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.

As we have just come through weeks of discord and dissension in the U.S. House, I am willing to give the new speaker, Mike Johnson, a chance to succeed.

Long odds against him, but….

Washington Post columnist Mark Thiessen gives him a chance, too.  He wrote under this headline:  “Speaker Johnson is off to a great start. Let’s hope he makes it last.”

But the fact is that, in politics, talking is one thing.  Acting is another.

It takes both to succeed.

That’s a conclusion I came to based on more than 40 years working in and around state government in Oregon, the last 25 as a private sector lobbyist.

Getting anything done required acting on compromise, not shouting on the street corner, at least figuratively.

More from Thiessen:

“For millions of Americans, listening to Representative Mike Johnson for the first time Wednesday, the new House Speaker made a really good first impression.  After Johnson accepted the speaker’s gavel, his first message was directed, not to his fellow House Republicans, or to conservative voters, but to his Democrat opposition.

“’I know we see things from very different points of view,’ he said, directly addressing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.  ‘But I know that in your heart, you love and care about this country, and you want to do what’s right.  And so, we’re going to find common ground.’”

“He went on to say:  ‘We’re going to fight vigorously over our core principles because they’re at odds a lot of times, but we have to sacrifice, sometimes, our preferences because that’s what’s necessary in a legislative body.’”

This, Thiessen added, was a decidedly un-Trumpian start.  And, from a person, Johnson, who has been in Trump’s camp.

“Johnson,” Thiessen wrote, “exuded the kind of grace and magnanimity that many despaired had been irretrievably lost in American politics.  It was what the country desperately wanted.  And it was exactly what House Republicans — whose reputation has been shredded after three weeks of embarrassing dysfunction — desperately needed.”

That’s talking.

Now comes the harder part – acting.

Thiessen:

“Now the question is:  Will he be able — or allowed — to deliver?  Or, will Johnson’s pledge of bi-partisanship be, like President Biden’s inaugural address, just another broken promise to unite the country?

“Will Johnson be a leader who understands that he controls one-half of one branch of government — and that the way to advance core principles is to elect more people who share them?  Or will he pushed into launching pointless kamikaze missions that fail to advance conservative principles?”

One question is whether the best kamikaze himself, Representative Matt Gaetz, will be able to curb his tendency to commit suicide and try to take others with him.  To use a hackneyed phrase, “only time will tell.”

Back to talking.

The new speaker defined great things about which there could be at least some consensus — individual freedom, limited government (though, here, no one yet knows what “limited” means), the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, and human dignity – that have marked and should mark America.

“Those,” he said, “are the foundations that made us the extraordinary nation that we are.  And you and I today are the stewards of those principles.”

I, for one, am willing to give Johnson a chance to do more than talk – to act.

“I think all the American people, at one time, had great pride in this institution,” he said, referring to Congress.  “But right now, that’s in jeopardy.  And we have a challenge before us right now to rebuild and restore that trust.”

So, Mr. Johnson, please get started.