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 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.

In America today, it is credible to “bemoan the loss of civility politics” – yes, that’s a favorite quote of mine, which I attribute to the late military hero Colin Powell.

But, the loss of civility goes beyond politics to characterize many of our general relationships in American life.

In large part, we have lost the ability to “disagree, agreeably,” a phrase I often used in my lobbying career to commend the ability to find middle ground.

Today, middle ground – in politics or in life – barely exists.

Frankly, in some of my personal relationships, there are subjects I don’t bring up because, rather than spark reasonable discussion, they only provoke disagreement and strife.

Contributing columnist Brian Broome made this point a couple days ago in writing that appeared in the Washington Post.

His main thesis:

“Our political parties have become rigid, unforgiving religious sects that will tolerate no second-guessing — unless we want to be shunned.

“In the liberal circles in which I mostly travel, it is nothing short of blasphemy to speak a positive word about any conservative for any reason.  Many of my friends can’t even bear to hear their names mentioned.  I was reminded of this when, in conversation with a friend, I mentioned my approval of Representative Liz Cheney’s performance during the January 6 hearings.

“I said I thought it was courageous of Cheney to speak truth against the kind of pressure and opposition she’s facing from her party.  I said I admired her for it.  I don’t love Liz Cheney or plan to send her money or anything.  But I figured it was okay to say that what she is doing is good.”

But Broome reported that his comment was met “with a mixture of shock, hurt and outrage  — as though I had stabbed my friend in the back.  ‘How can you say that,’ he asked, noting that Cheney had opposed same-sex marriage and was a legatee of the father of the Iraq War.

“When I told him Cheney had since changed her mind about same-sex marriage, he listed a litany of things that she had said or done in the past which put her beyond the realm of acceptable.  And in that moment, for him, I had failed the liberal purity test.  Because she is one of them.”

Conservatives, Brome contends, are the same.  “They hate liberals with an almost otherworldly passion. They like to put bumper stickers on their cars and trucks calling Joe Biden a communist.  They have convinced themselves that the blue cities and states they despise are hellscapes of crime and desolation.  They have made demonizing Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton a kind of obsession.  In that world, saying anything complimentary about a Democrat is a marker of probable evil.”

Broome remembers what I do – that there was a time when it was considered normal and healthy to criticize the political team to which one belonged.  We didn’t take the words of any leader, regardless of party, as gospel.  And, even if people in the other party had different values and cultures, it didn’t mean you had grounds for a violent showdown.  Now, purity tests are everywhere and something akin to a loyalty code makes it taboo to question your own side or call attention to its weaknesses and contradictions.

Broome adds:

“We are no longer a country of give-and-take.  We are a country torn apart by something closer to religious strife, where both sides demand devotion to doctrine and rough punishments await those who step out of line.”

Going back to the Powell quote, I continue “to bemoan the loss of civility,” both in politics and in life.  If we cannot find a way to “disagree, agreeably,” we could be condemned to what amounts to civil war.  To some degree, we are already seeing the extreme character of that battle.