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 previous blogs, I have said that I read the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post every day. 

Why?

Well, look only at excerpts of two editorials that ran this morning to grasp that I want to gain perspectives on both sides of major public policy issues facing our country.

From the Journal, I get the right-of-center perspective.

From the Post, I get the let-of-center perspective.

The excerpts.

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:  The heavily redacted affidavit in which the FBI requested court permission to search Donald Trump’s home, released Friday, is more tantalizing than it is revealing.  But what is visible, despite pages of blacked-out text, makes the Justice Department appear thoughtful and deliberate — and the former president quite the opposite.

On the orders of a federal magistrate judge, the DOJ unsealed the document claiming to establish probable cause for entering Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to seize suspected sensitive materials improperly transported from the White House. The most important information — the specific pieces of evidence that persuaded the court to permit the FBI search — were obscured to protect the probe and the witnesses who have assisted it.

But the text that remained visible still contained some useful information. This includes a closer look at the Trump camp’s back and forth with the National Archives and Records Administration and the FBI before the search, a granular list of the classification markings on the materials in question, and a mention of the possibility that “evidence of obstruction will be found.”

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  A federal judge on Friday released a heavily redacted version of the FBI affidavit used to justify the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and we can’t help but wonder is that it? This is why agents descended on a former President’s residence like they would a mob boss?

It’s possible the redactions in the 38-page document release contain some undisclosed bombshell.  But given the contours of what the affidavit and attachments reveal, this really does seem to boil down to a fight over the handling of classified documents.  The affidavit’s long introduction and other unredacted paragraphs all point to concern by the FBI and the National Archives with the documents Trump retained at Mar-a-Lago and his lack of cooperation in not returning all that the feds wanted. ‘

So, which of these two venerable journalism outfits is right?  Well, I am not close enough to the process to make a final decision.  But my instincts lie with the Post for this simple, basic reason:  No one is above the law and that includes Trump.