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 this brief blog, I’ll get way over my depth in American foreign policy.

But, drowning has never stopped me from writing stuff.

So, after reading story-after-story on U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, I presume to ask a simple, straightforward, one-word question:  Why?

For me, there is no reason for the U.S. House Speaker to presume to enter into assertive foreign policy, which is – and should be — the province of the president.  Let the U.S. speak with one voice when it comes to international relations – and let that be the president.

I also suggest that Pelosi should stay home and tend to legislative affairs in Congress and, goodness knows, there is much to do in the Nation’s Capitol to produce results on a range of pressing public policy issues.

As I admitted at the start of this blog, all of us is above my pay grade, but if I were President Joe Biden, I would ask Pelosi pointedly why she chose to take such a presumptuous initiative.

Her visit, now concluded, left the president and his Administration with a much deeper set of tensions with China. 

At the same time, the Administration has emphasized it intends to honor and retain strong in support for an independent Taiwan, which begs the question about Pelosi defied pleas to avoid the trip.

Pelosi’s assertiveness – no, read, aggressiveness – has made all of this tough foreign policy much tougher.

As a believer in strong U.S. government, I say this to the three branches – Legislative, Judicial, and Executive:  Stay in your own lane, AND, when the time is right, work together, not separately, for the common good in America.