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.

Congressman John Lewis says, “He does not deserve to be president.”

Actress Meryl Streep uses a platform to criticize him.

News reporters are called out for not hewing to his party line.

Who is this?

Well, to anyone who follows news, even fake news, these days, it is Donald Trump who will be president in only a few days, not just the president-elect. Call his style narcissism personified.

In this space previously, I wrote that Trump, in his bid to win the presidency, reminded me of what Hitler was reported to have done in post-World War I Germany. Trump called on Americans, just as Hitler called on Germans, to recover from economic doldrums and re-assert their right of primacy.

For Hitler, it was racial primacy that unconscionable act to try to ripe out an entire race of people, the Jews. For Trump, we are not sure what his view of primacy is yet, though clues are that whatever he says will be THE truth.

In some ways, the analogy of Trump to Hitler may be an overreach because we are able to look back on the incredible human tragedies Hitler wrought and, with Trump, we have only the “opportunity” to look forward and imagine the results he will proclaim as his own.

But, beyond general comparison, there is a word that, I think, describes the two, Hitler and Trump. Again, it is narcissism.

Both are full of themselves. Any perceived opposition is considered to be a personal slight. They respond in kind, if not worse.

Trump has made headlines recently – via tweets, it must be said – by criticizing U.S. civil rights icon John Lewis, a member of Congress who stood with other civil rights figures, including Martin Luther King on the bridge to Selma and in other venues where he argued against racism while being attacked physically.

Lewis had questioned Trump’s right to be president in light of Russian claims of hacking to benefit Trump.

Here’s how Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson put it:

“It must be said that the whole business of questioning a president’s right to hold office is pernicious. It puts a hard stop on all civility and cooperation. The worst instance, of course, was the claim hat Barack Obama was Kenyan-born and disqualified to be president — an argument based on partisan, conspiratorial and quasi-racist lies enthusiastically spread by Trump. When the president-elect calls out Lewis on this topic, it is a display of hypocrisy so large that it is visible from space.

“Trump often justifies his attacks as counter-punching. Even a glancing blow seems to merit a nuclear response. But this is the exact opposite of the ethical teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, and of the principled nonviolence of the civil rights movement. In these systems of thought, the true victory comes in absorbing a blow with dignity, even with love. It is the substance of King’s message. It is the essence of a cruciform faith.

“This is not always easy to translate into politics. But a president-elect attacking a hero of the civil rights movement less than a week before he takes the oath of office is not normal. There is some strange inversion of values at work. Because Vladimir Putin praises him, Trump defends Putin. Because Lewis criticizes him, Trump attacks Lewis (as “talk, talk, talk — no action or results”). The only organizing principle is the degree of deference to Trump himself. It is the essence of narcissism.”

There it is – that word narcissism.

Or, Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post: “As I’ve said before, Trump’s compulsion to answer any perceived slight with both barrels blazing is a sign of dangerous insecurity and weakness, not strength. We are about to inaugurate a president with the social maturity of a first-grader.”

To Trump, like Hitler, everything revolves the “big I.” “I” am the answer to every problem, Trump says. Making it personal, he goes after everyone who even slightly disagrees with him. Meryl Streep? Yes, go after her. John Lewis? Yes, go after him. A disabled reporter? Yes, go after him. Senator John McCain, a Vietnam era prisoner of war? Yes, go after him.

We need a president who respects and evokes the storied history of this country, including a recognition of the real account of Black America, not one who peevishly attacks heroes and believes that he is the only one “who can make America great again.”

So, Mr. Trump, please get about the business of being president, not a narcissist.