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.

Writing in Atlantic Magazine, Tom Nichols said that he no longer is a member of either the Republican or Democrat parties.

Atlantic Magazine columnist Tom Nichols wrote that he is no longer a member of either the Republican or Democrat parties.

Why?

He called this the “era of incoherent partisanship.”

To start his column, Nichols put it this way:

“As I wrote in the summer of 2022, when I tried to define why I still thought of myself as a conservative, the GOP is not identifiably ‘conservative’ in any way that people like me ever understood that word.  

“I was a Republican because I wanted a small, efficient government that believed in constitutional limits on its own power, a strong national defense, and the advancement of free markets. That party no longer exists.”

I share Nichols’ view.

Back many years ago, I identified as a Democrat, including, of all things, when I voted for Democrat George McGovern, clearly a liberal, for president.

But when the Democrat party went nuts to cater to the far left, I left that to become a Republican, but only for a short time.

Republicans also went nuts, this time to the far right and in fealty to the stupid one, Donald Trump.

Plus, when I worked as a state lobbyist in Oregon, I thought that becoming an independent was the best way to express my support for government that worked, not government with a bias either to the right or the left.

Nichols went on in his recent Atlantic column as he referred to a vapid comment by U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik who advocated that all Republican processes stop, and candidates quit in order to leave the field to Trump. 

Stefanik may have thought her advocacy would put her in a position to be vice president if Trump wins again.  Perish both thoughts – Stefanik as vice president and Trump as president.

From Nichols:

“Long before Stefanik’s call for less democracy, I wondered what it means to be a Republican or a Democrat in 2024.  The Republican answer is easy:  To be a member of the party is to abandon all political principles, of any kind, and bend the knee to the personal needs of Donald Trump.

“For Democrats, it’s more complicated.  The Democrats were always a gathering of several constituencies under one roof, and their electoral house is even more crowded now that the guest rooms have been taken up by appalled independents and apostate former Republicans.

“And yet, in a historical irony, the once-fractious party is now more ideologically coherent than its GOP opponents.

“I will not ‘both sides’ this argument:  The Democrats are today a model of ideological consistency compared with the Republicans.  To be sure, they have their own problems; younger Democrats in particular have demands, such as student-loan forgiveness and other uber-entitlements, that transcend right or left definitions.

“And the Israel-Hamas war has uncovered a nasty streak of anti-Semitism in some Democrats that is, and should be, repulsive to any American.

“But the Democrats, as a party, are in favor of American constitutional democracy, and when so much of our politics has become nothing but blue flags and red flags, that is enough.”

Nichols continues with a tirade against most Republicans who have abandoned any cause for good government.

“The Republicans, meanwhile, have, in the course of a decade, sublimated from a solid party into a miasmic gas of partisan incoherence.

“Partisan inconsistency is hardly news:  Political scientists have known since at least the 1960s that voters are attached to parties, but are far less coherent about policies.  But one American party has collapsed; the other is holding together a fragile, but so far dominant, pro-democracy coalition.

“In this unprecedented situation, our politics have been largely emptied of meaning beyond the existential question of democracy itself.

“Nothing is more important than the survival of the Constitution, even if some voters (and some legislators) insist on being mired in their own particularistic interests.  I wrote in 2020 that I can never again be as partisan as I once was; I long ago quit the GOP and will never re-marry another party.

“But I miss politics as a process, a series of arguments, among people united in their wish to better the country while disagreeing about how to do it.”

Nichols is right.  To me, real politics ought to be a process that produces a product – better government.

To achieve that, it takes goodwill and even-handedness from both the right and the left.  Such officials can uncover middle ground where most solid public policy solutions lie.

I wish for a day that, in America, we could find a way to get back to that high goal.

My fear is that my wish may not be rewarded.