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 a story that appeared in the Washington Post, essayist Lance Morrow argues that the answer to the question in blog headline could be “yes.”

The essay appeared under this headline:  “Tim Scott and the Politics of Forgiveness; an upbeat candidacy of national reconciliation seems pitched to break the Trump-Biden stalemate.”

Of course, with all due respect to Morrow, only time will tell.

Morrow started his piece this way:

“America is stuck — deadlocked, frozen, like the armies on the Western Front in 1917.  One side is headquartered at Mar-a-Lago and has no ideas at all beyond revenge and gaudy vindication.

“The other side bivouacs at the White House and has far too many notions in a leftish way.

“Both armies are angry, full of sullen grievance.  Fox and MSNBC lob ritual shells to and fro.  Donald Trump and Joe Biden glare at each other across the cratered American landscape.”

So, is Scott the answer to those who hope for something other than campaigns of revenge and get-even.

Scott’s recently announced candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination points in an interesting direction.  He’s a long shot now, but he might become the kind of leader who could break the American deadlock.

Morrow adds:

“Think of Messrs. Trump and Biden as thesis and antithesis. They are irreconcilable ideas — old sluggers from the Pleistocene, both of them embarrassments by now.  For a moment, allow yourself to imagine Scott as a kind of synthesis — and even a refreshment of the American system.

“Scott is a black conservative.  That somewhat counterintuitive double identity might have its uses in a national drama of reconciliation.  He is from Charleston, South Carolina, a seedbed of the old confederacy.  He was raised in something like poverty, with a devoted, hard-working single mother.  His parents divorced when he was 7.”

But, even with that heritage, Scott became an entrepreneurial, patriotic Republican who won a congressional seat and now is running for the presidency.

Morrow argues that the key to Scott’s presidential venture isn’t so much his qualifications as statesman or politician.  Rather, the key is in his temperament — his manifest goodwill.  His policies are less important at this point than his temperament.  His conciliatory charm isn’t superficial, but rather the product of spirit and character.

And this conclusion from Morrow:

“The only exits from rage are exhaustion and forgiveness.  But sometimes a miraculous change of mood will do.  Almost uniquely among American politicians today, Scott embraces a theology of forgiveness — that great mood-changer.

“Forgiveness requires humility, a virtue in short supply.  It also requires maturity, intelligence, and a capacity for gratitude.”

Those qualities are surely missing in the current Republican contenders for president.  Chief among those without maturity, intelligence or the capacity for gratitude is one Donald Trump. 

He carries no qualities of character that we should expect in a presidential candidate or in someone who holds the nation’s highest political office.  No matter.  He still appears to lead the Republican field.

As for President Joe Biden?  Hard to tell, but, whatever the debates about politics and age, he is manifestly a better person than Trump, with character traits over a life marked by sorrow and loss.

I hope Scott rises to the challenge. 

We need a candidate – no worries about party affiliation – who displays the character to lead the free world from the Oval Office.