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.

After “Super Tuesday” results, we have confirmed who is on the ballot in the next presidential election and, Tom Nichols, writing in Atlantic Magazine, comes up with this accurate summary:

“American democracy is on the ballot.  Individual freedom, including reproductive rights and civil liberties, is on the ballot.  The security of Europe, of the United States, of the world … all of it is on the ballot.  It is time for voters to take a deep breath, deal with the world as it is, and decide what they really want when they make one of the most fateful decisions in American history.”

Nichols is right. 

And, on that “fateful decision,” anyone in their right mind, will vote for Joe Biden because he is the only candidate who values American democracy.

The other one, a looney-tune, made-for-reality-TV figure, one Donald Trump, views himself as a dictator, American democracy be damned.  If he wins, it will continue to be all about him, not all about America.

Biden and his camp now have a few months to get the campaign right…for America.