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.

I have written in the past about the perils of the “permanent election campaign,” in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Oregon House.

In both places, those who win election serve only for two years, so, as soon as they win, the next campaign starts.

Instead of “legislating,” (deciding on useful additions to U.S. or Oregon laws) the 435 members of the U.S. House and the 60 members of the Oregon House start campaigning, often with a negative twist compounded by irritating TV ads.

Essayist Joseph Epstein, in a piece for the Wall Street Journal this morning, added to my thinking.  His column carried this subhead:

A dispiriting mid-term cycle has only just finished and the 2024 presidential race has already started.

Here is how his column started:

“Has there ever been an election so relentlessly dreary as the one we have just been through?  The day after Election Day a cable-show panelist remarked that ‘there are only 727 days until the next election.’  He laughed. I didn’t.

“I’m suffering from political exhaustion.  I’m bored and saddened, satiated with talk of electoral politics.  In some places, it took nearly three weeks to count the votes.  I’ve seen more polls than Poland has Poles.  And most of those polls turned out to be wrong.

“Mistaken predictions from so-called experts preponderated.  There was no tsunami, wave, or serious turning of any tide in the political fortunes of the country.  I have seen all the TV white boards I care ever to see, with men in shirt sleeves — the working press? — indicating states, counties, cities, neighborhoods going for one party or the other.”

Worst of all, Epstein adds, have been the TV ads.  He says more than $16 billion – yes, “billion” — was spent this cycle, “a sum that could pay to house the homeless, return the insane back to safe mental institutions, or buy eight NBA franchises.

“The vast majority of these ads were on the attack, entirely negative, not advancing a candidate’s best qualities but setting out what a swine his or her opponent is.

“On one side, relatively obscure incumbent Members of Congress were accused of bringing on inflation, causing urban crime, opening up the borders, turning the country over to socialism.  On the other side, opposing politicians were accused of being threats to democracy, supporters of systemic racism, in favor of cutting off women’s access to health services.”

Epstein goes on to cite what he calls “particularly Machiavellian strategy: Contributing to the defeat of formidable candidates in the other party’s primary so you face a weaker opponent in the general election.”  This happened, among other places, in Illinois.

Now, Donald Trump’s announced bid for another term in the White House – perish the thought – will only add to the blather.

Epstein concludes:

“How much better things would be if time — eight or nine months, say —were set aside to knock off all the blather, kick back, chill.  But it is not to be; perhaps it never will be again, and the country will henceforth live in a permanent state of electoral frenzy:  A state of claim and counter-claim, insults delivered and returned, hyperbole everywhere, agitation reigning generally.”

With Epstein, I do not hold out much hope for change.

I am not sure what the solution is.  One, of course, would be that people of goodwill and good intent run for Congress or the Oregon House and, then, bring along smart credentials to get about the business of governing.

Too much to expect?  Probably.

But another good solution, at least a partial one, exists.  Make terms for the U.S. House and the Oregon House four years, not just two.  At least that would delay the inevitable – more campaigning and electioneering.