PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

In a post earlier this week, I outlined my mixed emotions about Elizabeth Warren who is at or near the top of the list of Democrats running for president.

She made headlines late last week by unveiling her plan to fund the Medicare for All plan that she touts as a priority for Americans.

Still, while I give her credit for going on record with the numbers, the problem is two-fold – first, they don’t hold up well under scrutiny, and, second, they impose huge tax increases on many Americans who may not favor an approach where federal bureaucrats would make their health care decisions.

If Warren wins the Democrat primary, my fear is that Donald Trump, even with all his bombast and buffoonery, often, will take her apart on the campaign trail.

The fact is that a Warren win for the Ds could very well mean Trump gets re-elected.

That was a point made very well this morning by Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, who with good words and trenchant analysis, often gets to the heart of issues facing this country.

Witness what he wrote under this headline, “Warren’s climb in the polls should horrify Democrats.”

“With the fact of serious ethical breaches by President Trump all but demonstrated, most elected Republicans do not seem to be struggling with their consciences over impeachment. They wrestle, instead, with a more practical challenge: Continuing to support a corrupt man without appearing too corrupt themselves.

“This is not the kind of political objective that encourages idealism and attracts young people to public service. Instead, the torch has been passed to a new generation of shills and rationalizers, frightened of their own mercurial leader, intimidated by an angry base and dedicated to maintaining the blessing of presidential fundraising for their campaigns.

“The main occupation of the GOP at this point in history is the defense of public corruption, which is a particularly insidious form of corruption. Those who excuse Trump’s abuses of power will not escape his taint.”

“And yet — at this low point of presidential character and congressional GOP courage — perhaps the most politically talented Democrat challenger to Trump in 2020, Senator Elizabeth Warren is six points behind the president in Michigan, even with Trump in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and four points behind Trump in Florida (according to recent surveys by the New York Times Upshot and Siena College).”

This, Gerson avers, should horrify Democrats. “One of the most exciting, substantive, compelling voices in their presidential field would stand a good chance of re-electing Trump. And this is not a problem that can be solved through good speeches and clever advertising. The weak points that Trump would exploit are the centerpieces of Warren’s campaign — the very reasons that Democrats are falling for her.”

Here is a list of problems for Warren.

• In producing her recent funding plan for Medicare-for-all, she doubled down on ending private health insurance in the United States. Ds may like this ideological boldness, but now, Gerson says, Warren has very little flexibility to make her plan seem less disruptive and frightening in a general election against Trump.
• She is proposing hugely to expand the role and reach of government in American lives, and to spend an additional $20.5 trillion (or more) over 10 years to do so, at a time when trust in government is near an all-time low.
• Her plan to socialize — there is no other word for it — the health insurance industry fights against a swift current of public skepticism.
• The fact is that, over time, Obamacare, has become more stable, reducing the number of uninsured Americans (though less than proposed by the former president). This reality creates more problems for Warren. She wants to scrap ObamaCare and start over with a government-centric approach, thus displacing private insurance for millions of Americans.

Whether Warren can achieve her big health care idea without middle-class tax increases appears unlikely. So, she will be solidly on record, whether she likes to admit it or not, in favor of huge tax increases if she fights Trump next year.

Gerson asks a final question about Warren.

“Can she eventually transform her public image from being a progressive populist to being a mere populist? Her health-care proposal indicates she cannot. Trump’s charge of socialism — more accurately, SOCIALISM! — may seem hyperbolic. But it is more likely to stick when a candidate proposes to abolish all private health insurance, put a government bureaucracy in charge and spend an additional $2 trillion a year on her ambitions.

“It is always tempting to view the weakness of a political opponent as an opportunity to gain total ideological victory. But in the case of Trump, this would be a blunder. If the 2018 midterms are any indication, the president has shed supporters at the more moderate edges of his coalition. And they will be attracted by stability and incrementalism, not disruption and radicalism — no matter how principled and well explained.”

So, for Trump, Warren may be the exactly the kind of candidate he would relish meeting at the polls – that is, if he survives impeachment.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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 asked myself a probing question this past weekend in between watching golf and football.

If the 2020 presidential contest came down to Donald Trump vs. Elizabeth Warren, for whom would I vote? The context is that support for Warren appears to be on the rise while support for Joe Biden appears to be waning.

I thought of this in relation to a comment from a friend of mine a couple weeks ago – a stalwart Republican, by the way – who said he was so sick of Trump’s excesses that he would vote for “anybody but Trump.”

In the spirit of full disclosure about a year away from the presidential vote, I find myself in a similar camp, though I have not yet decided if I could vote for a currently-running Democrat, including Warren, because they are so far left as to be out of sight.

For me, that might mean casting my vote for a third-party candidate who would display the types of credentials I think we need in the leader of the free world.

Regarding Warren, I would have to think long and hard about her vision for America, which, put simply, is to create more and more government. The result would intrude into all of our lives, often with a demand that we pay for the privilege of having government control us.

My mixed emotions about Warren arise from various sources, including her recent proposal to outline how she would pay for her government-run Medicare for All plan.

On one hand, she deserves credit for stepping up to the plate to outline an approach on health care rather than continuing to dodge the funding question.

But would her plan work?

I say no.

To arrive at this position, I rely on three perspectives – my own background for 25 years as health care lobbyist in Oregon, a column by the Washington Post’s Megan McArdle, and a Wall Street Journal editorial.

McArdle writes that the “math for Warren’s health care plan adds up if you accept its ludicrous premise.”

“After months of pressure,” McArdle wrote, “Warren finally released her comprehensive Medicare-for-all plan, which promises lower costs for everyone, paid for by taxes on corporations and the rich.

“The good news is, the math adds up, as long as you buy her assumptions. The bad news is that Warren’s assumptions are crazier than keeping a pet rhinoceros, after which, who cares that her calculator works? This is to actual policymaking as the plastic noodles in a ramen-bar window is to lunch.”

And this from Wall Street Journal editorial writers:

“Now we know why Elizabeth Warren took so long to release the financing details of her Medicare-for-All plan. The 20 pages of explanation she released Friday reveal that she is counting on ideas for cost-savings and new revenue that are a fiscal and health-care fantasy.”

Key criticisms revolve around her reductions in what almost every analyst believes is a cost in the range of $30+ trillion – yes, trillion – plus the effect of huge taxes on business, which would reduce the tax payments from business which could re-locate operations, again, overseas to escape the punitive Warren taxes.

In this blog, I don’t intend to summarize all of the deficits in the Warren plan, which will come under the glare of analysis in the next days leading up to the next Democrat presidential debate, if not in the debate itself, not to mention the first vote in the Iowa caucuses.

Rather, I will make two concluding points.

1. Warren’s funding plan creates a new federal entitlement with no way to pay for it – at least no legal way, short of displaying the excellent quote, “it is easy to spend other people’s money” – which Warren does in spades.
2. It is time, as I have posited previously, for public officials on both sides of the aisle, also armed with private sector health policy expertise, to get into a room – yes, there will have to be a round table inside that room – to devise a plan from the center.

No Democrat big government proposal. No Republican “just say no” approach.

I have seen this work in Oregon over the years and it is time for it to be tried again as an illustration that America can still solve pressing public policy problems, such as health care.

So, for whom will I vote in 2020?  Don’t know yet.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

From Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty: “Republicans don’t know how to take yes for an answer.

“For weeks, they dutifully echoed President Trump, baying that the House’s ongoing impeachment investigation is a ‘witch hunt’ and a ‘sham.’

“They have complained that the House never took a formal vote on proceeding with the inquiry (though there is no requirement for one), that it was being conducted in secret (though open hearings are promised), and that the president is not being offered an opportunity to respond to his accusers (though he does it constantly on his Twitter feed).

“On Thursday, they will have the vote they demanded (of course, now the vote is over and the impeachment won), along with a road map for how the inquiry will go from here.

“The procedure as outlined strikes a reasonable balance between the need to collect evidence and testimony, some of which must be done initially behind closed doors, and the transparency necessary for the public to have confidence that something as grave as the impeachment of a president is done fairly.”

Comment: Tumulty criticizes House Republicans for their ham-handed action to infiltrate a House impeachment hearing, using cell phones (which was against policy in the secure hearing room), and, incredibly, ordering pizza as they stopped the hearing.

They did so even as many of their Republican colleagues were members of the three committees holding the hearing and, thus, were already in the room as the stunt occurred.

Tumulty makes this excellent bottom-line point: “Nonetheless, Republicans continue to howl about process. The reason: It allows them to avoid talking about the actual substance of the allegations against Trump.”

From Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal: “When Trump first came in I would press his supporters on putting all of American military power into the hands of a person with no direct political or foreign-affairs experience or training. They’d say, confidently, ‘But he’s got the generals around him.’

“His gut would blend with their expertise. But though they went to work for him with optimism and confidence in their ability to warn him off destructive actions or impulses—though they were personally supportive, gave him credit for a kind of political genius, and intended to be part of something of which they could be proud—they found they could not. This president defeats all his friends. That’s why he’s surrounded now, in his White House and the agencies, by the defeated—a second-string, ragtag, un-led army.”

Comment: Noonan is right to outline a key difference in the Trump presidency. When it started, accomplished generals signed up to run important national security operations. Now, all of them have left, knowing that Trump cannot run anything as he veers off repeatedly on more Twitter feeds, plus take international actions (read, the retreat from Syria) that risk America’s future.

From David Leonhardt in the New York Times: “Personal attacks don’t hurt him (Trump). Substantive ones do.

“House Democrats are doing the right thing by pursuing impeachment against Trump. But it does create a political quandary for their party.

“Democrats have been most successful against Trump when they have focused on his unpopular policies, as they did during the 2017 fight over ObamaCare and the 2018 mid-terms. They have been least successful when focusing on his outrageous behavior, as Hillary Clinton did in her 2016 campaign.

“Trump’s supporters seem to take his personality as a given and aren’t moved by complaints about it. Some fraction of them, however, can evidently be swayed by his failure to live up to his policy promises.

“Impeachment unavoidably returns the focus to the cartoon version of Trump, the gleefully norm-breaking president who resembles no other. The trial is also likely to end in acquittal by the Republican-controlled Senate. Trump will then claim vindication, and Republicans will deride the exercise as a vindictive waste of time and money.

Comment: Leonhardt, in a piece that was clearly labeled “opinion,” emphasizes a useful distinction between substance and Trump’s personality. Go after the first, not the latter.

On the Trump personality issues, I agree with Leonhardt – it appears that Trump supporters always give him a pass on person failures because he does what they want him to do.

I have come to the conclusion that, given Trump’s clear excesses on substance, there was no real choice but for Democrat leaders to begin impeachment. Even if doing so would not result in final conviction in the U.S. Senate, thus allowing Trump to claim vindication in the 2020 election.

Sometimes it is important to rest on honesty and integrity, not bombast.

It is time for leaders in Congress – yes, there are some on both sides of the political aisle – to throw Trump out of office and get back to the important business of governing from the middle.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

This is one of three departments I run with a free hand to operate as director-in-charge. The others are the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering and the Department of Bits and Pieces.

Like Trump, I fancy myself to be a dictator. But, I add with emphasis, in no other way am I like the buffoon who occupies, perish the thought, the Oval Office.

So, here are my new pet peeves.

DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN SUBJECT AND VERB: The Wall Street Journal made a mistake earlier this week when it ran this:

“According to the Urban Institute, a non-profit economic and social-policy research organization, increased costs would outweigh savings. They say the most generous single-payer plan would require between $29 trillion and $34.8 trillion in additional federal revenue over a decade. A “single payer lite” plan excluding undocumented immigrants and imposing cost-sharing on individuals would need between $13.3 trillion and $17.3 trillion.”

Note the word “they.” It should have been the word “it,” which would have agreed with the noun, “the Urban Institute.”

This grammatical mistake is made far too often today. One of the most frequent mistakes is this sentence: “The committee made their decision.” It should be, “Made its decision.” If you like the word “their,” then write the sentence this way – “Committee members made their decision.”

Or, consider this from no less a quality journalist endeavor than the Washington Post. “A number of presidential candidates who signed onto Sanders’ bill in 2017 have since wavered on some of these key components.”

The word “have” should be “has” to comply with the early phrase in the sentence – “A number of presidential candidates…”

Sounds tinny to the ear? Yes. But, it’s right.

Why is this kind of stuff an issue for me? Well, who knows, but one reason is that I am retired and have nothing much else to do – other than, of course, golf.

ANOTHER LANGUAGE ISSUE — TURNING GOOD NOUNS INTO STUPID VERBS: The most recent example is the tendency to turn the word “helm,” a useful noun, into a verb.

An example: “The baseball manager helmed the team to a victory in the World Series.” I didn’t actually see that sentence, but I could have.

You don’t helm something. Helm is what exists, for example, on a ship. It is a noun.

I say leave nouns as nouns and verbs as verbs.

TOO MUCH FOCUS ON TRUMP TWEETS: Since he took office, Trump has tweeted more than 17,000 times. But who is keeping track?

Well, some news outlets are, including the Washington Post. And, on some days, Trump sends so many tweets that it appears he would not have time for anything else. I suppose it could be added that he is at least tweeting, not doing something more risky such as feuding with North Korea.

My pet peeve is this. Why allow Trump to control the flow of “news” on any given day by emoting on his twitter machine? Just ignore what he says because, most of the time, they are lies anyway.

It would be better for journalists to report real news rather than focus on this aspect of Trump.

DEMOCRATS LABELING CORPORATE POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS “EVIL,” WHILE FULLY ACCEPTING PUBLIC EMPLOYEE UNION CONTRIBUTIONS: Frankly, I am stunned at the duplicity of this contention.

If there is “evil” in political contributions, then the evil rests in all segments, not just in corporations.

An emerging plank in Democrat party platforms, both in Oregon and nationally, is to go after corporations. Of course, some have made huge mistakes; think only of what has happened to Boeing over the last couple years.

But, also know that corporations provide jobs for thousands of citizens who, with jobs, pay taxes to support government. And, on occasion, if those corporations make political contributions, they do not automatically fall into the evil dump.

It’s time for equity in expressing views about political contributions, regardless of the source.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

To read the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) this week, you would suspect the answer the answer would be no – strategic plans in an organization are not much more than pablum.

I beg to differ.

Obviously, a strategic plan that engaged in platitudes and not much else would not be worth the paper on which it was printed or the PowerPoint to display it.

But a solid strategic plan could be worth gold to anyone who was involved in developing it with skill and insight, or who was subject to its provisions.

The worth of a strategic plan depends on how well it was done, as well as the process for producing it — a process that must consider all points of view regardless of position in an organization.

The question in the headline arose when Wyatt Wells, a professor of history at Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama, decided to take on strategic plans in a piece he wrote for the WSJ. It appeared under this headline:

Why “Strategic Plans” Are Rarely Strategic – or Effective

Effective managers can list their goals on a note card. They don’t need long recitations of bromides.

My sense is that Wells goes over-board in his criticism.

What he contends can be summarized by this quote:

“The typical strategic plan begins with an anodyne statement of principles, lists several general goals, and finally recounts a series of initiatives that the institution will undertake to realize these objectives. In its statement of principles, Auburn University’s plan asserts that the university seeks ‘to provide quality and diverse educational opportunities,’ offering a ‘student-centered experience ‘with excellence as our standard.’

“These are more specific that Google’s old mantra, ‘Don’t be evil,’ but not much. Presumably, every institution of higher learning shares these goals – none would boast that ‘adequacy is our standard.’”

So, with these words, Wells denigrates all strategic plans because the ones he knows about from his university includes high-sounding phrases with no way to measure success. What Wells doesn’t recognize, even in passing, that strategic plans, if done right, can advance the cause of any organization, public or private.

Several writers of letters to the editor of the WSJ disagreed with Wells, as I do. One headline led the way:

Good Strategic Planning Can Be Productive

The antidote to Wells’ anecdotes is exactly the kind of deeper, more genuine thought and engagement that great strategic planning entails.

The writer said this:

“Wyatt Wells throws the baby out with the bath water. While he cites anecdotes to support his thesis, he neglects to mention that strategic planning, when done well, involves establishing a robust fact base, conducting rigorous analysis, surfacing the most intellectually and emotionally challenging questions for the organization, addressing those questions with genuine thought, integrity and collaboration, and communicating effectively across the organization throughout the process of developing and implementing the plan.”

Excellent points.

For me, a well done strategic plan involves all of the credentials listed above, plus allows those who develop the plan – as well as those affected by it – to ascend to a higher level than just the humdrum and limitations of day-to-day business.

Put another way, the process allows those involved to focus on strategy, not just tactics – to focus on context, not just individual issues. It is easy to fall victim to coming up first with tactics, but, often, with no good way to measure whether the tactics contribute measurably to the higher-end goals.

A friend of mine who consults with business leaders added these thoughts:

“Strategic conversations are critical to moving forward. They release a synergy that cannot be achieved by one person alone. They also add another dimension that is absolutely critical for advancement – engagement of critical partners, expertise, and everyday workers.

“Finally, they better align all parties to shared, common goals.

“What does not seem to be addressed (in the WSJ piece) is the ‘planning’ part of the phrase ‘strategic planning.’  Planning, on a large scale, with lots of time spent on all of the above, in a lengthy, drawn-out, round-and-round process is antiquated today. Instead, we are moving at warp speed, data is abundant, and we lose to others if we are not nimble and forward-focused.”

Over my years in management and consulting (even if those years rank as lesser in status to the credentials of my friend), I often have advised organizations and clients to commit to strategic planning.

I continue to believe it is the right way to go.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

Election politics often revolves around finding scapegoats to blame for whatever bugs a certain candidate.

Today, look no farther than Democrats who have found a new one – corporations which can be blamed for almost everything.

Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, makes this point in a column that ran this morning.

“With Halloween in the air,” Henninger writes, “it’s the right moment to discuss the central role played in presidential politics by bogeymen—creatures conjured to distract and scare the citizenry. In politics, the bogeyman is always just around the corner. For John F. Kennedy it was ‘the missile gap;’ for Barack Obama, the ‘wealthiest;’ and for Donald Trump, criminals pouring across ‘the border.’

“Naturally, the Democrats running for their party’s presidential nomination needed a bogeyman, and they have created one even scarier than the Trump monster. It’s them—‘corporations!’ At their recent presidential debate, one candidate after another claimed corporations were wrecking the country.”

Henninger writes that Senator Elizabeth Warren, “who knows a thing or two about scaring people,” said this: “They (corporations) have no loyalty to America. They have no loyalty to American workers. They have no loyalty to American consumers. They have no loyalty to American communities. They are loyal only to their own bottom line.”

Politics can get crude. It is possible to understand, if you lose judgment in the quest to win at all costs, why candidates play the race card, the class-warfare card, the anti-immigrant car or any other card.

But, I ask, with Henninger, how has the Democrat Party arrived at playing the anti-corporation card?

First, not all corporations are evil. A number of them make huge mistakes, which generate national headlines. Look no farther than Boeing.

But the anti-corporation rant comes against a growing economy that is producing historically high job creation and rising wages for people regardless of income level, race, sex or sexual orientation.  Corporations provide jobs for thousands of Americans.

The New York Times wrote recently that the jobs boom was forcing corporations to dig deeper for workers: “With the national unemployment rate now flirting with a 50-year low,” the Times “noted that companies are offering work-from-home options to parents, accommodating employees with disabilities, reducing educational requirements and waiving criminal background checks.”

In his Wall Street Journal column, Henninger posits that Democrat presidential candidates aren’t talking about the real economy “because most of them don’t understand it.” They give no credit to private sector job-creating efforts even as they advocate for more and bigger government.

The same negative view of corporations appears to be under way in Oregon.

In the Secretary of State race, for instance, one candidate is pinning the campaign on limiting corporate political contributions without one mention of political contributions from public employee unions. The latter, of course, fuel Democrat campaigns, so the question to win for a Democrat argues against any mention of the extent of union contributions even as corporate contributions are described as evil.

As I watch politics these days – both in Oregon and Washington, D.C. – I wish those running would appeal to our best interests as Americans. Avoid finding bogeymen — immigrants, those with certain sexual orientations, those with different economic status.

Advocate for the public interest. Find middle ground solutions.

And, to put a point on it for this post, don’t go after corporations, unless they deserve the scrutiny. Recognize that many of them contribute to economic gains and hire workers – and it is those very workers who pay taxes, thus funding government programs important to all, including Democrats.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

Here’s the reality for a single payer system.

If the United States moves to such a system, the cost will be a huge, defining issue. Depending on your point of view, it may be a cost worth paying or one too high to contemplate.

There are essentially three options:

1. Impose higher taxes to pay for the multiple trillion-dollar price tag.
2. Allow the federal budget deficit, already at record levels, to go even higher.
3. Divert money from other programs to pay for health care.

Add to this the possibility, also difficult to achieve, that it might be possible to cut the cost of health care at a time when many citizens believe access is a right.

Analyzing these costs issues is incredibly difficult, as illustrated by a piece by economist Richard Rubin in the Wall Street Journal.

Rubin wrote: “The Democrat presidential hopeful from Massachusetts (Elizabeth Warren) could propose a plan to partly pay for a single-payer system by finding ways to reduce health-care costs, expanding budget deficits or adding new levies on the richest Americans. But replacing insurance premiums would likely require taxes on individuals and businesses.

“And she has to find a way to explain the shifts in payments and coverage to voters. If her plan works as advertised, many Americans would pay less for health care but owe more to the government, trade-offs that wouldn’t be easy for individuals to estimate or calculate.”

Rubin’s point strikes me as exactly right. Which is one reason why Warren is taking so long to announce her plan for how to fund her preoposed single payer health care system. I am not defending her silence on costs to this point, but arriving at a conclusion is difficult for her, both in terms of substance and politics.

Meanwhile, Time Magazine – yes, it still exists –- showed up with an interesting story on how many physicians are becoming pointedly more active on health care reform, often in favor of a single payer system, rather than sitting on the sidelines or, as the magazine remembers, adopting a conservative approach.

Here is how the article started:

“Miriam Callahan remembers the patient who clarified her decision to become a political activist. He was homeless, suffered from severe arthritis in his hip and was self-medicating with fistfuls of Advil. That gave him a bleeding gastric ulcer that landed him in the emergency room at a public hospital.

‘Callahan, who is a medical student at Columbia University, and her colleagues patched him up and sent him back to the shelter, where he began self–medicating once again. He was stuck in a horrific cycle. Arthritis isn’t a disease that should kill people, Callahan says, but in this case, it was becoming a real possibility. ‘It’s immoral,’ she says, ‘the way that we treat people in this country.’

“In the months since seeing that patient, Callahan has channeled her frustration into political organizing—and she’s hardly alone among her fellow medical professionals.

“With roughly 27.5 million Americans uninsured and nearly 80 million struggling with medical bills, doctors, nurses, medical students and other patient-facing professionals are finding themselves on the front lines of a broken system.

“Like Callahan, many are looking for ways to fix it. The result is that the medical field, which was once one of the most conservative professions, is becoming an unlikely hotbed of progressive political activity. One of these advocates’ top goals? Single-payer health care, now known most often by its politically charged nickname: Medicare for All.”

Immoral, as Callahan contends?

Perhaps.

But it also would be immoral for this country to embark on a trillion dollar health care system – some credible estimates put the cost at more than $32 trillion — without knowing how to pay for it.

Back to Warren.

Rubin, the WSJ columnist, suggests that Warren “has to find a way to explain the shifts in payments and coverage to voters. If her plan works as advertised, many Americans would pay less for health care but owe more to the government, trade-offs that wouldn’t be easy for individuals to estimate or calculate.

“Financing is just one piece of the proposed shift to a single-payer system that would expand coverage, upend health-industry jobs, and put the government more firmly in charge of cost control and access to care.

One key question for Warren relates to how much money she needs to generate to fund her proposal.

Single-payer advocates argue that such a system could reduce health-care costs by removing insurance-company profits and administrative inefficiencies. Skeptics say it would increase total costs by covering more people and encouraging the use of free services that now cost money.

Rubin reports that, according to the Urban Institute, a non-profit economic and social-policy research organization, increased costs would outweigh savings in any single payer approach. The Institute says the most generous single-payer plan would require between $29 trillion and $34.8 trillion in additional federal revenue over a decade.

A “single payer lite” plan, excluding undocumented immigrants and imposing cost-sharing on individuals, would need between $13.3 trillion and $17.3 trillion.

My wife asked a very good question this week. How, she asked, did countries with socialized medicine reach political consensus to embark on such a system – and she asked this question after “our” recent experience with socialized medicine in England, a good experience.

I don’t know how the consensus was reached, but, for me, the question prompted thoughts of the political dislocation in this country – dislocation that ignores potential middle-ground solutions in favor of extremes.

The left-wing wants a full and complete federal government entitlement on the apparent theory that federal employees should control health care access for you and for me.

The right-wing, for its part, wants nothing to do with any larger government role, so ritually opposes everything, even better health care.

Never the twain shall meet.

Too bad, because this country deserves better on one of the most momentous issues of our time – health care.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

Washington Post editorial writers have posted this axiom, which says volumes:

“There is an old Washington saying that if you’re arguing about process, you’re losing.”

That would apply to the 30 or so Republicans who stormed a House Intelligence Committee hearing in a secure Capitol facility, objecting that Democrats have, so far, conducted impeachment proceedings behind closed doors.

The stunt disrupted the testimony of Pentagon official Laura Cooper and temporarily distracted Washington from the evidence – and the roster of evidence is growing — of President Donald Trump’s misconduct.

The fact Trump’s Republican defenders are focusing on process, not substance, means the latter – substance – doesn’t matter, at least to Trump supporters.

Every day, the evidence mounts against Trump and, even White House strategists, if there are strategists in the White House at all, appear flummoxed about what to do or say. Plus, the Washington Post reports today that Republicans in the Senate are concerned about what new revelations will emerge about Trump’s misconduct.

This summary ran in the Washington Post over the weekend:

“Anyone who tried to follow the bouncing ball of Trump’s hourly utterances and tweets was doomed to fail, and there is no relief on the horizon. Simply tracking the provocations, contradictions and exhortations that fill the average day of this president can be an overwhelming task.”

“But,” the Post adds, “it has also become an increasingly consequential one as the impeachment case against Trump unfolds and his foreign policy decisions come under greater scrutiny both in the United States and abroad.

“He ordered a surprise withdrawal of troops from Syria, prompting immediate fighting, loss of life and a shift in the balance of power in the Middle East.

“He also announced his intent to award his own golf course a major federal contract for an international summit, and then reversed that decision days later amid criticism he was using the power of his office to help his struggling business.”

In all of this, by tweet and overstatement, Trump tries to control the news as he done so often as a reality TV star, not to mention president for now, what is it, three years. He often succeeds as many reporters focus on his provocations, not the substance of the charges against him.

Still, the weight of the evidence against Trump continues to mount. And that, for this country, is a good thing. Time to throw him out of office.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

Given that we are in the middle of a presidential election, perhaps it should not be surprising that health care policy remains off track in the nation’s capital.

Most who are running tend to utter platitudes to appeal to a political base, not real-world proposals for better health care policy.

On one side, Democrats, including those running for president, want health care to be a full federal responsibility, even though most don’t want to deal with how to pay for the federal largesse.

On the other side, Republicans are no better. All they appear to have the will to say is “no” – nothing to contribute to a reasonable, middle-of-the-road outcome.

For this to be the case in America, which ought to have better ideas, is a crime. Both sides are to blame.

And, amid all of the failure to articulate a sound, compromise plan, we continue to see Democrat presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren touting the benefits of a plan they cannot describe.

At least, Sanders, on occasion, admits that taxes on the middle class will have to increase to fund his new federal entitlement. Warren won’t, saying only that she has a plan, but will wait weeks before disgorging it.

Republicans simply utter typical right wing dogma.

From the cheap seats out West, I have developed my own plan, at least in part so I would be able to say something other than no to health care reform ideas. My notions are informed by more than 25 years of dealing with health care policy in Oregon on behalf of hospitals and insurers.

I have summarized my plan in previous posts, here are the four planks in my health care policy plan.

1. It won’t be popular in some quarters, especially with some Republicans, but, first, a critical component of reform is to require all citizens to have health insurance, either by buying it if they can afford it, or by having it provided by government if they cannot.

Without everyone in the to-be-insured pool, any system will collapse, much as occurred with ObamaCare. The very rationale for insurance is that the largest pool possible should be covered in order to spread the risk.

Think of this way. All of us who drive cars are required to have automobile insurance. If we don’t, we pay a price. The same policy should exist for health insurance.

2. Second, a catastrophic health insurance plan should be provided so that those who cannot afford regular insurance have an option for a lower-cost plan.

As the American Enterprise Institute has written: “Health insurance is also important for financial security. The ObamaCare replacement should make it possible for all people to get health insurance that provides coverage for basic prevention, like vaccines, and expensive medical care that exceeds, perhaps, $5,000 for individuals.

“Those Americans who don’t get health insurance through employers, or Medicare and Medicaid, should be eligible for a refundable tax credit that can be used to enroll in a health-insurance plan. The credit would be set at a level comparable to the tax benefits available to individuals with employer-sponsored insurance plans. The subsidy would be enough to make a basic level of catastrophic coverage easily affordable for all Americans.”

3. Third, any new middle-of-the-road health coverage approach should accommodate people with pre-existing health conditions.

I have mixed emotions about this because, inevitably, the price of insurance will go up with the added risk of covering pre-existing conditions. Yet, there is a reasonable social consensus that people should not be penalized financially for health problems largely outside of their control.

And, I firmly believe in the concept that human being should take care of other human beings (if they are willing to accept help) rather than leave the differently-abled to the scrap heap.

4. Fourth, any new plan should allow broad access to health-savings accounts (HSA). ObamaCare pushed millions of Americans into high-deductible insurance without giving them the opportunity to save and pay for care before insurance kicks in. There should be a one-time federal tax credit to encourage all Americans to open an HSA and begin using it to pay for routine medical bills. And HSAs, combined with high-deductible insurance, could be incorporated directly into the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

My views also are informed by a recent experience with health care in England, where there is nationalized health care. While on a European cruise, I came down with a potentially significant health care problem that resulted in me staying in an English hospital for 14 hours of emergency are before I was discharged – in full health, I add.

The charge for my 14 hours was zero – yes, zero – which means that, while I was not paying for my care, someone else was…taxpayers in England. Through this experience, I could not help but that think that smart policymakers on both sides of “The Pond,” should be able to take the best of England and the best of America and produce a meld of both. It would mean a better system in both places.

But, sigh, developing a smart solution is not likely in the presidential election. Those on the left will advocate for a government-run system without knowing the price. Those on the right will advocate for doing nothing, again without knowing the price.

And, surely, there will be a price if we do nothing – a price in the form of higher taxes or a price in the form of lesser health care than we deserve.

AN UNUSUAL POST FROM ME: TWO VIEWS ON IMPEACHMENT

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

Competing propositions:

• What Trump did violated presidential norms and should result in his removal from office.
• What Trump did doesn’t matter because he won in 2016, has blanket immunity as president and should remain in office unless he gets beat in 2020.

Those, essentially, are two views of the Trump impeachment process making the rounds in Washington, D.C.

So, I was struck this week when I read commentaries – one in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and a second in the Washington Post – that came to opposite conclusions on the impeachment process.

The differences suggested to me that the only way to go would be to post these commentaries to illustrate the two views, which are, in many ways, representative of what is going on in America as Trump faces a real threat to his office. The post, therefore, is long, but, to me at least, worth reading.

Paul Waldman from the Washington Post and Dan Henninger from the WSJ are both very capable journalists. Waldman says the Democrats are proceeding effectively to build a case against Trump. Henninger contends the Ds have moved far too quickly and should have waited to oust Trump through the 2020 election.

Whom do you believe? I favor Waldman, given the height, depth and breadth of Trump’s misdeeds. But Henninger’s points also are worth considering.

*********

Surprise: Democrats are actually mounting an effective impeachment inquiry

By Paul Waldman, Washington Post columnist

If there’s one thing everyone in the political world agrees on, it’s that Democrats are a bunch of screw-ups who can’t get anything right. The impeachment process was supposed to be just one more example: They were fools for not starting it sooner, then they were dumb for starting it at all, then everything about it was supposed to be disastrous.

But now? From both a substantive and political perspective, the impeachment inquiry is going about as well as you could hope. Democrats are, in fact, getting this right.

That’s not to say everything’s been perfect. For instance, the leadership chose to focus on the Ukraine scandal and not include the many other impeachable acts Trump has committed as part of the inquiry. There’s a reasonable case you could make for either approach, but there are certainly plenty of high crimes and misdemeanors just around Ukraine.

So let’s look at where we are now. Keep in mind that we’re in only the first phase of the inquiry, in which depositions are being taken privately from key officials. What have we learned?

Despite the White House’s attempts to obstruct the investigation, several officials have testified, and their accounts of events are beginning to fill in a shocking picture of presidential misdeeds. At this point, it’s undisputed that Trump ordered his “lawyer” Rudolph W. Giuliani to set up a separate, quasi-official Ukraine policy, which Rudy did with his (allegedly criminal) friends, to coerce Ukraine into helping Trump’s reelection. Along the way, Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine, attempting to get the country to mount a probe of Biden that would produce something damaging — or at least provide a justification for Trump to publicly proclaim that Biden was corrupt.

Giuliani’s parallel foreign policy initiative sucked in a range of officials, nearly all of whom understood how inappropriate it was, and many of whom are sharing what they know with Congress.

Every time another one of them testifies, we get alarming new revelations of how unusual, improper and incompetent the whole thing was. Critically, those testifying are not partisan opponents of the president but respected career civil servants who have worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations. Their testimony has been devastating to Trump — and there’s more to come.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are left resorting to buffoonish stunts such as the one they pulled Wednesday, storming a secure room to protest the fact that they were being kept out of a deposition of a Pentagon official — except they weren’t being kept out, because Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee were in the room ready to question the witness, and members of the other two committees participating in the impeachment inquiry were welcome to attend as well.

Their strategy, if you can call it that, is being shaped by the president himself, who cares only about whether Republicans are angrily shouting at a sufficient volume on his behalf. If he turns on Fox News and sees them snarling and red-faced, he thinks he’s winning. Meanwhile, “Republicans have increasingly complained that defending Trump against those accusations is a herculean task made more difficult by the president’s impromptu tweets and the lack of coordinated messaging at the White House.”

The biggest problem Republicans have, however, is the facts. It’s indicative of how brutal this process has been for the administration that the president and his advocates can’t seem to decide on what the defense of him is supposed to be. Are the allegations all fabricated? Did Trump not pressure Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden to help his reelection campaign, or was it completely fine that he did so? Was there no quid pro quo, or are quid pro quos good? Whatever they’re saying today, they’ll probably be saying something different tomorrow. They can’t decide because there is so little ambiguity around what Trump did, and no good way to justify it.

Which is why the methodical approach the Democrats are taking is working well. In the current phase, they’re gathering testimony from officials, which is adding up to a damning indictment of the president. Then next month, they’ll move to public hearings, which will provide dramatic, made-for-TV moments in which Trump’s abuse of power will be laid bare.

This will then lead almost inevitably to a vote on impeach. The president is unlikely to be convicted in the Senate, which would require 20 Republican senators voting to remove him, but by then Democrats will have done all they could to gather information, display his wrongdoing for the public to see and understand, and impose what accountability they can.

And according to polls, it’s already working. Up until a few weeks ago, a majority of Americans opposed impeachment, but that has flipped. Now the polls show a plurality, or in some cases a majority, saying Trump should be impeached.

I suppose it’s theoretically possible that next month’s public hearings will finally show that the whole thing is a witch hunt, that Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) suddenly display competence and dismantle witnesses so skillfully that the entire American people realize how innocent Trump is. It’s also possible that by next month I’ll be the starting point guard for the Golden State Warriors.

More likely, the process from this point forward will make Trump’s malfeasance even more clear and widely understood. Republicans will continue to flail as they try desperately to find a defense of Trump that doesn’t sound ludicrous. The president himself will grow more unhinged, rage-tweeting day after day in order to keep his base from abandoning him. And all of it will play out against the backdrop of the 2020 election, when the voters get to decide if they want four more years of this.

It’s almost as if the Democrats know what they’re doing.

*******

Pelosi’s Impeachment Blunder

By Daniel Henninger, deputy editorial page editor, WSJ

Nancy Pelosi had the Democrats’ impeachment strategy right the first time: Don’t do it. But apparently even a lifetime in the mud-filled trenches of politics wasn’t enough to toughen the House speaker against the Democratic left’s compulsion to impeach Donald Trump.

Anyone of any political stripe knows that the most psychologically distressed Democrats have wanted to impeach this guy, somehow just get rid of him, from day one.

Before Democrats regained control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections, the Trump takedown was supposed to result from the Russian-collusion narrative, which got up to speed in January 2017 and then steamrolled across the country for two years of media leaks and the Mueller investigation, ultimately and fantastically going nowhere.

Within a day of the Mueller report’s release, dismissing the Russian-collusion story lines, the opposition pivoted to the obstruction-of-justice narrative. Somehow, the pivoters must have assumed that the American people, after enduring the Mueller odyssey, would not notice that this extraordinarily disruptive investigation had come to nothing. And that people would saddle up to join the next get-Trump posse. That didn’t work.

We’ll pause in our own narrative to posit a de minimis level of legitimacy to what they’ve done. If the opposition party and, in our unique times, the opposition press want to spend what capital and credibility they have in a round-the-clock effort to take down a sitting president, that’s their prerogative. Nothing in the Constitution says elected officials are obliged to do anything productive.

But translating the public’s votes into a permanent presidential takedown had better work, because if they don’t pull off impeachment and drive Donald Trump out of public life next year, the losses for the Democrats and the media will be devastating. It’s the familiar do-or-die stakes of trying to take out the king.

Because Donald Trump loves living dangerously, he and the increasingly mysterious Rudy Giuliani handed his opponents the unexpected excitement of the Ukraine-Biden narrative—and at last an opening for impeachment. The New York Times, delirious at the prospect, has even created an ominous little logo for its coverage, typically several pages a day—“The 45th President: Impeachment.”

Maybe it really will be the third time’s the charm for the Trump-elimination forces, but the impeachment project looks like it’s starting to go wobbly.

For starters, it’s still just sort-of an impeachment. There’s been no vote in the House and no sign the Judiciary Committee is drawing up articles of impeachment, as in the past. Instead, Adam Schiff’s intelligence committee is interviewing Ukraine-related State Department officials—in secret hearings. It resembles a show trial, with the “public” parts emerging as selective leaks to the impeachment press.

But the most telling impeachment development this week wasn’t any paraphrased testimony from Mr. Schiff’s private hearings. It was the news that Speaker Pelosi’s impeachment timetable has been delayed “to sharpen their case” for doing it.

It is now evident that a vote to impeach President Trump isn’t likely to occur before Thanksgiving, as many assumed, but will slip to December. Then, of course, the trial phase will pass to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Mr. McConnell reportedly wanted it all over by the end of the year, but what’s the rush? The Trump trial could run through January—31 priceless campaign days before the Democratic Party’s intensely competitive primaries. The Iowa caucus vote is Feb. 3, then comes New Hampshire’s primary on Feb. 11; Nevada’s caucuses are Feb. 22; and the crucially important South Carolina primary arrives Feb. 29.

Instead of competing for their party’s nomination, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Michael Bennet will spend invaluable campaign time planted on Capitol Hill during the days that the Pelosi-Schiff Trump trial drones on. Sens. Sanders and Harris can’t call Mr. Trump the “most corrupt president” in the history of the country and then skip out on the trial of public enemy No. 1 to campaign in a downstate Iowa diner.

Joe Biden, Mayor Pete, and Hillary’s new friend Rep. Tulsi Gabbard get to romp daily through the primary states, but who’s going to notice with the Trump impeachment trial siphoning away the nation’s media’s attention?

Surely Nancy Pelosi knew when she stood firm against opening the impeachment dam that the interests of her party’s anti-Trump compulsives—nearly all from safe seats—and her party’s broader election interests were not aligned.

The left has always believed that some deus ex machina, such as Robert Mueller or a nonstop storm of negative press stories, would magically make the Trump presidency just go away—rather than the more plausible likelihood that the relentlessly combustible Mr. Trump would eventually discredit himself in the eyes of most voters.

The American left throughout its existence has had a deep mistrust of the U.S. system, so rather than wait until November 2020 for voters to sort all this out, we get this crypto-impeachment. Like the sure-thing election of 2016, it too could backfire.