as “something that happened 15 months ago on a private conversation.”

But 15 months later, the Great Prevaricator’s assault on truth has become a daily menace.

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 guess this would be a “”logical day to write about the U.S. Supreme Court and abortion, given all the news about the leak of a draft opinion proposing to undo Roe V. Wade.

But, for me, there never is a logical day for such writing.  I will leave all of the discussion about abortion (at least almost all of the discussion) — not to mention vitriol — to the pundits and commentators.

For me, this is a good day to write about an long-timne reality in Oregon – the so-called “Two Oregons” – the urban one and the rural one that never can get together.  Or, at least they refuse to understand each other.

The division persists today. 

And the divide exists in other states, as well.

I encountered the reality when I worked as deputy director of the Oregon Economic Development a number of years ago.  For us, it was easier to recruit businesses to grow and expand in urban areas than it was in rural areas.

That’s just the reality of the economy.  But, at the risk of defending myself when no one is charging me with anything, my colleagues and I in the department made a variety of intentional efforts to reach out to rural Oregonians.

We traveled the state.  We welcomed interaction with rural residents.  We tried to understand their perceptions, though, to state the obvious, all of us in the department were from an urban area, either Salem or Portland.

On this subject, a solid story appeared in the New York Times early this week written by Chloe Maxmin, the youngest female state senator in the State of Maine’s history, and Canyon Woodward, who ran two of her campaigns.  They wrote a book – “Dirt Road Revival” – which offered some suggestions about how to bridge the urban-rural divide.Top of Form

Their notions are not magic answers, but they are worth considering. 

Here is how their essay in the NY Times started:

“NOBLEBORO, Maine — We say this with love to our fellow Democrats: Over the past decade, you willfully abandoned rural communities.  As the party turned its focus to the cities and suburbs, its outreach became out of touch and impersonal.  To rural voters, the message was clear:  You don’t matter.

“Now, Republicans control dozens of state legislatures, and Democrats have only tenuous majorities in Congress at a time in history when we simply can’t afford to cede an inch.   The party can’t wait to start correcting course. It may be too late to prevent a blowout in the fall, but the future of progressive politics — and indeed our democracy — demands that we revive our relationship with rural communities.

“As two young progressives raised in the country, we were dismayed as small towns like ours swung to the right.  But we believed that Democrats could still win conservative rural districts if they took the time to drive down the long dirt roads where we grew up, have face-to-face conversations with moderate Republican and independent voters and speak a different language, one rooted in values rather than policy.”

That’s good advice.

I put it this way.  State agency administrators and legislators from urban areas in Oregon should make an intentional effort to travel around Oregon to meet people in rural areas. 

Travel the “dirt roads.”

Talk to these citizens.  But don’t just talk.  Listen.

Maxmin and Woodward did this in Maine, and it worked.

“To us,” they say, “it was proof that the dogmas that have long governed American politics could and should be challenged.  Over the past decade, many Democrats seem to have stopped trying to persuade people who disagreed with them, counting instead on demographic shifts they believed would carry them to victory — if only they could turn out their core supporters.

“The choice to prioritize turnout in Democrat strongholds over persuasion of moderate voters has cost the party election after election.  But Democrats can run and win in communities that the party has written off, and they need not be Joe Manchin-like conservative Democrats to do so.”

In 2018, the two authors reported, with chagrin, that the chair of the Democrat National Committee, Tom Perez, told MSNBC, “You can’t door-knock in rural America.”

In effect, what he said was that rural America wasn’t worth a dime.  He wrote off hundreds of thousands of citizens throughout the country.

Maxmin and Woodward add this:

“That blinkered strategy is holding the party back.  When Democrats talk only to their own supporters, they see but a small fraction of the changes roiling this country.  Since 2008, residents of small towns have fallen behind cities on many major economic benchmarks, and they watched helplessly as more and more power and wealth were consolidated in cities.  

“The current Democrat strategy leads, not just to bad policy, but also to bad politics.  Our democracy rewards the party that can win support over large areas.  Ceding rural America leaves a narrow path to victory even in the best circumstances.

“What much of the party establishment doesn’t understand is that rural life is rooted in shared values of independence, common sense, tradition, frugality, community, and hard work.  Democrat campaigns often seem to revolve around white papers and wonky policy.  In our experience, politicians lose rural people when they regurgitate politically triangulated lines and talk about the vagaries of policy.

“Rural folks vote on what rings true and personal to them:  Can this person be trusted? Is he or she authentic.”

Some political scientists and many mainstream Democrats don’t believe their own strategies must change.  Rather, they believe rural Republicans are too ignorant to vote in their own best interest.  

“It’s a counterproductive, condescending story that serves only to drive the wedge between Democrats and rural communities deeper yet.” 

And, the two authors offer this anecdote:

“Chloe has knocked on more than 20,000 doors over the past two cycles, listening to stories of loss and isolation.  One man told her she was the first person to listen to him.  Most campaigns, he said, didn’t even bother to knock on his door; they judged him for what his house looked like.  Another voter said she had been undecided between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump until Election Day but voted for Trump because, she said, at the Republican convention, he talked about regular American working people and Clinton didn’t at her convention.”

Something has to change.

Democrats need a radically different strategy if they are to restore their reputation as champions of working people, committed to improving their lives, undaunted by wealth and power.

In their campaigns, the two turned down the party consultants and created their own canvassing universe — the targeted list of voters they talk to during the election season.

As for campaign signs?  They were hand-painted or made of scavenged wood pallets by volunteers, with images of loons, canoes, and other hallmarks of the Maine countryside.  Into the trash went consultant-created mailers.  Instead, the two designed and carried out their own direct mail program for half the price of what the party consultants wanted to charge while reaching 20 per cent more voters.

In addition, volunteers wrote more than 5,000 personal postcards, handwritten and addressed to neighbors in their own community.  And, they defied traditional advice by refusing to say a negative word about their opponents, no matter how badly they wanted to fight back as the campaigns grew more heated.

More from the two authors: 

“We heard some rough stuff, and we didn’t tolerate hate.  But through the simple act of listening, we discovered that we could almost always catch a glimpse of common ground if we focused on values, not party or even policy.

“If people said they were fed up with politics, we’d say:  ‘Us, too! That’s why we’re here.’  If they despised Democrats, we’d tell them how we had deep issues with the party as well and we were trying to make it better.  It was how we differentiated ourselves from the national party and forged a sense of collective purpose.”

It is possible to apply these lessons to Legislative and Executive Branch bastions, both of which have tended to ignore rural areas for too long.

If I was going to advise Democrats in charge of nearly all sectors of political power in Oregon, I would say – “Go to rural Oregon and listen.”

If I was going to advise the top brass in state agencies, I would say the same thing.

All of this reminds of one of the favorite sayings of one of my partners in my old firm.  He was fond of saying, “God gave you two ears and one mouth.  So, listen twice as much as you talk.”

That is a basic prescription for solving at least part of the urban-rural divide in Oregon – and elsewhere.

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.

If you consider the games Republican leaders are playing these days, you would think politics is just that – a game, with not much at stake.

It’s not.

The very future of the form of U.S. democracy is at stake.

No one writes this better than columnist Thomas Friedman whose work appears in the New York Times.  One of his most recent pieces ridiculed “soulless” leaders in America who trash the country in favor of their own ends.

If you wonder about this, look no farther than Donald Trump or his sycophant Kevin McCarthy.

They want what they want because they want it – and the “it” is to be in charge of America and have thousands bow at their feet.

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.”

Back to the games metaphor.

Republicans like Trump and McCarthy behave like children, just playing a game. 

• If they don’t get their way, they pout.
• If they don’t get what they want, they get mad.
• If they say one thing one day, they will say something else – probably the opposite – the next day.

But it is not only self-proclaimed Republican leaders who treat political governance as a game.  Many voters do, too.

On this subject, read words written by the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin this morning and take no solace in them – because solace is not warranted.

“One school of punditry postulates that the rise of the anti-truth, anti-democracy MAGA movement is all about its demagogic leaders (e.g., former president Donald Trump) and opportunistic enablers (e.g. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California).  

“The theory goes that if Republicans offered something ‘better,’ the GOP base would be happy to hop off the delusional, authoritarian bandwagon.

“Skepticism is warranted.  After years of marinating in right-wing media sewage — everything from birtherism to immigrant scaremongering to the ‘big lie’ — Republican voters unsurprisingly show no sign of discomfort with the MAGA mentality. 

“To the contrary, over half of Republicans say they buy into the QAnon child-trafficking conspiracy.  Over half remain convinced the 2020 election was stolen.  When Trump briefly tried to encourage coronavirus vaccination, his crowd booed.

“In other words, the GOP suffers not only from a supply shortage of patriotic, sober-minded, pro-democracy leaders willing to call out lies — but from a demand shortage, too.  If GOP voters were offered candidates ‘better’ than the likes of Trump or pale imitators such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (who delights in using government to retaliate against corporate critics) or Missouri’s Senator Josh Hawley (who eagerly smeared Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as soft of child pornography), would anyone vote for them?”

I suggest the answer is yes.  These voters would cast ballot for anyone who catered to their outlandish views.

The issue is not just stupid Republican leaders, though that’s true.  The label stupid also to those who follow them.

It’s time for smart Americans – yes, there are some – to reject political stupidity and take up the just cause of saving America…from itself.

In a spirit of equanimity, this admonition applies to both political parties.  Above, I have written most about Republicans, but Democrats, too, ought to practice high-minded political discourse, not gamesmanship.