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.

Now that we have endured the mid-term election – at least most if it even as we await final results in “too-close-to-call” contests – our attention should turn to the question posed in this blog.

This:  How can those who won get past campaigning and get on to the business of governing?

As I began writing this blog, I came again to the realization that getting about the business of governing will require something more basic than political will.  It will require a change of heart that will have to weave its way into politics and, indeed, into every area of life.

That is especially true now as Donald Trump tries to sow discord and dissension as he anticipates announcing in a few days a run for president in 2024, a run that promises to emphasize disagreement and enmity for anyone who chooses to disagree with the epitome of a narcissist.

For me, Washington Post opinion writer Michael Gerson prompted deeper thoughts than just politics with a very well-written piece in the Post. 

Who among our political leaders, he asked, “is calling for mutual understanding and practicing it?  This would involve the concession of truth on both sides.”

Gerson went on to quote Judge Learned Hand who, in 1944, told newly minted citizens in New York’s Central Park: 

“What then is the spirit of liberty?  I cannot define it.  I can only tell you my own faith.  The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit that weighs their interests alongside its own without bias . . . the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten, that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.”

This, I know, is a lofty, hard-to-reach goal, given the kind of politics we have been seeing in recent years.

But, for what’s is worth, here are my ideas about what the future should hold.

First, those in office should get about the business of solving – or at least making substantive progress on — two major issues that are gripping the nation, homelessness and immigration.

For too long, both issues have been subjected to talk and pithy quotes, not solutions.

Republicans and Democrats have a joint responsibility, finally, to move to solutions on the immigration issue.  Find a way to stimulate legal immigration and take advantage of the perspectives and energy of new citizens.

For one thing, we need no more of the tactics employed by two governors – Ron DeSantis from Florida and Greg Abbott from Texas, both of whom just won re-election in ways that put them into a group of Republicans who could make a bid for president two years from now. 

To illustrate their pique earlier this year, they used public transportation to deliver immigrants to cities to the north in the belief that, somehow, this tactic would illustrate “their” problem.

It didn’t work.  Many of those on the receiving end of the immigration ploy reacted with skill and empathy to help refugees gain their footing in the north.

The same admonition for solutions applies to homelessness.  Do something.  Don’t just criticize.

For one thing, it will be interesting to see how Oregon Governor-Elect Tina Kotek moves on this issue, which was a major one in the recent campaign.  If there was one issue that moved voters, it might have been this one and, toward the end of the campaign, she said she a major plan to do something about homelessness.

Second, the mid-term election appeared to underscore that many Americans were concerned about democracy in the country, so they voted against the so-called “election deniers” who wanted a dictatorship under Trump.  Elections don’t matter, those deniers said.

Well, elections do matter – and that’s why many of them lost, a good thing. 

Several reputable post-election pollsters underscored that America got through the election without major threats to democracy.

Here is how Washington Post put it:

“Democracy fared pretty well, actually.  Election Day felt normal, with fears that MAGA Republicans would refuse to concede races, based on baseless voter-fraud allegations, mostly failing to materialize.  When Donald Trump wrote on social media that people should protest a minor absentee-ballot problem in Detroit, no one showed up.

“Election officials breathed a sigh of relief that aggressive fraud-hunting novices seemed few and far between, despite promises from popular voices in the MAGA movement to inundate polling places with activists and station monitors in eyesight of ballot drop boxes

“Going into the mid-terms, many eyes were on a post-Trump phenomenon:  Election deniers on the ballot.  By The Post’s count, 51 per cent of the 569 GOP nominees questioned or refused to accept Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.  They ran in every region of the country and in nearly every state.”

Many lost.

So, if democracy matters, then so should a commitment to find middle ground on such issues as immigration, homelessness, crime, police funding, international relations (including the war in Ukraine), and many others.

Middle ground in politics is hard to find and may remain remote, especially of hard-right conservatives in the U.S. House continue to press for an advantage with the new House leadership which will have to practice the art of “herding cats.”

As the introduction to this blog says, I love middle ground – both in golf and in politics.

So, I say, let’s find it as the reality of campaigning moves to the obligation of governing.