[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 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 an Oregon state government manager and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing pubic policy – to what I write. If you are reading this, thanks for doing so and please don’t hesitate to respond so we can engage in a dialogue, not just a monologue.]

I am one of those who has been hoping that, as voters, we would be able to consider real people who would propose real solutions to the real problems we face.

Color me disappointed.

On both sides – Republicans and Democrats – we have terrible choices that tear at the fabric of representative government.

On the D side, we have a leading contender, Hillary Clinton, who is nothing but a crook if only based on her attempts to avoid transparency in her apparently intentional creation of an e-mail account beyond anyone’s review. Who knows what she would do if she was really elected president?

On the R side, we have the unbelievable leader in a blowhard who believes he knows everything and criticizes anyone and everyone who dares wonder whether he has the public policy chops to be president. I am not even sure he knows what public policy is!

One of my favorite columnists, Charles Krauthammer, put it very well last weekend in a column headlined, “The Double-Suicide Presidential Campaign.” Here is an excerpt:

“Meanwhile, on the Democrat side:

“– They are running a presidential campaign decrying wage stagnation, income inequality and widespread economic malaise — as if they’ve not been in office for the past seven years.

“– Their leading presidential candidate is 27 points underwater on the question of honesty and is under FBI investigation for possible mishandling of classified information.

“– Her chief challenger is a 74-year-old socialist with a near-spotless record of invisibility in 25 years in Congress. The other three candidates can hardly be found at all.

“– The only plausible alternative challenger, Joe Biden, has run and failed twice and, before tragedy struck (to which he has responded, one must say, with admirable restraint and courage), was for years a running national joke for his endless gaucheries and verbal pratfalls.

“For the GOP, this has all been a godsend, an opportunity to amplify the case being made every day by the Democrats themselves against their own stewardship. Instead, the Republicans spent the summer attacking each other — the festival of ad hominems interrupted only by spectacular attempts to alienate major parts of the citizenry.

“The latest example is Ben Carson, the mild-mannered, highly personable neurosurgeon and one of two highest-polling GOP candidates. He said on Sunday that a Muslim should not be president of the United States. His reason is that Islam is incompatible with the Constitution. On the contrary. Carson is incompatible with a Constitution that explicitly commands that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

“Carson is not one to cynically pander. Nor do I doubt that his statement about a Muslim president was sincerely felt. But it remains morally outrageous. And, in a general election, politically poisonous. It is certainly damaging to any party when one of its two front-runners denigrates, however thoughtlessly, the nation’s entire Muslim American community.

“Particularly when it follows the yeoman work done by the other leading GOP candidate to alienate other large chunks of the citizenry. Three minutes into his campaign, Donald Trump called Mexican-American immigrants rapists who come bringing drugs and crime. He followed that by advocating the deportation of 11 million illegal immigrants. And sealed the deal by chastising Jeb Bush for speaking Spanish in answer to a question posed in Spanish.

“Trump’s contretemps with women enjoy even more renown — his attacks on Megyn Kelly (including a re-tweet calling her a bimbo) and his insulting Carly Fiorina for her looks.

“Muslims, Hispanics, women. What next? Who’s left?

“It’s a crazy time. One party is knowingly lurching toward disaster, marching inexorably to the coronation of a weak and deeply wounded presidential candidate. Meanwhile, the other party is flamboyantly shooting at itself and gratuitously alienating one significant electoral constituency after another. And it’s only September. Of 2015.”

Krauthammer has it all right. If nothing changes by the time election rolls around next year, I won’t vote for either the crook or the blowhard. I’ll cast my ballot for someone like the late Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield who, to me, personified the ideals of integrity, clarity and ethics in politics.

God bless the late senator. We need more like him in politics today.