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.

Even as much of the world reckons with a new, incredibly dangerous war between Israel and Hamas, what are supposed Republican “leaders” in the U.S. House of Representatives doing?

Debating what they should do after throwing out their earlier leader, Kevin McCarthy.

That’s what.

So far, neither candidate – Jim Jordan or Steve Scalise – has found enough support to become the new Speaker of the House.  Both appear to want the job.

David Firestone, a former congressional reporter for The New York Times and now a member of the editorial board, wrote about this sad start of affairs in the Times today.

“Leverage, in case you missed the constant reference in the battle over McCarthy, is a Washington euphemism for blackmail.  By holding the country’s credit hostage, or shutting down government functions, a small band of wrecking-ball ideologues can try to get a win on some unrelated matter.

“The anti-McCarthyites said he failed to use his speakership to re-write the rules of government in Washington.”

Well, there was no way he could succeed in trumpeting the incendiary views in the far-right U.S. House.  Democrats control the U.S. Senate and a Democrat is in the White House.

That’s a prescription for compromise.

At least, it was in previous cases of how the U.S. government operated.  No longer.

Firestone writes that “there ways to achieve political success in a divided government.  Leverage is the poisoned choice.

“The more effective path, the one that used to be employed regularly in Washington, is to cut deals and make compromises with your opponents, even if they are occasionally painful and at odds with your principles.

“That’s how Abraham Lincoln operated, that’s how Lyndon Johnson pushed through his Great Society and civil rights bills, and it’s how Obamacare was created.

“But ever since Newt Gingrich’s era, the idea of compromising with the Democrat Party, of putting bills on the House floor that both sides can support, has been anathema to Republicans.”

Firestone continues that “the preferred method of dealing with Democrats now is to extort them, and though that usually fails, the mere act of trying brings great cheer to extremists who view centrists from both sides as the rotten core of the ‘uni-party.’”

What government leaders should be doing today – if we had real leaders – would be debating what stance to take in the Middle East war, as well as how to continue to support Ukraine in the war against Russia.

No easy answers in either case, but that makes the case for a reasoned debate.