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.

Two writers in the Wall Street Journal today – former Republican analyst Karl Rove and retired Wall Street editor Daniel Henninger – confirmed for me what I thought was the case already:  Today’s politics is worse than ever, especially in Washington, D.C.

What is happening again doesn’t provide much hope for democracy in America.

FIRST ROVE:  He wrote under this headline and subhead – “Biden’s 2024 Campaign Is Worse Than Churchill’s Pudding; Trump is beatable, but the president’s campaign has no persuasive theme.

Here is how he started his column:

“That Biden trails Trump in the RealClearPolitics average, 43.9 per cent to 47.8 per cent, suggests the presumptive Democrat nominee has significant challenges.  In the 18 polls conducted this year, Biden has led in only two and tied in three.  So where to begin?

“Winston Churchill reportedly once rejected an indifferent dessert, saying: ‘Take away this pudding! It has no theme.’

“Biden’s campaign is worse than Churchill’s pudding.  He not only lacks an effective, simple story line about who he is and what this contest is about; his attempts so far to draw one have only muddled things further.”

Rove also avers that it is not enough for Biden just to run against Trump.

“…railing about Trump’s traversing of norms doesn’t energize Biden voters, many of whom remain generally lethargic.  The president would have more success focusing on specific matters that independents and swayable Republicans care about.  For one, Trump promises to pardon those now imprisoned for offenses, including violent ones, related to the January. 6, 2021, riots.  That’s unacceptable to most Americans.  He keeps claiming he won the 2020 election.  While most Republicans believe that, nearly a third disagree, as do most independents.”

SECOND HENNINGER:  He wrote under this headline and subhead:  “The Republicans’ Border Crisis; The GOP is branding itself as addicted to rage and internet fundraising.”

Here is how he started his column:

“The United States, an alleged superpower, may soon join Italy, Greece and Russia as validation of Adam Smith’s cautionary maxim:  There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.  The irony is that America’s slow disintegration is occurring in perhaps its most robust state, Texas, where the southern U.S. border essentially no longer exists.

“In December alone, the U.S. Border Patrol reported 302,000 encounters with illegal migrants at the southwest border.  Total encounters for fiscal years 2022 and 2023 were an almost incomprehensible 4.7 million.

“To endure, great nations find their way to solving large problems. Migration may turn out to be the issue that swallowed America’s democratic order.”

Henninger reported that Oklahoma’s conservative Republican senator, James Lankford, has spent weeks attempting to shape a compromise on illegal migration with Democrats that would permit passage as well of a supplemental bill that has funding for embattled Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.

So far, Henninger adds, Lankford has failed, at least in part because Republicans in Congress, out of fealty to Trump, are trying not to pass a border bill to avoid “giving” a win to Biden.

“The politics of immigration are well known.  But let’s step away from the Beltway mud-wrestle for a moment to acknowledge the practical, unavoidable result of Trump’s position.  Doing nothing so that he and Republicans will have an issue to run on means the migrant open hydrant will flow daily for all of 2024.  And that means an additional two million or so illegal migrants will enter the U.S.”

So, there you have it, as in:

• More inability for the Biden Administration to craft campaign themes that will appeal to the Democrat base, as well as to attract independent voters fearful of another Trump term.

• More inaction on the part of Republicans in Congress to try to solve a huge problem at the Southern Border for fear of, (a) helping Biden, and (b) irritating the untethered one, Trump.

In all of this, the basic form of democracy in the United State is at risk.  Again.  And still.