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.

In case you hadn’t notice, the State of the Union speech is now over, but the ratings continue.

• Did President Joe Biden do himself any good?
• Was he on top of his game as the election campaign is already starting?
• Did he show his age or not?

Questions:  Various answers.

For my part, I did not watch the speech.  I had the better things to do that evening with my wife as we went to the McCallum Theater in Palm Springs, California to watch a “Legends of Music” presentation.  It featured impersonators mimicking – is that redundant? – __________, Lionel Ritchie, the Carpenters, and Elton John.

Better than any political speech.

But, then as a political junkie, I reviewed comments by various political analysts to come up with this summary.

FROM PEGGY NOONAN IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  “How much can one speech do?  When you’re a president in a hole (approval numbers stubbornly stuck below 40 per cent, a re-election campaign under way) a big speech can help a lot or a little, be a wow or a mess.

“You know fairly quickly when the speech didn’t work:  People start making jokes and the jokes gel.  If the speech is splendid, you may only know in retrospect because it takes time for history to see where it fit in the scheme of things and what it really did.

“The headlines in the speech: There’s life in the old boy yet.

“And:  Boy, he came in hot. It was fiery.  He opened by comparing the current moment to 1941 and suggesting his right presidential corollary is Franklin D. Roosevelt and ‘no ordinary time.’  He immediately pivoted to Ukraine and NATO, issuing passionate vows. ‘We have to stand up to Putin.  ‘Europe is at risk.’  ‘Freedom and democracy at home and abroad are at risk. Then quickly on to January 6.

COMMENT:  Those who expected Biden to fall all over himself due to his age, will be disappointed.  He performed very well.

AND THIS ALSO FROM NOONAN:  “Biden was ready for back-and-forth from the floor and seemed to summon it.  Conservatives and Republicans need to field a better antagonist than Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wore a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat and heckled from the floor.  She makes her party look stupid and her movement vulgar.”

COMMENT:  Good for Noonan.  Calling out Taylor Greene is easy because she is such a goofball.  Not a spot of decency in her conduct or demeanor.

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:  “Democrats would like to believe that President Biden changed the 2024 game with his State of the Union address Thursday night, demonstrating verve and combativeness amid concerns about his age and mental acuity.

“It’s not so clear the American public saw the home run that they did.

“Biden’s campaign and some media outlets have pointed to a post-speech instant CNN poll showing 65 per cent of viewers offered a positive review of Biden’s speech.  Viewers also shifted 17 points toward believing the country is headed in the right direction — from 45 per cent before the speech to 62 per cent afterward.

“Both of these are true.  What’s also true is that State of the Union speeches almost always receive strongly favorable views, in part because viewership tends to draw disproportionately from their allies.”

COMMENT:  With all due respect to my friends who are pollsters, I tend to be skeptical of polls taken in the immediate aftermath of a development like the State of the Union speech.  I understand the instinct to take immediate polls, but better, I think, to let the dust settle a bit.

So, if I was working for Biden, I’d be satisfied with the speech, believing it would help set a tone for the early days of the re-election campaign.  But I also would know there are huge obstacles ahead.

AND MY VIEW:  My basic thought is that Biden exceeded expectations in the speech.  It won’t assure anything when it comes to the election campaign, but it was an effective starty.

It set a resilient and combative tone, just what Biden needed to do in what could have been the most important speech in his 50 years in politics.

So, now, on with the campaign which I hope will continue showing what Biden called “his predecessor” — not using the name — to be the narcissist he is, incapable of handling the job of leading America and the free world.