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.

The headline on this blog is right, at least if you define politics the way I do.

Politics is the “art of compromise” and it an art almost always lost in politics as we know it these days.

Washington Post writer Phillip Bump made that clear in what appeared in the Post yesterday:

“Running against a cadre of sitting and former elected officials, Donald Trump said things they wouldn’t — mostly the things that were being said in the right-wing media and by pundits on Fox News.  [This occurred during his first run for president as he, now, contemplates a return.]

“The reputation for ‘truth-telling’ his supporters embrace was born of his willingness to elevate false, popular claims, particularly about the left. He wasn’t elected for his policies.  In fact, he broadly rejected the idea that people cared much about policy.

“The only thing that’s changed over the past eight years, really, is that everyone should know the playbook by now.

“We should know that he will 1) flood the zone with things that are burbling on the right-wing fringe, 2) make sweeping promises without much follow-through, and 3) reject any criticism out-of-hand, spinning it into a reason to praise himself.”

There we have it.  Another excellent description of Trump who should be headed to jail, not running for president.