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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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 manage as I see fit.

In past writings in this blog, I have tried to avoid the debate in the Senate over President Trump’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court because I don’t think I have anything to add from my post on the West Coast.  However, several commentators I read routinely do have points to make, so I include them here to lead off Bits and Pieces.

And, if you read this and think that I would be voting “yes” on Kavanaugh if I were involved, that is probably right and, for me, the basis would be the principle that a person “is innocent until proven guilty.”

From Jason Riley in the Wall Street Journal regarding the so-called “confirmation process” involving Judge Brett Kavanaugh:  “Predictably, Democrats have used the delay to argue that a one-week investigation is insufficient and that the probe’s scope is too limited. They’ve also decided, based on Judge Kavanaugh’s response to some of the allegations, that he lacks the right ‘temperament’ for a Supreme Court justice. The bigger concern for the country might be the temperament of Senate Democrats who are so willing and eager to dispense with due process in order to prevent President Trump from filling a Supreme Court vacancy.”

Comment: If I had the bad fortune to serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I do not know how I would vote on the confirmation. But, I think I would try, as Senate Democrats have not, to maintain a sense of political decorum. And, as Riley writes, to suggest the judgments about temperament flow from Kavanaugh’s appearance before the committee is silly – see below in Senator Orrin Hatch’s commentary.

From a piece in the Wall Street Journal written by Senator Orrin Hatch:  “A notable shift occurred in the left’s anti-Kavanaugh campaign over the weekend. Attention has turned away from Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual assault—the entire reason for last week’s hearing and the ensuing delay in Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote—and toward his behavior at the hearing.

“We’re starting to see arguments like the following: Even if Judge Kavanaugh is innocent, what he said at the hearing, and how he said it, is disqualifying.

“This is rich. The hearing occurred in the first place only because of Democratic duplicity. It occurred only because Senate Democrats sat on Ms. Ford’s allegations for six weeks rather than referring them to committee investigators, as they should have done immediately. It occurred only because Ms. Ford’s lawyers—recommended to Ms. Ford by Senate Democrats—refused to tell their client of our invitation to testify privately in California, as she said she preferred.

That Judge Kavanaugh had the temerity to defend himself vigorously is now being counted as a strike against him. Over and over we hear him described as ‘angry,’ ‘belligerent’ or ‘partisan,’ followed by the claim that his conduct at the hearing shows that he lacks a judicial temperament.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Do the people making this argument really expect a man who until five seconds ago had an unblemished reputation to sit passively while his reputation is viciously and permanently destroyed? While he is accused of the most horrific and obscene acts imaginable? Judge Kavanaugh’s critics seem to be aghast that he is a human being who is unwilling to take slander lying down.

“Had Judge Kavanaugh sat dispassionately through Thursday’s hearing and denied the allegations weakly, his critics would have taken his lack of forcefulness as proof of guilt. We all know this. We’re not stupid. Spare us the pearl-clutching.”

Comment: Senator Orrin Hatch describes the status very well. 

From the Washington Post:  “Senator Richard Blumenthal in 2003 told a crowd about ‘returning from Vietnam,’ implying he had been there. He was not there. In 2008, he told another crowd about ‘the days that I served in Vietnam.’ He didn’t.”

Comment: I was struck by the senator’s duplicity as he had the guts to suggest that Kavanaugh was lying in one thing, so could not be believed in another. Takes one to know one, I say.

From William McGurn in the Wall Street Journal, regarding the underlying issue in the confirmation process — abortion:  “Never mind that Chief Justice John Roberts is unlikely to acquiesce to a move that would bring down the furies on his court. Or that it’s not clear Judge Kavanaugh would be any different, having assured senators that he regards Roe as ‘settled’ and ‘an important precedent’ whose central holding had been reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). Or that overturning Roe still wouldn’t make abortion illegal.”

Comment: No matter what Kavanaugh says, the Ds believe he will vote to overturn Roe V. Wade.

From Michael Gerson in the Washington Post:  “Is it feasible that some people are genuinely disturbed by a medical procedure that begins with two genetically distinct human beings and ends with one? Is it reasonable to credit the good intentions of millions of men and women who want the circle of inclusion and protection to include every human life, at every stage of development?

“There is, of course, a mirror-image problem of pro-life activists who regard pro-choice people as murderers. But that is precisely the point. There is a strong current of dehumanization running in our politics. The rival crew, it turns out, is not only wrong but evil. And how can mortal enemies embrace the give and take of a shared political project? Only the raw exercise of power can decide between them. The goal is no longer to win arguments but to crush opposition.”

Comment: Gerson is prescient again as he often is. He describes both sides of the abortion debate in precise terms. One side hates the other and never the twain shall meet.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

As a follow-up to my post yesterday outlining my current health concerns, there is something else I could have included.

It is this.

As part of my doctor office visit, I was given blood tests to confirm that I did not have pneumonia. Good. Better to have bronchitis than pneumonia.

When I got the call providing the results of the tests, here is what the nurse said:

“Dave, as for your blood tests, everything is negative.”

Well, being an old person who has had a lot of medical care over my nearly 70 years, I knew what the word “negative” meant. It meant that the test did not produce any results of concern.

But, think about the word. It might have been better to say, “Dave, as for your blood tests, the results are positive.”

That would have been good, too, in every-day usage of the word “positive.” But, in medicine, positive would not have been good. Negative is good.

Such is the world of medicine these days.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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 am an “impatient patient.”

I admit it.

Not sure about the question in the headline, but the thought contained in the phrase above crossed my mind this week in my role as a patient of the Doctors’ Clinic in Salem.

Recently, I have received great care and service there for two health issues – (1) viral bronchitis that set me back for a few days with a bad cough, headache and a sore throat, and (2) another bout with gout.

In both cases, I found myself illustrating this oxymoron – an impatient patient!

I wanted the various medications to work faster. No doubt they were working, but not fast enough for me.

So, do I add this phrase – impatient patient – to the list of oxymorons I published in this space recently.

My answer is yes.

And let me add this serious point. I am a believer in medication as long as they are prescribed by a competent medical practitioner, as is the case with me. Without them, I’d be lost.

With them, I have a chance to get back on the golf course.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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 remember when I first heard former president George H. W. Bush utter what became his signature phrase – “A thousand points of light.”

At the time, I wasn’t sure what the words meant just as I’m sure was true for many other Americans. Still, the phrase had a lilt to it, conjuring up a number of positive images as I and others looked skyward to see the point of light. To be sure, an interesting turn of phrase for this president who was not known for being very quotable, yet still substantive.

But, what, in fact, does the phrase mean?

Well, in a piece for the Wall Street Journal this morning, two writers, B. Boyden Gray, White House counsel under Bush, and Elise Passamani, Gray’s director of research, shed light on the answer under this headline:

Here’s the Point of ‘Points of Light’

Trump hasn’t figured out George Bush’s signature phrase. That’s completely understandable.

Here is how they started their piece: “Donald Trump made fun of George H.W. Bush’s signature phrase, ‘a thousand points of light,’ at a West Virginia rally Saturday, saying it was something that ‘nobody has really figured out.’ This wasn’t the first time. In Montana this summer he asked: ‘What the hell is that? Has anyone ever figured that one out? This observation is not unfair, and has more to do with the press’s misrepresentation of the phrase than with either Bush or Trump.”

Boyden and Passamani point that the phrase emerged 1988 when then-Vice President Bush accepted the Republican presidential nomination.

“Bush was praising America’s volunteer organizations—‘a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.’ Even though Bush would later tell the New York Times, ‘I can’t do poetry,’ he returned to this lyrical phrase again and again during the ’88 campaign and his presidency.”

So what does “a thousand points of light” really mean? Bush used the phrase in nearly 200 presidential speeches. They reveal an often-overlooked conviction of his—that there are limits to what government can do, but no limits to what volunteers can do. “A thousand points of light” is shorthand for a philosophy of limited government.

According to Boyden and Passamani, “On April 26, 1990, Bush exhorted his audience to reject the hand of big government in favor of a thousand points of light, joining hands and linking hearts. To his detractors, he added: When we started talking about a thousand points of light, there were a few snickers out there. I had to keep defining what I meant. But I think people understand this. I think Americans understand it. It’s real: One American wanting to help another. So I’m going to continue to say that any definition of a successful life must be the involvement in lives of others—one American helping another.”

I find Bush’s phrase – one written for him, by the way, by Peggy Noonan, one of my favorite political columnists these days — to be, in a word, elegant.

In the Washington Post: Bush’s (and Noonan’s) phrase is elegant—though elusive, as poetry often is. Yet, the more important thing is its intellectual heft. George Bush’s vision of volunteerism as a check on big government and as a crucial element of liberty is worth remembering.”

Kudos to Bush. It would be good if this country would return to the idea that big government is not the answer to every perceived problem. Is there a role for government? Of course. But not one that is automatic.

This is not a partisan proposition. Both Republicans and Democrats, as well as those who claim independence from party labels, should be able to accept of limits on government intervention – accept, as the Post put it, the “intellectual heft of the idea.”

At least in that way, such a focus would allow government to achieve better results in programs that it does accept as being withing its orbit. Volunteerism – “A Thousand Points of Light” – can become a current-day highlight, not something in our past.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

The difference noted in the headline is one I followed for a number of years as a partner in a lobbying and public relations business in Oregon. (We also had offices in Washington, D.C.)

It is this:

A strategic focus is looking at the big picture, then designing tactics to fit that focus.

Too often, I saw lobbyists focus on routine tactics as a way to achieve desired ends. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.

But a focus on strategy would have been better.

Here is the dictionary definition of the two words:

• Strategy: A plan, method or series of maneuvers for obtaining a specific goal or result.
• Tactics: Any mode of procedure for gaining advantage or success.

There is at least a subtle difference between the two, but one I think is important. It is that strategy is the bigger word, one that doesn’t just focus on activities, but that emphasizes goals and aspirations. It was what motivated us to call our firm, CFM Strategic Communications (CFM), when the time came several years ago to recognize that one of our partners was going to retire and we needed a new name.

An example or two from my role as a lobbyist may help to underline the difference between strategies and tactics.

1. Deepening the Columbia River Channel on behalf of the Port of Portland (a CFM client)

Our strategy here rested on the theory – not to mention the reality – that the Port of Portland served the entire region, not just Portland. Our work also rested on the strategy to convey a perception – a true one, by the way – that deepening the channel would serve as an economic benefit for the entire region as deeper-draft ships could ply their way up and down the Columbia River.

Our tactics were designed to cement that strategic focus in the minds of legislators who eventually would have to vote to make the channel deepening money available over multiple biennia. In one case, we produced a list showing how businesses in all of Oregon’s 36 counties used the Port of Portland and would benefit from increasing ship traffic – and we often called the Port of Portland, the Port of Oregon, if not the Port of the Region.

We also produced statistics that showed the potential economic benefit for the region beyond Oregon.

We started with a strategy, aiming at the big picture, then built the individual, daily tactics to serve that strategy. It was not just about the appropriation; it was conveying a big-picture rationale for the appropriation. The result was that legislators approved the allocation.

2. Supporting continued investments in Medicaid for low income Oregonians on behalf of Providence Health and Services (CFM’s long-standing client)

Here, we set out to describe Medicaid, the joint federal-state program, as a key feature of Oregon’s safety net for low-income Oregonians, many of them single mothers with young children.

To design tactics to serve the strategy, we developed a variety of communications materials to convey the reality that physicians and other medical personnel supported continued Medicaid investments. We also designed materials to make the funding case on behalf of actual patients who agreed to allow us to use photos and to tell their personal stories.

It was not just – appropriate the money. It was developing a strategic rationale for the appropriation. Again, the tactics served the strategy, not the reverse. And the result was success – the appropriation was approved.

All of this reminds me of the times when I have been asked to appear before a Willamette University graduate class where I often described the differences between strategy and tactics. My impression was that the class members accepted the difference.

I hope they did and that the differences between the two will help them succeed in their chosen fields, just as the differences have helped me succeed in mine over the years.

I cannot help but add that President Donald Trump appears to proceed on a tactical basis. It is often not possible to see the strategic focus that motivates him. In one case, a commentator called his approach “swagger, not strategy.”

Too bad. We’d be better served with a presidential strategy that put America first, in deeds, not words, and that valued ALL lives in America, not just those a president chose to encompass.

Sorry to bridge from my own experience to the current Oval Office, but I cannot help it. A strategic served me well and I believe it also would serve public officials well.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

Since I was appointed by Governor Kate Brown to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission (OGEC) about a year ago, I have intentionally avoided blogging about the subject.

I was glad to have been appointed to this important state government commission, but I thought it better to let my work speak for itself rather than trying to summarize what I and my colleagues did in writing.

That will change for this one time and the reason is that I was asked to join OGEC staff members this week to talk with a delegation of business leaders from the People’s Republic of China who were on a tour of several states in the U.S. In our case, they wanted to know about ethics law in Oregon.

We spoke with the Chinese leaders through an interpreter, but that didn’t hamper our ability to explain ethics laws – or their ability to be interested in Oregon’s record.

Here is a quick summary of what I said.

• I and my colleagues on the commission feel very fortunate that we have an excellent staff to conduct our investigations and make recommendations to us on Oregon ethics laws. We are reviewers and overseers of their work, not administrators and it is a bright line we observe very carefully.
• The commission is made up of nine members – two appointed by Oregon House Republicans, two appointed by House Democrats, two appointed by Oregon Senate Republicans and two appointed by Senate Democrats. That leaves me, the only gubernatorial appointee. I had to meet two tests to be appointed. First, I could not be regulated by the OGEC (I am not in retirement, though I was for about 40 years). Second, I had to be “unaffiliated,” which meant I could be neither Republican nor Democrat. And, as a lobbyist, I thought it better to be a registered independent, so that status enabled me to accept the appointment I add that, while party leaders appoint OGEC members, I have no clear idea of the party labels of members because they, like me, try to focus on facts, not politics.
• We are responsible for five main areas of law – (1) registration and expense reporting for lobbyists; (2) registration and expense reporting for clients that hire lobbyists; (3) reviewing “statements of economic interest” filed by all public officials in Oregon; (4) the conduct of public officials to make sure they don’t capitalize on their public positions for private gain; and (5) issues related to when government bodies can meet in private, which we call “executive sessions.”
• We have two important and overarching missions or priorities – the first is We want to educate Oregonians about the importance of ethical conduct in state government, regional government and local government – which are our jurisdictions — (in other words, not the federal government).
• Education is critical because, the more Oregonians – especially the government officials who serve citizens – know about ethics laws and rules, the more – presumably — they will be able to comply with those laws and rules.
• Enforcement is also a top priority for us. Enforcing the law – and that means imposing penalties for violations – is not always a pleasant task. But it is an important one. Further, if we enforce Oregon law carefully, fairly, honestly and in public, we will achieve the added benefit of contributing to our educational mission. For me, as one commissioner, aggressive enforcement of Oregon law underlines the importance of ethical behavior and conduct.
• Ethical behavior and complying with Oregon ethics laws means that the general public has a better chance to trust And trust is critical for any government. If you lose it, you risk losing the consent of the governed.

My sense was that the Chinese delegation appreciated our summary of Oregon law. Their government, obviously, is different than ours; still they especially appreciated Oregon’s commitment to openness and transparency – a fact which means that citizens can obtain all kinds of information on-line.

To put a point on it, that cannot be done in China.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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 wrote earlier about my love for a great Scottish golf course, Royal Dornock, in the far north of the Highlands in that great country.

I also wrote about my love for a book, A Season in Dornoch, by golf writer, Lorne Rubenstein, which captured my imagination.

So much so that I wanted to write about Royal Dornoch again hard on the heels of my last blog. Golf in the Scottish Highlands captures golf as it was meant to be – a trip around a great landscape, perhaps with friends, as you enjoy the ground God created.

Too often – and I am party to this– many of us play golf without allowing the pursuit itself to inform our senses. We should take time to play, to enjoy the land, to understand how your foot falls on the ground, and to take hints about about how to play a great game.

Here is part of Chapter 1 in Rubenstein’s great book.

“I have traveled to these Highlands and on to Dornoch from my home in Toronto, a sprawling city where four million people jostle for space. I flew to Glasgow, where I walked the streets and spent a few hours in the city’s main library, then sat in a café until it was time to return to the airport.

“From Glasgow, I took a small plane forty minutes northeast to Inverness, a city of forty thousand people that is the main population center in the Highlands. I rented a car at the airport, and drove an hour north in the long light of the first summer evening in June 2000. I immediately felt far from Toronto and from the south, the central belt of Scotland.

“There, in the south, are the big cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and the medieval town of St. Andrews, where lies the Old Course. Too busy for me.

“I have come to Dornoch for golf, not cart-ball. I have traveled to this seaside village of thirteen hundred residents because Royal Dornoch is one of the most beautiful, and tranquil, courses in the world. I have come to explore empty lands, to fill myself with the virtues of golf as sport rather than commercial enterprise. Perhaps my season in Dornoch will help me understand whether people and land can exist in harmony and if and how the former compromises the latter.

“I am searching for scale, for proportion, for perspective. I wonder what happens when too many people crowd a space and believe that something essential is lost in the game when a course is clogged with golfers. Nobody enjoys it when players knock against one another.

“A golf course is not an elevator in an office building at closing time; it is a landscape meant to allow for breathing room and walking room and space to join with others, but not for golfers to overwhelm one another. Somewhere, somehow, I think, there is a way for people to live with consideration for a landscape, and for golfers to go gently on the course.”

Another passage in the book recalls how Rubenstein took time to feel how his feet fell on the often uneven ground and to use the feeling to influence how he played shot after shot. Feel the game; don’t just play the game.

Maybe I’ll have a chance to return to Dornoch soon, but even if that doesn’t occur, the course – the feeling of the course – is still in my bones.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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 wrote earlier about my love for a great Scottish golf course, Royal Dornock, in the far north of the Highlands in that great country.

I also wrote about my love for a book, A Season in Dornoch, by golf writer, Lorne Rubenstein, which captured my imagination.

So much so that I wanted to write about Royal Dornoch again hard on the heels of my last blog. Golf in the Scottish Highlands captures golf as it was meant to be – a trip around a great landscape, perhaps with friends, as you enjoy the ground God created.

Too often – and I am party to this– many of us play golf without allowing the pursuit itself to inform our senses. We should take time to play, to enjoy the land, to understand how your foot falls on the ground, and to take hints about about how to play a great game.

Here is part of Chapter 1 in Rubenstein’s great book.

“I have traveled to these Highlands and on to Dornoch from my home in Toronto, a sprawling city where four million people jostle for space. I flew to Glasgow, where I walked the streets and spent a few hours in the city’s main library, then sat in a café until it was time to return to the airport.

“From Glasgow, I took a small plane forty minutes northeast to Inverness, a city of forty thousand people that is the main population center in the Highlands. I rented a car at the airport, and drove an hour north in the long light of the first summer evening in June 2000. I immediately felt far from Tornoto and from the south, the central belt of Scotland.

“There, in the south, are the big cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and the medieval town of St. Andrews, where lies the Old Course. Too busy for me.

“I have come to Dornoch for golf, not cart-ball. I have traveled to this seaside village of thirteen hundred residents because Royal Dornoch is one of the most beautiful, and tranquil, courses in the world. I have come to explore empty lands, to fill myself with the virtues of golf as sport rather than commercial enterprise. Perhaps my season in Dornoch will help me understand whether people and land can exist in harmony and if and how the former compromises the latter.

“I am searching for scale, for proportion, for perspective. I wonder what happens when too many people crowd a space and believe that something essential is lost in the game when a course is clogged with golfers. Nobody enjoys it when players knock against one another.

“A golf course is not an elevator in an office building at closing time; it is a landscape meant to allow for breathing room and walking room and space to join with others, but not for golfers to overwhelm one another. Somewhere, somehow, I think, there is a way for people to live with consideration for a landscape, and for golfers to go gently on the course.”

Another passage in the book recalls how Rubenstein took time to feel how his feet fell on the often uneven ground and to use the feeling to influence how he played shot after shot. Feel the game; don’t just play the game.

Maybe I’ll have a chance to return to Dornoch soon, but even if that doesn’t occur, the course – the feeling of the course – is still in my bones.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

One of my favorite golf magazines, Links, produced a story for its on-line version listing favorite places where “you could fall in love with golf (again).”

For me, I am not sure that is necessary because I still love the sport.

But one of the mentions captured my eye because it reminded me of one of my favorite sojourns in the home of golf, Scotland. It is Royal Dornoch.

Here is a quote from Links:

“If you’ve already made the pilgrimage to St. Andrews and want to drink deeper from the Home of Golf’s bottomless cup, head to the Highlands where storied links rim the shores of firths and bays within shouting distance of the Arctic Circle.

“Start with legendary Royal Dornoch, established in 1616, then move on to an unmatched supporting cast: Cruden Bay, Royal Aberdeen, Castle Stuart, Nairn, Trump International, Carnegie Club, and many more. Extended daylight in summer easily permits a second (or third) round.”

If you asked me to list my favorite golf course in the world – a bit of a artificial question, I admit – Royal Dornoch would be at or near the top of the list.

I have had the privilege of going there on several occasions and never tired of this great example of links golf in Scotland.

My curiosity was peaked when I read a book, A Season in Dornoch, by golf writer Lorne Rubenstein. With his wife, he went from his home in Toronto to Scotland for several months to live and play golf there. He rented a flat on the second story of a bookstore in the town of Dornoch and it was only a short walk to the golf course.

He didn’t only play there. Lorne and his wife got to know the residents of Dornoch. Plus, he walked on the course, telling stories of the sounds his feet made as he trekked his way around the course that sits astride the Firth of Fourth.

An excerpt from the book:

“The town of Dornoch, Scotland, lies at nearly the same latitude as Juneau, Alaska. A bit too far removed for the taste of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, the Royal Dornoch Club has never hosted a British Open, but that has hardly diminished its mystique or its renown. In an influential piece for the New Yorker in 1964, Herbert Warren Wind wrote, ‘It is the most natural course in the world. No golfer has completed his education until he has played and studied Royal Dornoch’

“If any town in the world deserves to be described as ‘the village of golf,’ it’s Dornoch…The game has been played in Dornoch for some 400 years. Its native son Donald Ross brought the style of the Dornoch links to America, where his legendary, classic courses include Pinehurst #2, Seminole and Oak Hill.”

All of this captured my imagination when I read the book and, so, with my wife, we made a pilgrimage to Dornoch a number of years ago and have been back several times since that first trip. For my wife, Nancy, it was a return “to her homeland, Scotland,” or, more accurately, the homeland of her parents when each emigrated from Scotland to the U.S. when they were children.

[As an aside, I cannot avoid mentioning President Trump in almost any blog I write, even this one. So, listen Trump – my wife is the child of immigrants who made their life better in the U.S., even as they loved their homeland. I, too, am the grandson of immigrants, this time from Norway.]

Back to the Links Magazine article. It turns out that I have played most of the mentioned courses, except Trump International and Carnegie Club. I have no interest in playing the Trump course, if only because the president’s name is attached to it. Perhaps I’ll play the Carnegie Club at some point.

But, as for the others — Cruden Bay, Royal Aberdeen, Castle Stuart, Nairn – each represented a true experience in Scottish links golf.]

I love Scottish golf. And I love the book, A Season in Dornoch. In fact, if only because of this blog, I am starting to read it again for at least the 10^th time.

And, this footnote: I was fascinated a few months ago to learn that Royal Dornoch charges a only a $1,177 initiation fee, plus $557 in annual dues, making that $1,734 first year cost the bargain of a lifetime. Perhaps I’ll become a Royal Dornoch member, if only to to say that I have status.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

When you have been a lobbyist for about 40 years, as is the case with me, it is relatively easy to come up with a list of strange stories over those years.

Here is a collection of mine:

Oink-oink: This refers to the strange situation when the legislator at the rostrum in the Oregon House called for a vote with the phrase “all in favor say oink-oink.”

It was a reflection of the fact that the first installment of State of Oregon money to deepen the Columbia River channel (thus allowing deeper-draft, ocean-going ships to ply their way up and down the Columbia) was imbedded in a “pork-barrel” bill.

To get the money, in my role as the Port of Portland chief’s Salem lobbyist, I had to agree to include three different, local projects unrelated to channel deepening. Thus, it became a “pork-barrel bill,” with the request for an “oink-oink” vote.

I was in the third-floor balcony viewing the proceedings on the floor, and with others, couldn’t stop laughing. The good news? The bill cleared the House floor on a 40 to 20 vote and moved over to the Senate where it passed easily, without any “oink-oink” request. The governor signed the bill and, today, the channel is deeper.

Car with Senator Bryant: If you are a state capitol lobbyist in Salem, you often have to work hard to find a few moments to talk with, important legislators. Often, 30 seconds here or there turns out to be the key to success.

So it was that I came into possession of information that Senator Neil Bryant, a Republican from Bend (he has become the best legislator friend I made in my 40-year career), had gone to Washington, D.C. on Oregon Senate business.

Thus, I knew that he would need a ride down to Salem when he landed at PDX. I went to his office, talked with his wife, Mary, who was his legislative assistant, and volunteered to pick him up. She readily agreed.

That meant that I had at least an hour of time with Neil because, as I drove at 70 miles-per-hour toward Salem, he wouldn’t be able to escape the car.

For me, it was time well spent. For Neil, who knows? However, as we have talked about this episode over the years, we both agreed that it was a brilliant strategy!

Betsy Johnson call: I am not sure this can be called a highlight. It may actually be a lowlight. It started when, more than 13 years ago, I experienced what I have to come to call “my episode.” In regular everyday parlance, you can use the term “heart attack.”

This occurred on a Wednesday evening and the good news is that, by Friday, I was well on my way toward recovery, though I did not necessarily have that perspective at the time. I was alert in the hospital, giving thanks that I was still around.

The emergency took me away from lobbying for a couple weeks, so I thought I had a quick chance to pick up a couple of the pieces. So I placed a call to Senator Betsy Johnson, a Democrat from Scappoose, to continue lobbying her on a health care policy issue.

Because she had not seen in person for a few days, she asked where I was. I told her I was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack. She couldn’t believe I would take time for a call and, and on several occasions since that call, she has had fun with me – sometimes in public — about taking such action during my recovery.

All I can say is that it was just an indication of solid, sometimes stupid, commitment to my practice!

A political fundraising request for $10K: There is a bright line between political fundraising and policy development at the Capitol, so much so that there is an understanding that requests for money will not be transacted at the Capitol, even in “public areas.”

Several years ago, a legislator who, for this report, will not be named, accosted me in the hallway, asked to sit beside him on a bench outside a hearing room and proceeded to beseech me for $10,000 for his re-election campaign from my firm’s clients.

I made no commitment, suggesting it would be more appropriate for such a request to be made, if it were to be made at all, outside the Capitol.

The result? We did not respond affirmatively to this legislator’s entreaty.

I could recount other stories, but enough for now. Suffice to say that, for me, every day in my lobby career was different, one reason why I liked the gig enough to remain in it for 40 years.