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.

A recent column in the Washington Post made a lot of sense to me. The writer compared the theatrical actions of one Donald Trump to the World Wrestling Federation (WWE), long one of the best examples of appealing to an often gullible public (though, not me, I hasten to add).

Referring to the make-believe world of “professional” wrestling, the columnist, David Drehle, wrote: “It was a world that included one Donald Trump, the Ravishing Rick Rude of politics. Too little attention has been paid to Trump’s wrestling background, which was sufficiently broad that he reached the hall of fame a full four years ahead of Rude.”

The reference to Rude was to a character in the Wrestling Federation who made its own Hall of Fame.

More from the columnist: “Trump was among the first self-promoters to hitch a ride on impresario Vince McMahon’s WWE juggernaut. He sponsored two of McMahon’s early WrestleMania extravaganzas back in the Golden Age, steering them to the Historic Atlantic City Convention Hall and promoting them through his Trump casinos.

“But the peak of Trump’s career came in 2007, when he was written into the script of WrestleMania 23 as one-half of the Battle of the Billionaires, facing off against McMahon. Before a crowd of 80,000 at Detroit’s Ford Field, with a million more watching on pay-per-view, Trump played his role to the hilt, clotheslining McMahon and pretending to pummel him on the floor before shaving the promoter’s head as the fruit of victory.”

It is not an exaggeration to contend that the Trump presidency is right out of a WWE script. His brawling news conferences, his beefs with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and journalist Mika Brzezinski, the who’s-up-who’s-down chaos inside his White House, all bear the imprint of a man schooled on the melodramatic storylines of pro wrestling.

Here’s more:

• Trump is all show and little, if any, substance.
• Trump is all act, as if on a WWE stage.
• Trump doesn’t care whom he offends; in fact, offending appears to be the goal.
• To Trump, it’s all about HIS GOOD and EVERYONE ELSE’S EVIL.

Trump scripted his campaign as a series of professional-wrestling scenarios, complete with menacing foreigners, un-clever nicknames and plenty of trash talk. When the show got him elected, he doubled down, taunting world leaders and journalists alike.

You might say all politicians tell stories of conflict. But with Trump, it’s relentless. He takes us from bout to bout — Trump against China, Trump against Comey, Trump against Kim, Trump against Fake News — with a head-spinning undercard of Jared against Bannon and Spicy Spicer against The Mooch. Every policy choice, every personnel decision, every setback can be fodder for the next day’s script.

My question: Can we change the channel?

Indeed, pro-wrestling ratings have been dropping for years. Perhaps support for Trump, the bad actor on a stage, will drop, too. One can only hope.