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.

While I was shocked at Donald Trump’s election victory, I did feel that it was time for a change from the Obama Administration.

And, obviously, there would be a change after Obama’s two terms; it just appeared to many voters that Hillary Clinton would be the change, perhaps Obama 3, a result voters could not tolerate.

While Obama appears to be a good man who cared for his family and wanted to do what he felt was right for the country, he also seemed, at times, to me, to be in over his head as the nation’s chief executive.

I remember when he came into office after a remarkable campaign. He would be the first Black president and I suppose some voters selected him because of that fact. I didn’t. He campaigned on the slogan “Hope and Change,” and it was persuasive to many Americans, including me. I remember his appearance in Chicago just after his election. The fact that more one million Americans attended that celebration illustrated the fact that hope for change had gripped the country.

The next eight years tended to deflate that slogan. While coming across as a good man, Obama could not deliver on the promise.

Trying to come to terms with Trump’s pending presidency, I have been giving some thought to Obama Administration failures, which is presumptuous, perhaps, because I did not have any occasion to see Obama up close and personal. Nor, obviously, do I have any real, first-hand knowledge of what it means to be president, a job so difficult and complex that it almost defies understanding.

Still, I wanted to have something to say when friends and colleagues asked me why I had problems with Obama. Here, for me, are a few summaries of his failures.

• First, Obama’s view appeared, at all times, to be that government had a solution for every It did not appear that a key question was asked – is there a role for government in responding to this problem and, if there is, what should that role be and how should it be defined?

• Second, Obama came into office on a pledge to change the culture of Washington, D.C. by working with all sides on issues and challenges. He never was able to make good on that pledge. Some will fault Republicans in Congress for opposing Obama at every turn and, to be sure, they deserve some of the blame. But a test for every president is the ability to persuade a reluctant Congress to find compromise the fulfills at least part of presidential priorities.

• Third, Obama at least allowed, if not encouraged, several agencies in his Cabinet to act beyond the law. Chief among them was the Internal Revenue Service, which, beyond collecting taxes, used its power to intimidate conservative non-profit organizations.

• Fourth, Obama established a number of “red lines” in the Middle East or other international fronts, then failed to enforce them, a reality that made him a difficult-to-be counted-on president.

• Fifth, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Obama independently enacted 560 major regulations during his first seven years in office—nearly 50 per cent more than during the two terms of the George W. Bush Administration. The Supreme Court has repudiated or questioned some of Obama’s efforts to circumvent Congress, including his immigration orders, which the court effectively blocked by a 4-4 vote last June.

Even in his last days in office, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel reports that Obama is engaging in a “midnight express” of new regulations in the apparent belief that President Trump will have difficulty getting rid of all of them.

• Sixth, these paragraphs from a column by the brother of Washington Post columnist Maureen Dowd strike me as a solid commentary on Obama, perhaps a bit overstated at times, but still worth considering.

“The election was a complete repudiation of Barack Obama: His fantasy world of political correctness, the politicization of the Justice Department and the I.R.S., an out-of-control E.P.A., his neutering of the military, his non-support of the police and his fixation on things like transgender bathrooms.

“Since he became president, his party has lost 63 House seats, 10 Senate seats and 14 governorships.

“The country had signaled strongly in the last two midterms that it was not happy. The Dems’ answer was to give them more of the same from a person they did not like or trust.

“Preaching — and pandering — with a message of inclusion, the Democrats have instead become a party where incivility and bad manners are taken for granted, rudeness is routine, religion is mocked and there is absolutely no respect for a differing opinion. This did not go down well in the Midwest, where Trump flipped three blue states and 44 electoral votes.”

So, Obama is now in his final days in office as all of us contemplate a future with Donald Trump at the helm.

My hope is that Trump, with all his baggage, will be judged on the merits or demerits of what he does, not on the merits or demerits of what he says because, at the moment, there is more of the latter than the former – more of the demerits of what he says, I mean.