MAKING GOLF RULES EASIER

 

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.

Let me state this clear fact: Golf rules are hard.

Often too complicated. Often not logical. Often almost impossible to interpret.

Defenders cite several factors when they talk about the rules. For one thing, golf happens outside in thousands of venues worldwide, so the rules have to be complicated to deal with – well, that complexity of multiple venues. Golf is not played on, to put a point on it, a basketball floor or a football field.

Second, golf rules are designed, to use the sometimes-trite phrase, “to protect the field.” They make it fair for players of all abilities and experience to compete against each other.

And, then, defenders say the rules often end up helping a player rather than penalizing the player.

Well, all fine and good.

But, as for the complexity, the Wall Street Journal carried these headlines in a sports story last week:

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Golf’s Lofty Ambition: Rules That Make Sense

The sport’s governing bodies are working together to overhaul the rule book to make it more accessible—without fundamentally changing the game.

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One goal of the process, which itself will complicated given that two international golf ruling bodies are involved – the United States Golf Association (USGA) and the Royal and Ancient (R & A) overseas – is to encourage golf popularity.

Often, complicated rules produce the opposite.

So, here’s a salute to the USGA and the R & A. Work hard. Work well. Produce a set of rules that are, (a) easier to interpret, and (b) easier to use for golfers of all stripes and all abilities.

One further piece of good news is that Oregon Golf Association Executive Director Barb Trammel is a member of a joint committee re-working the rules. Her expertise, not to mention her down-to-earth manner, will help the process.

 

OLYMPIC IMPRESSIONS

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.

If athletes from around the country can compete together in the Olympics, why is it so difficult for the countries they represent to get along.

I was struck by this impression as I watched countries like Iraq, South Korea, North Korea, Russia, China, Iran and, yes, the United States, compete on the same venues, even against each other.

In other than athletic events, representatives of those same countries might be shooting at each other, or at least tempted to do so.

So a quick and probably simplistic idea is for countries to use the Olympics as a pattern for improved international relations. Compete hard, but get along.

THE DEPARTMENT OF PET PEEVES IS OPEN AGAIN

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.

Perhaps not all of the following qualify as pet peeves, but, as department director, it is up to me and me alone about what to include. [The me and me alone phrase – sounds like Donald Trump, doesn’t it?]

So, here is a new list.

A PRESCRIPTION FOR POLITICAL PROGRESS: It is easy these days to “bemoan the loss of civility in politics,” a phrase uttered a few years ago by none other than Colin Powell who would have made a great candidate for President this time around.

Put another way, the ability to find middle ground – call it compromise – is a lost art.

One way to allow for such middle ground would be to ban two hard-wired political action committees from being involved. They are NRA and NARAL.

On gun control issues, the NRA refuses to compromise, even when the issue comes to making it more difficult for criminals to get guns or to ban assault rifles. No one is advocating doing away with the Second Amendment. The issue is doing something about access to guns used to commit crimes.

Or, consider NARAL. For this organization, on the abortion issue, there is no room for compromise, even when it comes to banning late-stage abortions or putting any limits on elective abortions.

If the NRA and NARAL were banned from acting, we’d see middle ground compromises on both guns and abortion.

A USEFUL AMENDMENT FOR HOMEOWNER INSURANCE: I encountered a problem the other day that has come close to prompting me to request introduction of a “bill for an act” in the next legislative session.

It is this. With new predictions of the likelihood of an earthquake hitting the Northwest, my wife arranged for a bid to install earthquake retrofitting on our 30-year-old house. When the company looked through the crawl space, it discovered something: An underground spring had compromised part of our house’s foundation.

So, at substantial cost, we had no choice but to approve a fix. What happened next defies description.

We contacted our homeowners’ insurance company and were told, no, the work is not covered because homeowner insurance policies do not cover “preventive maintenance.” Why not, I asked, because, if the house foundation caved in, insurance would come into play and the cost would be far greater.

Still no, I was told because the cost of general preventive coverage around the Northwest – or in the country – would be too large.

Makes no sense to me and I say this having represented health insurers for almost 25 years as a lobbyist at the Capitol in Oregon. Health insurers cover preventive procedures as a matter of routine, especially faced with the specter of far larger costs down the road.

So, a “bill for an act” is in the offing.

SPEAKING OF EARTHQUAKE PROSPECTS: Heightened awareness of earthquakes in the Northwest raises a clear – and unfortunate – irony. In the 2015 and 2016 legislative sessions, when two Democrats – House Speaker Tina Kotek and Senate President Peter Courtney – couldn’t get their act together, long-standing plans to retrofit Oregon’s Capitol Building came tumbling down.

An earthquake, of course, would do the same thing.

Experts had spent more than five years studying what to do about Oregon’s “public building,” the Capitol, which almost came down in the last earthquake.   Courtney stood as the major advocate for taking action, along with another priority – retrofitting Oregon’s K-12 school buildings.

Legislators did nothing, which now strikes the ironic chord as those who live in the Northwest have been alerted to greater prospects of a major quake.

 

For legislators to have turned their backs on finding middle ground is tragic and we’ll pay a price if there is another earthquake.

A TOP 10 LIST OF PROBLEMS WITH DONALD TRUMP

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.

It is not hard to come up with a Top 10 list of problems with Donald Trump. The hard part is to limit the list only to 10.

Normally, in politics, any one of the problems listed below would disqualify a candidate for election, especially for the nation’s highest office. But, on many occasions, Trump appears to get what amounts to a pass.

At least, that has been true until recently when a list such as that below is raising new worries and causing a bevy of Republicans to distance themselves from Trump, declaring him to be unfit for office. Beyond Trump, their concern is that he may take other Republicans down with him, thus ceding control of the U.S. House or the U.S. Senate to Democrats.

Several weeks is an eternity in politics, so anything could happen, including a Trump pivot toward recovery. Plus, Hillary Clinton is not the most attractive candidate as she contends with a number of negatives, including questions about her honesty (which she even underlined recently as she failed again to apologize for using a private e-mail system to risk national security resort to a word – “short-circuiting” – which defies definition) and indications of conflict-of-interest between Clinton as Secretary of State and the Clinton Foundation.

All of that said, here is the Top 10 list re: Trump:

1. He ridicules a disabled individual

2. He ridicules Senator John McCain’s war-time service and POW status

3. He ridicules reporter Megyn Kelly

4. He ridicules parents of U.S. Muslim war hero who died defending this country

5. He aligns himself with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin

6. He compliments Korean dictator Jim Jung-on for his prowess

7. He claims a successful business record that actually was marked by bankruptcies and past-due bills that left others holding the bag

8. The treats women as if they are objects

9. He fails to understand anything about the checks-and-balances system of the U.S. government

10. He disavows any interest in public policy, only contending that he and he alone can solve all problems

As I write this list, I find myself wishing that the campaign for President could be about ideas rather than skewering the other side. For one, how about a debate over the proper role of government in our lives?

To listen to Clinton, she is promising bigger government handouts for almost every imaginable interest group. In a way, Trump did the same in his Republican convention speech in Cleveland.

Perhaps it wouldn’t attract much political attention from the masses, but I’d like to see a candidate advocate, not just for more taxes and higher spending, but, instead for more effective spending of current tax dollars. This would not just be a typical debate over wasteful spending; it would be a debate about getting more bang for our buck.

Naïve, you say. Yes. But a bit of naivete in this current campaign could go a long way to give smart voters something to be for, not just something to be against.

MIXED EMOTIONS ABOUT TRUMP

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.

If nothing else, Donald Trump’s run for President – especially in the last couple of weeks or so – conjures up two emotions.

On one hand, I wish he would get control of himself so he doesn’t say what is on his mind at the moment and end up violating every political rule in the book by going after people – the parents of the slain U.S. soldier, albeit a Muslim – or refusing to endorse (at least initially) three important Republicans, Senator John McCain, Senator Kelly Ayotte and House Speaker Paul Ryan.

On the other hand, given how bad Trump would be for the United States and the world if he were to gain the Presidency, I wish he would keep saying what he thinks, thus illustrating that he is THE most egotistical person who has run for the nation’s highest office. That way, he keeps alienating the very folks he needs to vote for him.

Most current polls show that Hillary Clinton has pulled ahead of Trump by as many as nine points in the last two weeks. Perhaps this is because of Trump’s ability to turn off voters as much as it is that Clinton is an attractive. But, whatever it is, I say so be it.

Of the two choices – two bad choices, in my view – Clinton is the lesser of two evils.

Will I vote for her? In the past, I have said a pox on both houses. But I am re-thinking that position. If voting for Clinton is the only way to help defeat Trump, a Clinton vote may be the best option.