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 line in this blog headline came from a column in the Washington Post by George Will.

Agree with him or not, he writes well, including in the words in the headline, which convey volumes.

So it was that he started his most recent column with these excellent paragraphs:

“Although not all worrywarts are progressives, all progressives are worrywarts.  They believe that there are evermore things urgently in need of their supervision — things to ban or mandate or regulate to help society shimmy up the pole of progress.

“Senator Elizabeth Warren is progressivism incarnate.  The former Harvard Law School professor should possess, if there were such, a Ph.D. in Advanced Worrying.

“She represents the cutting edge of modern fretting, forever anxious lest something, somewhere, escapes the government’s improving attention.  So she has Xed (tweeted, for those who are not au courant) her joy that the Federal Trade Commission recently has been preoccupied with the menace of Big Tech is turning its disapproving squint at Big Sandwich.”  

Will continues.

“Roark Capital, a private equity firm, owns or otherwise supports various fast-food chains (Arby’s, Sonic Drive-In, Jimmy John’s, McAlister’s Deli, Schlotzky’s) that serve sandwiches.  The government disagrees with itself about the definition of ‘sandwich.’  Now, Roark reportedly plans to purchase the Subway chain for $9.6 billion.  The FTC evidently shares Warren’s worry that this might create, what she calls, ‘a sandwich shop monopoly.’”

So, regulation is in the wind.

Will, for one, cannot believe it.

And neither can I.

For one thing, the Warren proposal indicates a far too aggressive stance on the role of government.  If it moves or has life, then Warren wants to get government involved.

Further, I have often railed against the use of the word “progressive” in politics because it conveys that liberals like Warren who want an ever-expanding role for government believe their views will make “progress,” thus are progressive.

No.  They often regress, not progress.

Like regulating sandwiches.

So, I say, stop! 

Instead, devote government time and effort to a host of issues that need to be considered by those in Congress, such as:

• Immigration
• The war in Ukraine
• Anti-semitism, including on university campuses
• Simmering tensions in the Middle East
• The next presidential election in the United States
• Climate change that can be proved by science, not politics
• How to save American democracy
• Etc.

Leave sandwiches alone.