Perspective from the 19^th Hole 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.

New York Times writer, Frank Bruni, has an idea for Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

But rather than make a suggestion or two, he wrote a column with this introduction:

“There’s sustained criticism that Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t provided detailed answers to questions about changes in her positions.  Why can’t candidates own that kind of transformation?  What would be wrong, in Harris’s case, with saying something like this?”

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It’s true that I once sang a softer, more permissive tune about the U.S. border, even raising my hand, along with other Democrats, during that frequently mentioned 2020 primary debate when we were asked if we would decriminalize illegal crossings.

Unlike another presidential candidate I needn’t name, I’m not going to fictionalize history.

But I also don’t feel bound by my own.

None of us should, because we’re always learning and always growing, or at least we should be:  That’s a sign of humility, curiosity, openness.

Show me someone who believes and says the exact same things about the world that she did 20 or 10 or even five years ago and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t been properly living in it.

I spoke of banning fracking, but I know more now.  That’s why I don’t speak of it any longer.  When I did, my political experience was confined largely to California, whose residents had been my primary obligation, and that state’s energy, industrial and environmental profiles differ from the country’s.

But as vice president, I’ve looked at all of America, through the eyes of all its residents, and that has afforded me a panoramic education and view.

I better understand the disruption that an imminent end to fracking would cause.  I better understand the enormous national asset of an array of energy sources.  I have adapted and adjusted accordingly.

Why do so many vice presidents run for president?  Sure, it’s because we’ve been eyeing and ogling that gilded station up close and, in most cases, we had designs on it before we settled for first runner-up.

But it’s also because our proximity to power has given us an extraordinary trove of information, an unrivaled exposure to expertise and a privileged series of lessons.  We’re better prepared than we once were — we’re smarter.  And smarter means we’ve revisited many of our past assumptions.  How could it be any other way?

In many senses, I’m the same person I was when I became a prosecutor and then a district attorney and then the attorney general of California and then a U.S. senator and now the vice president.  There’s no rewriting or erasing how my mother brought me up — to work hard, fight for justice and respect everyone.

There’s no reconfiguring the shape and bigness of my heart.  That’s what I mean when I say that my values haven’t changed.  I’ve taken and will always take the positions that, in my best judgment, are as fair as they can be to the largest number of people while also being as sensitive as possible to the most disadvantaged and vulnerable among us.

But my judgment is no more fixed than our circumstances, which are ever in flux, and my comprehension of them, which is ever more refined.  I revise it in accordance with where we are, what we need at that moment, and my increasingly mature assessment of what we can hope to accomplish.

So, I’m a different person, too — enlarged by accruing experiences, additional insights, fresh epiphanies.

You can be cynical and call that rudderless.  Or you can be generous and call it dynamic.  Flipping and flopping are fluidity by other names.

I don’t know when we became so obsessed with “gotcha” revelations of a politician’s swerves, and I don’t know why we cast them as character defects.  They aren’t, not necessarily.  And to any reasonable voter, they should matter less than a politician’s truthfulness, empathy and efforts to unite Americans. Judge me on those scores.

Judge my opponent that way, too. Ask yourselves which of us is living in a realm of facts.

Which is being more careful not to incite Americans to fear and hatred of one another. And — you bet — which is spreading more joy.

By all means, consider our constancy.

But consider it in the present:  Which of us seems more emotionally stable? Which delivers the same message on Tuesday as on Saturday and to one group of voters as to another?  Are the positions and intentions that we’re articulating now clear and sensible?

I think that matters more than a timeline of my remarks about private health insurance.

I’m not some Marxist in hiding.  I’m not some moderate come lately.  I’m a work in earnest progress.

And I hope never to see the day when I can no longer say that.

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One point I especially like about what Bruni wrote is this:

“… we’re always learning and always growing, or at least we should be:  That’s a sign of humility, curiosity, openness.

“Show me someone who believes and says the exact same things about the world that she did 20 or 10 or even five years ago and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t been properly living in it.”

Point made. 

It’s another way for Harris to explain why she may have changed positions on such issues as fracking.  If I said one thing a few years ago, then didn’t learn a thing by making the same point years later, I am not smart.