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.

As a former newspaper reporter, I am committed to reading various newspapers every day, including the Oregonian, which is published in Portland.

Why this headline?

The Oregonian has distinguished itself lately with a thorough and no-punches-pulled analysis of its racist history.

As a long-time reader of the newspaper, I was shocked to learn of some of the misdeeds, as well as very poorly chosen words of previous editors, which, given their evident racism, might have been intentional. 

Beyond shocked!

Two long and detailed stories have been printed and more may be on the way.  Headlines for the two, which are part of a series which has been labeled “Publishing Prejudice:”

• The Oregonian’s Racist Legacy:  The overtly racist words printed by Henry Pittock and Harvey Scott made Oregon a more hostile place for people of color.
• Concealed Consequences:  Editorials supported World War II incarceration of people of Japanese descent, and news coverage denigrated those targeted.

Therese Bottomly, executive editor of the Oregonian, deserves credit for enabling this introspection and, then, publishing what ensued, no matter the discredit that arose for the newspaper.

The current Editorial Board chimed in:

“As an editorial board, we often write about the importance of accountability when institutions or leaders make mistakes.  Acknowledging and accepting what went wrong in the past is key to correcting course in the future.

“That standard holds for us, as well.  ‘Publishing Prejudice: The Oregonian’s Racist Legacy’ has been horrifying and humbling to absorb. The decades-long pattern paints a picture of a news organization that downplayed lynching, supported incarcerating people of Japanese descent during World War II, embraced slurs and stereotypes in its news stories and editorials and sought to block basic rights for those who were not white and male.”

Here, from Bottomly, is a summary of the intense editing process for “Publishing Prejudice,” which stands as very different than normal editing:

“The Oregonian/OregonLive newsroom is not as racially and ethnically diverse as the community it serves, and the investigative reporter and investigative editor assigned to this project are white men.  To reduce implicit bias and enhance the stories, the newsroom created a novel, months-long review process to obtain iterative feedback from people of color before publication.

“Members of the newsroom’s diversity committee received drafts of the stories in June, providing valuable feedback on reporting, editing, and the project’s general direction.

“The Oregonian/OregonLive in July contracted with two former newsroom employees, Amy Wang and Eder Campuzano, who each had chaired the newsroom diversity committee.  They reviewed story drafts and provided important guidance, helping identify reporting holes, offering feedback on issues to expand or condense, and providing recommendations on ways to limit additional harm to communities of color through word choice and story framing.

“The newsroom contracted with five community members between August and October.  The panelists reviewed story drafts, providing perspectives the newsroom lacks, giving feedback to enhance the reporting with additional facts, and helping identify words or ideas that could perpetuate harm to communities of color.  The panelists are Oscar Arana, Brian Bull, Hong Mautz, Zachary Stocks, and Jillian Toda-Currie.

“The Oregonian/OregonLive maintained sole editorial discretion over the stories, and it accepted many, but not all, recommendations from outside consultants.”

I hope you will go on-line at oregon.live to read the stories on your own.  As they did in me, I also hope both stories will invoke a renewed commitment to diversity, acceptance, and tolerance, if not respect, for immigrants, refugees, or persons of a different skin color than your own.

The failure of several past Oregonian editors to reflect these qualities is beyond revolting.  Given my long history in Oregon, I remember some of the editor’s names.  What they did and what they wrote makes me say I would rather forget them and move on.

The story on the internment of Oregonians of Japanese descent particularly resonated with me.  For a specific reason.

This.  One of the persons emphasized in the story, Vicki Nakashima, is a former colleague of mine in Oregon state government.

We worked together closely at the Oregon Executive Department when both of us served, essentially, as deputy directorsl  Vicki had an assignment to recruit management staff with a specific eye to diversity and credentials.  She succeeded very well.  My assignment was to oversee media and related communications policy.

In one case, we co-directed a program – we called it simply, “The Good Ideas Program” – to ask for, receive and analyze good ideas from state employees, ideas about to improve workplaces and state programs.  We rewarded those whose good ideas were accepted.

Vicki was especially effective at recruiting employees to respond.

To put it simply, I learned a lot from her.

But, in point of fact, I did not know much about her history.

After the internment story broke, I talked with her.

When the Oregonian alerted her that it was starting its introspection, because, for one thing, the introspection focused on Vicki’s father, a victim of the Japanese internment policy in Oregon.  Vicki was not sure what to expect, wondering if it would just another case of false hope for clarity for past racism.

But, the editor, Bottomly, came across as genuine and, then, at one community meeting, she rose unannounced and provided a stirring and genuine apology to all those in the room.

As she has done several times, including in print, she said she “unreservedly apologized.”

So, read on and make your own appropriate commitment to genuine diversity and respect.

.  The week of October 2nd, the national art exhibit, “Resilience – A Sansei Sense of Legacy” opened at JAMO.  My cousin, Tom Nakashima is one of the artists and his pieces in the show were inspired by my father’s advocacy on behalf of the JA community. 

On October 5th, we had a “community meeting” about the importance of the art exhibit at OHS.  Without any announcement, Therese got up in front of me and gave a moving apology.  I still cry when I think about it.  Her staff (reporter and photographer) were also there and they told me they did not know she was going to do this.

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.

I must confess that I have not watched one political debate this election season, though I have read about them in newspapers.

Seems I haven’t missed much.  At least much that helps anyone – me, for example — decide how to vote.

Of course, I, like many of you remember watching various presidential debates when, for example:

• The elder George Bush made the mistake of checking his watch while he was on camera, as if to say, “are we done yet?” 
• In a vice-presidential debate, when Democrat Lloyd Bentsen skewered Republican Dan Quayle, by uttering a phrase which has lived since he said it in 1988, “Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.”
• Or, back in 1960, when Jack Kennedy came across on TV far better than did the wan Richard Nixon.

As memorable occasions, these actually did not add much to my decision, back then, about how to vote.

Then, for today, Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman captured this reality yesterday when he wrote under this headline:  “Why candidate debates are so awful — and how to fix them.”

Here is how he started his column:

“This has been a big week for the mid-term elections, as debates among Senate and gubernatorial candidates were held in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Colorado.  There has been plenty of discussion about which candidates won, who had the worst ‘gaffe,’ what will show up in campaign ads, and whether it will all affect the election outcome.”

Which, he contended, “is exactly why candidate debates, as they’re practiced, are utterly terrible, both for voters and for democracy”

“The best you can say about them is that when most voters see the candidates in only 30-second TV ads or one-minute online videos, debates offer the most extended look we get at them.  But everything about the debates’ format — which is almost identical in every race, as though it has been handed down on stone tablets — makes them worse.”

Waldman contends that, at their most fundamental level, “debates are terrible because it is now taken for granted that they should be seen as a performance, meaning we judge the candidates as though they were figure skaters at the Olympics.  Oops, Mehmet Oz bobbled the landing on that triple salchow, that’s a major deduction!  Why would we think this helps us understand who would do a better job in office?”

The fact is, Waldman add, debates are unlike anything officeholders will do in their job, until two or four years into a job when they run for re-election and debate again.  

He offers a prescription for meaningful change.

• Let the candidates sit down.
• Let them bring notes.  Whether a candidate remembers all eight points of his or her economic plan at a moment of stress is less important than whether the plan is a good one.
• Focus on a single-issue area — economics, public safety, domestic programs, climate change — so we can explore ideas in depth rather than skating over dozens of areas without much substance.
• And, for the journalists who participate:  Forget about surprising the candidates, or encouraging them to attack each other, or asking why one of them is struggling in the polls, or creating dramatic moments.

Which brings us, Waldman continues, to perhaps the most fundamental problem with debates:  They’re constructed around the needs and preferences of the already shallow way campaigns are conducted.

“Few voters watch the debates.  Instead, they see snippets that get re-played on the news or in ads.  Which means that the debate gets reprocessed through the news media, with all their pathologies.

“If you were a candidate with a compelling argument about health-care reform that takes three or four minutes to lay out, but you knew that all people would ever see of it is an eight-second clip, what would you do? You would distill it to a single zippy sentence, even if that sentence couldn’t begin to explain your full argument.

“What if you further knew that clips that get played on the news almost always involve conflict, the nastier the better?  You would forget about your compelling argument and come up with a clever insult to toss at your opponent.  Which is exactly what they do.”

The only appropriate response is, Waldman says, is “who cares?”

I agree. 

Unless debate formats change – and they are not likely to do so – I say choose another approach to decide how to vote.  Such as reading about public policy positions in various newspapers rather than watching and waiting for gaffes.

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.

There is something going on in this country called the “Re-Awaken America Tour.”

Don’t take the neutral, positive sounding term at face value.

What it is, according to the Washington Post, is a series of events around the country to rally folks to the side of Donald Trump, as he continues to pollute politics with his drivel.

Trouble is what is occurring is beyond scary.

Trump, to the applause of many, is mixing his version of polluted politics with his version of polluted Christianity. 

Not applause from me.  My disdain.

Here is the headline on the Post story:  “Right-wing roadshow promotes Christian nationalism before mid-terms.”

Trump and his ilk continue to play God.  He and his minions call people to support Trump as if he is a god and, to put a major point on it, even baptize people into their Trump status. 

Talk about perverting the Gospel, that’s it.

Here is the start of the Post story:

“MANHEIM, Pennsylvania. — At the end, after former president Donald Trump called in to energize the troops, more than 100 people lined up to be baptized.

“Some had driven hours for the two-day Re-Awaken America Tour in the leafy Pennsylvania countryside.  Some had paid up to $500 for VIP tickets. They were 5,000 strong, celebratory but angry about where the country is headed.  They said they believed the 2020 election was stolen, that vaccines kill people, and that America — both its moral and civic foundation — is headed for complete collapse.

“Now they were waiting to be baptized in a black plastic animal trough, leaving the water soaked and shivering — newly cleansed soldiers in their war for America.

“Since April of last year, the Re-Awaken America Tour has brought hardline-election deniers, anti-vaccine doctors, self-proclaimed prophets, and conspiracy theorists to enthusiastic crowds across the country.  The central message is that America’s white, evangelical Christian way of life is under threat from the globalist cabal on the ‘woke’ left.

“The traveling carnival of misinformation merges entertainment, politics and theology and makes the existential argument to those attending:  The debate is no longer about Republican vs. Democrat, they say, it’s about good vs. evil.  And it’s time to pick a side.

“In this world, as one adherent put it, elections are now ‘selections,’ fact-checkers are now ‘fake checkers,’ coronavirus is still the ‘China virus,’ and Trump is still the rightful president.”

Say what?

What Trump and his minions are propounding is not the real “gospel.”

It is in a word — perversion.

Baptism should be reserved for real Christianity as an outward show that a person has accepted Jesus Christ as Savior.  It’s not an entitlement with any bearing on politics.

So, what’s the real gospel?  This:

• God loves you.  He created you.  His love is boundless and unconditional.
• But sin separates you from God, so He made a way for you to become a child of God.  Accept Jesus’ free gift of salvation.
• Then, show your true character as a child of God by loving others, including those less fortunate than you, including immigrants, refugees, and persons who don’t share the color of your skin.

Just try to convey these truths to Trump and his minions.  They won’t listen as they try to build up “White America.”  But, so what.

They are wrong.  God is right.

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 an essay in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, Joseph Epstein hit the nail on the head, to use a hackneyed phrase.  I borrowed his headline, which appeared over his essay, for this blog.

Here is the sub-head:

“In the governor’s campaign, heads Illinois loses; tails, it also loses. Ditto in the last two presidential races.”

That’s exactly the way I often feel when it comes time to vote.  Heads you lose.  Tails you losse. 

Like Epstein, “I am one of those American political misfits known as an independent voter.”

Epstein add this:

“I voted for Barack Obama over John McCain in 2008.  Four years later I pulled the lever for Mitt Romney.  I didn’t vote in the last two presidential elections because none of the candidates were people I wanted to lead the country.  I find little reassuring in either of the political parties, whose members collectively strike me as ignorant, sanctimonious, meshugana.”

Which is a word I have not heard before.  Here, according to the dictionary is what it means:  “Nonsense; silliness; craziness; garbage; a person who is silly or crazy; a jackass.”

And Epstein continues:

“My non-affiliation frees me from the obligation to defend the nuttiness of Marjorie Taylor Greene or the anti-Semitism of Ilhan Omar.  I like to think it also provides a certain perspective unavailable to those locked into party loyalty.”

When I told a friend of mine the other day that I was toying with not voting in a particular race here in Oregon, he said avoiding a vote was “unethical.” 

I strongly disagree.  Not voting in a particular actually is, for me, an ethical decision.

It indicates that I cannot, in good faith, support either candidate whose name appears on the ballot.

So, for me, that leaves two ethical options – not voting or writing in someone’s name.

To buttress his own “independent” stance, Epstein says this:

“All I look for in candidates is that they constitute a lesser evil than their opponents.  Evidence of this often isn’t easily detected.  In the current race for Illinois governor, which pits incumbent J.B. Pritzker against state Senator Darren Bailey, detection of the lesser evil is all but impossible.  In a recent televised debate, each man called the other a liar, which struck me as one of the few times that evening when both of them told the truth.

“When it comes to voting for one or the other of these Periclean figures, I must remember to bring along a coin when I step into the voting booth. Heads Illinois loses; tails, it also loses.”

For me, voting is exactly what a citizen should do in every election.  It is a hallmark of citizenship.

But, one’s own ethical standards should be paramount.  And, if that means, not voting in a particular race, so be it.

I report this after having in Oregon’s election.  So what is done is done.

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.

Why are there 18 holes on a golf course? 

Why not 14?  Why not 15?  Why not 9?

That question has struck me lately as, to put it mildly, I have too much time on my hands, some of which is taken up by walking around a park-like atmosphere charging after a white – or sometimes yellow – sphere.

Well, to answer the question, I did what many people do these days, which is to consult Mr. Google.

Here is what he said:

“In 1764, golfers at St Andrews (in Scotland) decided to combine the first four short holes into two, to produce a round of 18 holes, though it was still 10 holes of which 8 were played twice.  Thus was born the 18-hole round, though it would be about 100 hundred years before there were 18 holes in general, as other courses followed suit.

“By the mid-19th century, the standard was for golf courses to have 18 holes and, in 1858, the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews made the rules formal and stated, “One round of the Links, or 18 holes is reckoned a match, unless otherwise stipulated.”

Early golf courses, especially in the “home of golf,” Scotland, actually varied in number of holes.  Even St Andrews had 22 at one point.

This “huge issue” crossed my mind the other day as friends of mine enticed me to play 9 holes, instead of 18. 

No problem.  Nine holes is fine, too, but, yes, 18 holes makes a competitive golf round.  Nine, obviously, doesn’t take as long – in fact, about exactly half as long.  Still fun and good golf.

Another golf question crossed my mind as I walked around the course:  Why do various results in golf use bird terms, such as: 

• Birdie for one-under-par on a hole.

• Eagle for two under par.

• Albatross for a two on a par 5.

• Condor for a hole-in-one on a par 5.

Also, if you want a question, with an answer for a trivia game, use this.  What do you call a hole-in-one on a par 5?  Answer, as above:  Condor.

As for why bird terms in general, I have no idea other than this quick fact from Mr. Google:  “In the 19th century, the term ‘bird’ was the equivalent of ‘cool’ or ‘excellent,’ so that term was attached to golf” — and other bird names  followed.

For me, have I made birdie and eagle?  Yes, over the years.  As for making an albatross, no.  And condor, also no.  No surprise with either of the latter, VERY rare in golf.

*********

Oh yeah, one other non-golf update.  My wife and I voted yesterday, performing an important civic duty.  While we sat together at our dining our dining room table, we voted individually, perhaps offsetting each other in the process in a few races.

So, vote!

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.

My most recent on-line issue of Links Magazine got me thinking about a subject that might not have crossed my mind, save for the magazine.

This:  Opening tee shots on a golf course.

One of my favorite golf writers, George Peper (he wrote the great book, Two Years in St. Andrews), comes up with this lead for his story:

“The first hole of a golf course is rarely memorable, but it never fails to arouse emotion.

“Can you think of a patch of ground — on the golf course or anywhere else — that consistently boils up such a complex cauldron of emotions as does the 1^st tee?

“Hope and trepidation, determination and doubt, impatience and paranoia, excitement, and tension.

“For many of us, it’s a case of dueling desires:  We can’t wait to hit that first tee shot and we can’t wait to get it over with.  As an aside, I’ve always wondered why The First Tee, a program dedicated to making the game inviting to kids, would name itself after the single most intimidating place on the course.

“Endlessly fascinating, the first tee is, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, like a box of chocolates—you never know what you’re gonna get.  We bound to the blocks brimming with optimism yet ever-mindful that the carnival could end in seconds when the curtain rises on a four-hour drama fraught with agony as well as joy.”

With Peper’s article in mind, I thought of the 1^st tee at Illahe Hills Golf and Country Club in Salem Oregon where I play most of my golf and have done so for more than 30 years.

I tell my friends that I never get tired of playing onthe course, given the various situations you’ll face on one of the best tracks in the state.

But, the first hole?

It is “pretty” routine. 

Note the word “pretty.”  I mean to say that, while the 1^st hole is a short par 4, there are several penalty areas beckoning – two bunkers on either side of the hole in what would be the landing area for a solid drive, water to the right on the drive, and a green that slopes, as many do at Illahe, steeply from back to front.  And there are greenside bunkers, too.

So, I have found that a par on the 1^st hole is a solid score.

Further, when you hit your tee shot on the 1^st you are only about 50 feet or so in front of the ground floor pro shop (with its windows) and the next floor where windows front the restaurant.  So, everyone there can see your tee shot.

Are they looking?  Probably not.  But the fact that they could be looking adds to the nerves.

Here are selected excerpts from Peper’s story:

• Mind you, in most cases all this turmoil (on the 1^st tee) is largely of our own doing.  Rarely does the first hole present a particularly formidable challenge or even an arresting moment.  Consider that in GOLF Magazine’s The World’s 500 Greatest Golf Holes only 12 of those holes are openers. Indeed, some magnificent courses — Pebble Beach, Turnberry, Teeth of the Dog, Crooked Stick, Medinah No. 3, Fishers Island — start with par fours that could be described most kindly as unremarkable.
• If the designers of those and so many other courses were alive, they’d likely point to the long-held dictum that a good golf course begins with a “friendly handshake,” a straightforward assignment with no heavy lifting.  And I can’t argue that it’s wise marketing to keep us dogged victims happy for at least the first few minutes of play. Nevertheless, first holes are rarely first rate.
• Another reason for this is that the first tee is usually hard by the clubhouse, on a piece of land that was chosen, not because it was the best golf terrain, but because it was the best place to put that building.  Often the role of the first hole is to get the heck away from that place, to do whatever’s necessary to escape the parking lot, tennis courts, and swimming pool and reach some proper ground for golf.

All that being said, Peper adds, “there are a few rare courses where the first tee (actually the entire first hole) lives up to its turbulence, either by presenting an assignment in nerve-jangling terror or through the sheer glory of its setting and vista.”

One he cites is Machrihanish in Scotland.

On one of my trips to Scotland with my wife, Nancy, along as tour guide and much more, I had the privilege of playing Machrihanish.  It has an intimidating 1^st tee shot and 17 great holes after that.

Incredibly, you have you have hit your drive over part of the ocean.  Plus, you have to carry it more than 225 yards to clear the water and reach the fairway.

On the day I played, we had a tee time, but Nancy and I arrived at the course just as three foursomes were getting ready to tee off.  With normal Scottish courtesy, they let us go ahead.

So, with a gallery of at least 12, I prepared for my tee shot.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I hit it well, cleared the water (barely) and went on to the thrill of golf on one of Scotland’s storied links.  With Nancy by my side, we had great, memorable four or five hours walking around in her parents’ homeland.

First hole jitters, there and back home?  Of course.  But, yes, worth it – at Machrinihanish in Scotland, or at Illahe Hills in Salem.

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 blog headline relates to the continuing kerfuffle (don’t you like that word, which sort of rolls of the tongue?) between pro golfer Phil Mickelson and a writer of his biography, Alan Shipnuck.

The kerfuffle (there’s that word again) revolves around the definition of a term, “off-the-record.”

I happen to know what the phrase means

This is so because of:  (a) my past work as a daily newspaper reporter, and (b) my role in Oregon state government as a manager assigned to deal with the media.  [In my 25 years as a lobbyist, I also dealt frequently with “off-the-record” issues.]

The phrase means this:

Both sides must agree in advance to go “off-the-record.”  The interviewer and the person being interviewed must reach that agreement and it must be well understood by both sides before anyone says anything or writes anything.  Off-the-record means that a source will not be quoted.

In the case of a source for a story, an individual cannot contend  “off-the-record” is in force just because he or she didn’t like how he or she was quoted.

And, on the other side – the writer – cannot just violate an “off-the-record” agreement because it suits himself or herself to do so.

If a writer does so, he won’t be a good, reputable writer for long.

When I have dealt with “off-the-record” issues over the years – and there have been many such cases on both sides of the issue – I always had an IRON-CLAD GUARANTEE before saying anything or reporting anything.  I also had to trust that the other side would live up to its commitments.

Further, regarding Mickelson, who used to be one of my favorite pro golfers, I have said before that I had hoped he would work within the PGA Tour to effect change.  He could have done so given his long-earned status on the Tour.

Instead, he went to LIV golf, which is funded by the tainted Saudi Defense Fund. 

I wish Mickelson wouldn’t have left a pro golf tour that had done so much for him, including providing him a world-class competitive golf stage. 

So, what happened in the case of the Mickelson and Shipnuck kerfuffle?

We’ll never know because we weren’t there.  But, it has been interesting to note how Mickelson has described the situation.  He has never said something like – “I had an advance, iron-clad agreement with the reporter that what I was saying was off-the-record, and then he violated that agreement.”

An interesting, if not telling, omission.

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.

Michael Gerson, one of my favorite writers going today – his work appears usually in the Washington Post – produced a long essay a day or so ago to decry the linkage between “real Christianity” and Donald Trump’s rabid appeal to the “religious right.”

I cannot do justice to Gerson’s words, so read all of them for yourself in a long essay I credit the Washington Post for publishing.

In one part of his essay, Gerson provides a list of what he calls, “Imagine if today’s believers were to live out the full implications of their faith.”

Here is the list, which is worthy of study and contemplation:

• Instead of fighting for narrow advantage, they would express their love of neighbor by seeking the common good and rejecting a view of greatness that makes others small.
• Instead of being entirely captive to their cultural background, they would have enough critical distance to sort the good from the bad, the gold from the sand.  This might leave them uncomfortable within their own tribe or their own skin — but the moral landscape is often easier to see from the periphery.
• Instead of being ruled by anger and fear, they would live lightly, free from grudges and ready to offer forgiveness — thus preserving the possibility of future reconciliation and concord.
• Instead of turning to violence in word or deed, they would assert the power of unarmed truth.  They would engage in argument without slander or threats — demonstrating not wokeness or weakness, but due regard for our shared dignity.
• Instead of being arrogant and willful, they would approach hard issues with humility, recognizing that even the most compelling principles are applied by fallible men and women.  They would know that people who esteem the same ideal can come to different policy conclusions — and be open to the possibility of changing their own mind.
• Instead of ignoring the cries of the ill, poor, and abused, they would honor the unerasable image of God we see in one another.  Believers don’t accept a society divided by rank or dominated by the illusion of merit — they seek to subvert such stratification in constructive ways, to prioritize justice and common provision for people in need.
• Instead of giving in to half-justified despair, they would assert that there is hope at the end of a twisting road.  Even when their strength is drained by long struggle and the bitterness of incoming attacks, they would live confidently rather than desperately, with faith in God’s mercy and hope for a tearless morning.

So, just imagine!

I will as a real Christian who deplores the depth to which Trump will go to aggrandize himself, even as, incredibly, he gains new sycophants.

This morning, however, I thank Gerson for summarizing real Christianity in such a compelling and transparent way.

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.

I borrow the headline on this blog from a column published in the Washington Post this morning and written by Margaret Sullivan, a now retired columnist who, in her last years on the job, often commented on the craft of journalism.

She often criticized what she called “the traditional way of doing things as a reporter or editor.”

What follows below is the full text of her new column, which rests on this notion from Sullivan:  “I believed in traditional reporting, but Trump changed me — and it should change the rest of the media too.”

The length of Sullivan’s column is imposing.  But I believe it is worth reprinting all of it because:

1. So much is at stake for America – the very future of democracy in the face of many – call them “election deniers” – who, led by Donald Trump, want to dismantle everything.
2. Sullivan proposes excellent, though tough-to-implement suggestions for the industry where I got worked in my first years out of college.

So, here is the column.

*********

Error! Filename not specified.espite my nearly four decades in journalism, I was unprepared for the moment of no return that came on a July day in 2016, as a blazing sun beat down on the streets of Cleveland. Walking around the grounds of the Republican National Convention, I was looking for a column idea.

I was new at this, having started at The Washington Post only a few weeks earlier. Wandering and observing, I came upon a table of souvenirs, meant to appeal to the convention attendees who had arrived from all corners of the nation to cheer on the Republican Party’s nomination of Donald Trump.

I already had seen some gleefully misogynistic anti-Clinton paraphernalia — “Hillary sucks but not like Monica” — but nothing measured up to the horror I felt as I registered the meaning of a T-shirt featuring the image of a noose and these words: “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.”

Over the weeks and months ahead, as I started to write what I hoped were well-reasoned Post columns about Trump’s relationship with the media, I felt an irrational anger coming at me like an unending blast from an industrial-strength hose. Trump hadn’t invented this anger, of course, but he certainly emboldened it — and used it for his own purposes.

On social media, in phone messages, in emails I received, the sheer hatred from Trump supporters shocked and even frightened me. One, unsigned but from a “lifetime member of the NRA,” asserted that people like me wouldn’t be around much longer. Another, signed “A Real, True Patriot,” read:

“Though I would never read a manure-laden pile of toilet paper like Washington Compost, I heard about your Nazi column about ‘reaching the masses’ with your fake news to convince people that your leftist Nazi lies are truth. You are a well-trained serpent of the left, following communist orders as you were taught. ‘If you say and repeat a lie often enough, it will eventually be seen as truth’ — Lenin … Here’s what you (slithering, fake-news/propaganda- generating slimy slug) should do: Go fornicate yourself with a large, sharp knife, and then eat rat poison until your belly is stuffed.”

I was called the c-word repeatedly. One reader suggested I have my breasts cut off. I tried to let all this nastiness roll off my back and even found it amusing when a Post reader sent me an email calling me a “venomous serpent.” John Schwartz, then a reporter for the New York Times who had become a friend, suggested I treat it as a badge of honor and write a book titled “Memories of a Venomous Serpent.”

Now, six years later, we journalists know a lot more about covering Trump and his supporters. We’ve come a long way, but certainly made plenty of mistakes. Too many times, we acted as his stenographers or megaphones. Too often, we failed to refer to his many falsehoods as lies.

It took too long to stop believing that, whenever he calmed down for a moment, he was becoming “presidential.” And it took too long to moderate our instinct to give equal weight to both sides, even when one side was using misinformation for political gain.

It’s been an education for all of us — a gradual realization that the instincts and conventions of traditional journalism weren’t good enough for this moment in our country’s history. As Trump prepares to run again in 2024, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the lessons we’ve learned — and committing to the principle that, when covering politicians who are essentially running against democracy, old-style journalism will no longer suffice.

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Back in 2016, I was still looking for common ground with the Trump crowd. It fit with my background as a traditional newspaper journalist. During nearly 13 years as chief editor of the Buffalo News, ending in 2012, I had believed that I could listen to or communicate with our readers, whatever their politics — and I was registered to vote as a “blank.”

Our editorial board, which I sat on, endorsed candidates from various parties, and I had courteous relationships with officeholders of all stripes. I frequently would go out to speak to civic organizations, such as rotary clubs, in the Buffalo-Niagara region with no regard for whether their members leaned right or left.

At the Cleveland airport after the convention, I interviewed one delegate, a concierge for a car dealership named Mary Sue McCarty, who wore a cowboy hat and pearls as she waited for her flight home to Dallas. She had her mind made up about the news media: “Journalists aren’t doing their jobs. They are protecting a certain class.”

When I pointed out that it was the New York Times that broke the consequential story about Hillary Clinton’s email practices and that mainstream media organizations had aggressively investigated the finances of the Clinton Foundation, she shrugged: “If it’s a Republican, it’s investigated to death. If it’s a Democrat, it’s breezed over.”

This assertion could hardly have been more wrong. After all, the media’s endless emphasis on Clinton’s emails would prove to be a big factor in dooming her campaign. It simply wasn’t the case that the press was giving Democrats a pass.

Clearly, the empirical common ground I depended upon — and believed in — was eroding. Dealing with that growing reality over the next few years would change me as a journalist and even as a person. Some principles and beliefs, I found, were more important than appearing to get along with everyone or responding to criticism by offering to compromise or change course.

Journalists have to stand, unwaveringly, for the truth — and if that meant being attacked by zealots who wanted to call such a position evidence of bias, I could live with that. For me, it would soon become a matter of simple integrity to acknowledge that some of the old-school rules and practices didn’t work anymore.

From this new vantage point, it seemed self-evident that the mainstream press was too often going easy on Trump. Well into his presidency, journalists didn’t want to use the word “lie” for Trump’s constant barrage of falsehoods.

To lie, editors reasoned, means to intend to be untruthful. Since journalists couldn’t be inside politicians’ heads, how were we supposed to know if — by this definition — they were really lying? The logic eventually became strained, given that Trump blithely repeated the same rank mistruths over and over.

Too many reporters and their editors didn’t seem to want to figure out how to cover Trump properly. From the moment he descended the golden escalator at Manhattan’s Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his candidacy, the news media was in his thrall.

Journalists couldn’t stop writing about him, showing him on TV and even broadcasting images of the empty stage waiting for him to arrive at a rally. Trump had described himself as “the ratings machine,” and for once he wasn’t exaggerating.

As I continued to tackle the 2016 campaign, I criticized the press’s obsession with the former reality-TV star, yet I was caught up in it, too. I have no regrets about what I wrote, but I certainly was aware that if I wrote a column with Trump’s name in the headline, it probably would find a passionate audience: thousands of comments and retweets, hundreds of emails, requests to talk on TV.

And because I wrote about the news media, and Trump never stopped using the news media as a foil, there was so much to say.

In every way, Trump was a deeply abnormal candidate, but the news media couldn’t seem to communicate that effectively or even grasp the problem. Instead, his every unhinged, middle-of-the-night tweet was covered like legitimate news.

To be fair, the media was applying a standard that had made sense up until that moment:  When a major presidential candidate says something provocative or worse, it’s newsworthy. The problem is that we were applying this old standard to a candidate who was exploiting it for his own purposes — while seeking to undermine democracy itself.

In the late afternoon of November 8, 2016, Election Day, I walked into The Post’s newsroom with a column already started about Hillary Clinton’s supposedly inevitable victory. A few hours later, I was scrambling, just like every reporter, editor, and commentator. My colleagues and I watched the television screens placed all around the newsroom as one battleground state after another fell to Trump.

Tossing away my useless column, I wrote that the media coverage of the 2016 race had been, as I put it, “an epic fail.” They — and I would include myself in this criticism — employed a kind of magical thinking: A Trump presidency shouldn’t happen, therefore it won’t happen.

Soon, word filtered down from the boss, Marty Baron, that I should produce a second column before I left the newsroom that night. He wanted me to write my recommendations for how the traditional press should cover the new president. So, I wrote a call to arms for American journalists: “Journalists are going to have to be better — stronger, more courageous, stiffer-spined — than they’ve ever been.”

I filed it, not at all convinced that I’d written anything worthwhile on this momentous night, said good night to my editor and headed out of the newsroom around 3 a.m.

Stunned and spent, I walked slowly through the deserted streets of downtown Washington. As I neared my apartment, I could see the U.S. Capitol, that seemingly inviolable symbol of American democracy, off to the east. Lit from within, it glowed an ethereal white in the darkness.

In every way, Trump was a deeply abnormal candidate, but the news media couldn’t seem to communicate that effectively or even grasp the problem.

As we would learn over the coming years, the Capitol was not inviolable, and neither is the democracy it represents. American democracy is now on the edge of a precipice. What can members of the press do to help keep it from tipping over as the 2024 campaign looms? What should we have learned since that summer in 2016?

For one thing, I’m convinced that journalists — specifically those who cover politics — must keep a sharp focus on truth-seeking, not old-style performative neutrality. Does that mean we throw objectivity out the window?

Of course not. We should be resolutely objective in the sense of seeking evidence and approaching subjects with an open mind. We should not, however, resort to taking everything down the middle, no matter what. Rather than, for example, having equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats (or conservatives and progressives) on every talk show, or devoting equal numbers of words to each side of a political argument, we should be thinking about what coverage serves the public best.

Those who deny the outcome of the 2020 election certainly don’t deserve a media megaphone for that enduring lie, one that is likely to reemerge in the presidential campaign ahead. But the media should go one step further: When covering such a politician in other contexts — for example, about abortion rights or gun control — journalists should remind audiences that this public figure is an election denier.

That’s exactly the model pursued by WITF, a public radio station in Harrisburg, Pa., which decided to remind its audience on a regular basis that some Republican state legislators and members of the Pennsylvania congressional delegation had opposed the transfer of power to Joe Biden, despite the lack of evidence to support their claims of election fraud.

A story on the station’s website about a state legislator’s efforts to get Pennsylvanians vaccinated was accompanied by a sidebar of text about his behavior after the election. On-air stories have used a tagline to accomplish the same purpose. The decision wasn’t easy, one editor told me, “because this is not the normal thing.”

Unfortunately, many media organizations — increasingly owned these days by huge corporations or hedge funds — seem more interested in ratings and profits than in serving the public interest. So, they are extremely hesitant to offend groups of viewers or voters, including the many Republicans who have signed on to the lie about the 2020 election being stolen.

The new boss of CNN, Chris Licht, raised eyebrows when he made the rounds on Capitol Hill a few months ago to assure Republican leaders that members of their party would be treated fairly on the network that had been one of the former president’s favorite punching bags. One conservative publication, the Washington Free Beacon, called Licht’s unusual outreach an “apology tour.”

Given all this, it’s difficult to picture CNN consistently alerting viewers that a politician is an election denier, even when discussing a different subject. Yet that’s exactly the type of bold measure that is needed.

Media people — not just reporters but their editors and top leaders of newsrooms — also need to take a hard, critical look at the types of stories that constitute traditional campaign coverage. That coverage has historically leaned on such things as live footage of speeches, rallies and debates; on “horse race” articles based on polls or conventional wisdom; and on blowing up small conflicts (campaign staff in disarray!) into major stories.

These modes of coverage can have the effect of normalizing a candidate who should not be normalized. They also often constitute a distraction at a time when huge swaths of one party are essentially running against democratic practices.

By no means am I counseling that journalists act as if they are “on the team” of Trump’s rivals. That’s not our job. At the same time, we have to be aware that covering someone who doesn’t care about democratic norms — even something as basic as the peaceful transfer of power — requires different judgments about what stories really matter, and how we should or should not cover them.

In making these judgments, we have to relentlessly explain ourselves to our readers, viewers and listeners. Although it didn’t involve Trump, a good example of this came over the summer when the Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland decided against covering a rally for U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance featuring Florida Governor Ron DeSantis because of the absurdly restrictive rules the campaign had tried to impose, including a prohibition against interviewing attendees who weren’t approved by rally organizers.

Instead, the Plain Dealer published white space, with a note to readers written by editor Chris Quinn headlined, “We reject the free speech-trampling rules set by J.D. Vance and Ron DeSantis for covering their rally.” Quinn was blunt: “Think about what they were doing here. They were staging an event to rally people to vote for Vance while instituting the kinds of policies you’d see in a fascist regime.”

Of course, the press must be just as tough on Democrats, should they adopt similar tactics or start lying all the time or trashing governmental norms. The standards should be the same for all. But journalists shouldn’t shy away from the unavoidable truth: Most of this is coming from Trump-style Republicans.

Perhaps the most important thing journalists can do as they cover the campaign ahead is to provide thoughtful framing and context. They shouldn’t just repeat what’s being said, but help explain what it means. This is especially important in headlines and news alerts, which are about as far as many news consumers get.

When Trump rants about the supposed horrors of rigged elections and voting fraud, journalists have to constantly provide the counterweight of truth. We have gotten better at this since 2016. Now we have to stick to it.

All of these suggestions go against the grain of traditional politics coverage. Undoubtedly, this approach will draw accusations of bias from the right; undoubtedly, journalists and news leaders will be put on the defensive.

They’ll need to get over that. The stakes are enormously high. Doing things the same old way isn’t remotely appropriate. By now, that’s something we all should have learned.

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.

Yesterday, I opened one of three departments I run with a free hand to manage as I see fit – the Department of Pet Peeves.

Today, demonstrating my supreme management ability, I open another of “my” departments – the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering.  [The third department, by the way, is the Department of “Just Saying.”]

So, the Good Quotes Department is open again.

FROM PAUL WALDMAN IN THE WASHINGTON POST:

“I wouldn’t be surprised if U.S. Senator Ben Sasse thought he was perfectly positioned for a future in his party after 2020:  Trump lost badly, then discredited himself with the January 6, 2021, insurrection, and surely the GOP would want to rid itself of Trump and all he represented.

“Sasse was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial.

“Instead, Sasse’s party is as firmly committed to Trump as ever.  And apart from the occasional story of someone being asked to leave a restaurant or young Trump staffers being unable to find dates, there hasn’t been much accountability for those who served him, promoted him, and made clear their own moral depravity by defending him.

“Because so much of the GOP was invested in Trump, it was in its interest to make sure no one would suffer from the moral stain of their connection to him.  And had Sasse wanted a think tank sinecure or some corporate board seats, no one would have protested.  But he tried to step back into academia, where liberals have plenty of power.

“All of which shows that while Trump contaminates everything he touches, the irony is that the more you were willing to drink his Kool-Aid, the less damage that contamination did to you.  The Republicans facing the biggest consequences are the people like Sasse who didn’t really want to be a part of it.”

COMMENT:  Sasse tried to do what was right in the Senate and got black marks from Trump and his minions for doing so.  Now, as the main contender for the presidency of the University of Florida – he is fully qualified for such a position – he is being black-balled by students who contend he has not been “woke” enough on such issues as gay rights and same-sex marriages.

He can’t win, though the Board at the University of Florida may still go through with his appointment.

FROM BENJAMIN DREYER IN THE POST:  [Random House executive managing editor and copy chief.]

“Now, it’s a common misapprehension that ‘editing’ is a synonym for ‘deleting.’  Yes, by all means trim away what I call the Throat-Clearers and Wan Intensifiers — ‘to be sure,’ ‘that said, ‘of course,’ ‘in sum,’ ‘rather,’ ‘actually,’ and, ‘very.’

“But I have learned that prose often benefits from the cushioning of a few extra words — for rhythm, for sense, sometimes simply to counter the airlessness of sentences that are so straitened they can’t breathe.”

COMMENT:  I think Dreyer is right.  Words matter, as in his phrase, “for rhythm, for sense, sometimes simply to counter the airlessness of sentences that are so straitened they can’t breathe.”

I often remember when a former business partner of mine counseled that fewer words were better than more.  Possibly.  But the word “rhythm,” a key part of writing, often depends on the use of more words not less.

The most basic key:  Work to make sure your words deliver the message you want them to deliver, with rhythm, style, and personal tone.

DICK HUGHES IN HIS “CAPITAL CHATTER” COLUMN:

“Doug Moore, of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, says Oregon often is mischaracterized as a very blue state when it’s actually purplish.

“Ah, be wary of the political stereotypes placed on any region.  Oregon’s status on the political spectrum varies according to the political contest, Republicans’ ability to field high-quality candidates, and the strength of their campaign structure and funding.

“Democrats have won 31 of the 33 statewide partisan elections since 2002. Secretary of State Dennis Richardson and U.S. Senator Gordon Smith were the lone Republican victors during those 20 years.

“With three strong candidates, it remains probable that a minority of voters will elect Oregon’s next governor.  Any of the three could yet win.”

COMMENT:  Hughes, former editorial page editor of the Salem Statesman Journal, has it right when he discounts labels in politics and says results often rest on the quality of candidates, not party label.

Whatever your set of beliefs this time around in the Oregon governor’s race, there is a real race here.  Any of three candidates could win.

The same is true, by the way, in another “purple” state, Washington.  There, long-time Democrat Patty Murray is in the race of her political career against a candidate from Eastern Washington, thus illustrating what is true both in Oregon and Washington – there are “two-Oregons” and there are “two Washingtons,” urban and rural…and rarely do the two ever meet or agree.