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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, 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 incredulous that Donald Trump is still in the presidential hunt.

All he does is appeal to the worst instincts in citizens as he expresses his own deep-seated racism, his hatred for women, his disdain for immigrants and his inability to put two sentences together in a way that makes sense.

The latter may, in fact, be one of his biggest appeals. He doesn’t even try to answer questions along the campaign trail and only resorts to generalizations that buttress his position as one marketing himself without regard to substance and reality.

Listen to him sometime. I defy you to repeat what he says. Cannot be done.

Referring to when Trump made headlines by questioning one of the initial Republican front-runners, Jeb Bush, columnist Kathleen Parker put it this way:

“Bush’s style isn’t exactly, say, electric, but he does have actual policies in his actual brain to back his campaign points. You may not like or agree with them, but at least there’s something there — a book on immigration, a legislative history on education, a longtime personal relationship with the Hispanic world.

“With Trump it’s all later, baby. Essentially, his motto is: Trust me, I can do this.”

I, for one, refuse to join the Trump bandwagon. Michael Davis, the editor of my hometown newspaper, the Salem Statesman-Journal, had it right a couple days ago when he wrote a piece with the headline

“The case of the loose buffoon running his mouth.”

Mr. Davis intentionally did not mention the name of the buffoon, but he didn’t need to do so. Anyone who read that headline would know that the subject is Donald Trump, who has made a mockery of running for the world’s most important political office, President of the United States.

With kudos to Mr. Davis, here is his column.

“There’s a buffoon on the loose who continues to claim that our country is no longer great.

“This dangerous xenophobe and unrepentant racist would have you believe that our triumphs as a society are all behind us, and that only by electing him to the highest office in the land will we regain our commanding place among free nations.

“What concerns me most about this bully is the lack of proper response to his vitriol and incendiary rabblerousing.

“For months, his accusatory mouth has run wild as his adherents nod their approval, even as the candidate contradicts himself and mouths inanities like all ethnic groups will “love” his presidency. This, as he disparages and defames Mexican-Americans, African-Americans, Syrian refugees and basically anyone who isn’t him.

“The nation’s first reality-show presidential candidate is incapable of providing a straight, informed answer to questions of even moderate difficulty. He dodges, weaves, meanders, misdirects and scat sings his way out of responding intelligently.

“Worse, he attacks opponents and critics with schoolyard taunts, as he did when depicting former prisoner of war John McCain as something less than heroic for being captured by the North Vietnamese.

“A few months ago, it occurred to me that this candidate was a modern-day Joe McCarthy, the vicious former senator from Wisconsin responsible for creating one of the blackest marks on our nation’s history. But the person who aspires to lead our nation is much more dangerous and insidious than McCarthy because he seems determined to stir a civil uprising from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

“The candidate is churning up so much hatred and overt bigotry we are at risk of rekindling hostilities between regions of the country that we thought had been put to rest in the 19th century.

“The candidate’s adherents are armed, they are angry and they’re feeling victimized. They’re being driven by emotion, not reason, and they don’t seem to care a whit whether the guy in the red ball cap can provide specifics. That he perpetuates outrageous falsehoods is of no matter. That he is incapable of an apology or even a clarification is of no consequence.

“The candidate is simply a fast-talking salesman, a pitchman, a B.S. artist, a dealmaker in the worst sense.

“Most enraging is his sales pitch that he will singlehandedly “make America great again.”

“Forget for the moment that we already a great country, albeit it with a list of issues we need to improve. That’s been the case since 1776.

“The candidate’s version of greatness is all caught up in “winning,” as if the global stage is just one big wrestling mat, where one combatant is victorious while another slinks away in shame.

“In the candidate’s cartoonish version of humanity’s progress, there are only winners and losers.

“A nation’s greatness has nothing to do with scoreboards and end zone dances.

“Greatness emanates from a nation’s soul, from its willingness to actually follow through on Monday morning on the promises made over the weekend in churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and other places of private contemplation where people of conscience gather.

“We are united by the Golden Rule, yet one blustering candidate and his followers are relentlessly turning away from that guiding principle.

“The candidate whose name I can no longer mention – out of revulsion – believes this: Mistreat others and make no apology for doing so.

“Rise up, people of good will and fairness.

“Your silence is exacerbating the problem and slowly spreading another dark blot on our history.”

As Americans, we can do better than Trump and, I add, better than Hillary Clinton who, in her own way, cheapens the political process by her own lack of ethics.

I pine for the day when we will have better choices that reflect more credit on this great country.

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan put it this way recently – and I agree with her:

“We don’t need the drab, manipulative ideological arguments we so often get, and we don’t need the shaming that comes from so much of our political discourse—you’re insensitive, racist, sexist, check your privilege, quit appropriating my culture. We don’t need the two things we so often get from our government and its practitioners, the defensive whine and the impenetrable babble.

“There is a hunger to be reminded we’re all in this together, that this thing we’re all part of is, in fact, a great and noble project.

“We all want to be moved by the public acts of public men and women. We all want to be stirred by the soundtrack of the nation we love. We all want a leader who is equal to the music (which was a reference to her love of instrumental music as she writes).”