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.
A version of this headline appeared on a story in the Wall Street Journal.
Yes, it was about “gavel bashing.”
What’s that?
Well, as the article put it: “Vexed city, county and school board officials resort to bashing (their wooden gavels) to restore order in unruly times.”
The Journal writer, Jacob Gershman, wrote this:
“There is no Guinness World Record for the most banging of a gavel by a local government official. But a Hinds County Board of Supervisors meeting last year in Mississippi was surely one for the history books.
“The gathering began civilly enough with an invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance. Then, in protest of an agenda item, County Supervisor David Archie raised a makeshift gavel he bought at Home Depot and proceeded to pound it hundreds of times. A local newspaper called it a ‘gavel-pounding rampage.’”
As someone who has used a gavel to chair meetings, I would add that banging it is rarely a solid way to maintain order. Using a gavel is usually a perfunctory way to start meetings or change agenda items in mid-stream. It should be combined with reasonable attempts, in words, to encourage committee or commission members to retain order.
Easier said than done in these days of yelling and screaming by some who want to get their way, especially in government circles. No doubt they have learned from one Donald Trump who has made yelling and screaming a fine art.
The Wall Street Journal story went on:
“The wooden gavel may be best known as a symbol of the legal profession and a prop for reality show judges. But in these unruly times, the gavel has become an emblem of civic disorder. Footage from local government meetings shows vexed city, county and school board officials bashing their gavels, sometimes so hard they splinter, to enforce silence, parliamentary procedure, and civil debate.
“Officials wielding the gavel call it a primitive but useful tool to gain control of the room when Robert’s Rules fly out the window. Those on the receiving end bristle at all the banging.
“’In a well-functioning polity, the gavel is a symbol of a community that allows debate and respects difference,’ said Stephen David Reicher, a professor of social psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. ‘The gavel is saying, let’s listen to each other,’ he said. ‘The contesting of the gavel is precisely about the splintering of that sense of community.’”
So, for me, no gavel bashing.
And, I say that as the current of the Oregon Government Ethics Commission where, yes, I have a gavel, but use it sparingly.
