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.

This lack of balance continues to irritate me:  Politics versus policy.

Most of those who represent us – either in a state such as Oregon where I live or in Washington, D.C. – don’t have a sense of balance between the two.

By definition, neither bad.  But, when balance is lost, politics becomes the name of every game and policy gets lost in the shuffle.

Put another way:  Most of those who represent us are always campaigning – engaging in election politics — and never governing.

Call it the permanent campaign.

It tends to mean never getting anything done, especially in the middle-ground, which is where the best solutions lie.

So, what is the permanent campaign?

The term was first coined by Sidney Blumenthal in his 1980 book by the same name.  In it, he explained how the breakdown in political parties forced politicians to govern in different ways.

Blumenthal contended that politicians increasingly used political consultants to help them monitor their job approval numbers and media exposure, even when not on the campaign trail.  This means those in office are always in campaign mode, even when they are supposed to be in office “governing.”

The theory of the permanent campaign is also credited to political strategist Patrick Caddell who wrote a memo for President-Elect Jimmy Carter just after Carter’s election in 1976 in which Caddell asserted:  “Governing with public approval requires a continuing political campaign.”

In the U.S. House, those who win election serve only for two years, so, as soon as they win, the next campaign starts.  The same is true in the Oregon House of Representatives.

Instead of “legislating” — deciding on useful additions to U.S. law — the 435 members of the U.S. House and the 60 members of the Oregon House — start campaigning immediately, often with a negative twist compounded by irritating TV ads.

Essayist Joseph Epstein, in a piece for the Wall Street Journal, added to my thinking as he wrote a few years ago about the last mid-term election.  His column carried this subhead:  “A dispiriting mid-term cycle has only just finished and the 2024 presidential race has already started.”

Here is how his column started:

“Has there ever been an election so relentlessly dreary as the one we have just been through?  The day after Election Day a cable-show panelist remarked that ‘there are only 727 days until the next election.’  He laughed. I didn’t.

“I’m suffering from political exhaustion.  I’m bored and saddened, satiated with talk of electoral politics.  In some places, it took nearly three weeks to count the votes.  I’ve seen more polls than Poland has Poles.  And most of those polls turned out to be wrong.”

Epstein concluded:

“How much better things would be if time — eight or nine months, say —were set aside to knock off all the blather, kick back and chill.  But it is not to be.  Perhaps it never will be again, and the country will henceforth live in a permanent state of electoral frenzy:  A state of claim and counter-claim, insults delivered and returned, hyperbole everywhere, agitation reigning generally.”

With Epstein, I do not hold out much hope for change.

Wall Street Journal’s William Galston put it this way:

“Campaigning is one thing, governing another.  Opposing is not the same as legislating.”

He is right.  And right even as we endure the relentless, permanent campaign.

And this footnote to illustrate a current issue where policy loses over politics:

“The Republican Party should take yes for an answer.  By torpedoing the Senate’s bi-partisan immigration deal, under pressure from former president Donald Trump to preserve his election-year advantage on a wedge issue, congressional Republicans would blow an opportunity to reduce undocumented immigration and curtail mass crossings at the southern border — along with saving Ukraine before it runs out of ammunition.

“The 370-page legislative text released Sunday night, promptly declared ‘dead on arrival’ in the House by Speaker Mike Johnson, emerged from months of substantive discussions and careful compromises by all sides.”

So, I say consider the immigration compromise merits and lay politics aside.