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.

New, very positive economic statistics – more jobs than predicted – raise a fundamental question.

Does anyone – a president, a governor – deserve credit for the good news?

Or, the other way around, does such a leader deserve debit when economic conditions sour?

This issue came back to me over the weekend as I read a column by Catherine Rampell in the Washington Post.  It appeared under this headline: “Three milestones from a stunning jobs report.”

Here is the story’s lead:

“The U.S. economy added nearly twice as many jobs in September as economists had forecast, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  And that’s before you consider how much job growth was revised upward in July and August.  All in all, it was an astonishingly good report.”

Near the end of the column, she raised the question about political credit or debit.

In remarks Friday afternoon, Biden took credit.

“It’s Bidenomics, growing the economy from the middle-out, bottom-up, not the top down.”

Rampell answered:

“In truth, presidents have very limited control over economic conditions, but since Biden gets blamed for the bad things no matter what, it’s hard to chastise him for taking credit for the good ones.”

That’s a great point, one I dealt with back when I worked, not in D.C., but in Oregon state government. 

Did governors – including the one for whom I worked, Victor Atiyeh —  deserve credit for good economic conditions or debit when the economy turned sour?

The best answer is “no” in both cases.  A state’s economy – not to mention, of course, the federal economy – is beyond the specific reach of any public figure, a governor or a president.

To be sure, what such leaders can do is advocate for policies and actions that have the potential to allow growth to occur, or at least not to stymie it.

That’s what Atiyeh did in Oregon and, for producing a positive climate, he won a second term with an incredible 62 per cent of the public vote.

Regarding Biden, there is little question but that, as he runs for re-election, he will tout economic growth, including his role in it.

As the writer Rampell says, he gets to do that because, if conditions sour, he will get debit, as well.

Just for the record, Rampell, cited three major elements of good news – “milestones” as she called them:

1. Raise a glass:  “When covid hit, the shuttering of businesses around the country and reluctance of consumers to dine out eliminated about half the jobs across the industry.  That is, between February and April 2020, about 6 million restaurant and bar jobs vanished.

“Even as the economy reopened, these employers struggled to hire back workers.

“But bars and restaurants have steadily been recovering, and as of last month, employment levels were finally back to where then were in February 2020.”

2. A boon for public-sector workers:  “Public-sector employment also took a hit early in the pandemic.  The sector overall has finally recovered all the jobs lost, though that milestone is entirely driven by growth in the federal government.”

3. They can do it:  “Despite all those warnings about a ‘she-cession’ setting working women back a generation, working women seem to be doing better than ever.  After some stagnation in women’s employment early in the 21st century, women ages 25 to 54 are more likely to be working today than at any previous time in history.”

Good news?  Yes. 

Count on Biden to trumpet it and, as he does, don’t blame him.  Just relish the good news.