\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.

As the director of this department, I enjoy full and complete authority about what to include, as well as how to comment on the quotes.

There has been a lot of grist for my mill lately as the Trump Administration goes wild in Washington, D.C. – what else is new? – and as commentators write about political unease. Very few compliment the Administration because there is little that deserves a compliment as Trump jeopardizes his own agenda (if he has one) and puts Republicans leaders in the vise of having to work with him.

As one year ends and we head toward a new one, it ought to prompt time for reflection and hope for the future. But, no, with Trump in the nation’s top political job, many of us worry about what’s next, including the heightened prospect of war.

All of that said, here are more Good Quotes Worth Remembering.

From Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal:  “Mr. Trump’s political malpractice has been to fail, since his election, to increase his popularity and thus his power. He has a core but it remains a core. He could have broadened his position with a personal air of stability and moderation, and with policies that were soft-populist. He has failed to do so, primarily due to his self-indulgence—his tendency to heat things up when he should cool them down; his tendency always to make the situation a little worse, not a little better. His tweets, his immaturity, his screwball resentments and self-pity alienate and offend.”

Comment: The point of Noonan’s comments is not to suggest that Trump shouldn’t be in the White House, though that may be her view, as it is mine. It is to say that Trump avoids all of the normal protocols of being and acting like the president of this country. “His tweets, his immaturity, his screwball resentments and self-pity alienate and offend,” Noonan writes. Yes.

And more from Noonan:  “As to his {Trump’s) foes in the other party, the biggest silence in American political life is not from the Republicans, who can’t stop arguing. It is from the Democrats when they are asked what they stand for. What economic policy do they want? What is the plan, the arrangement they hope to institute? What philosophy are they trying to put in place? What in terms of foreign policy do they want?

“Domestically the only thing they’re clear on is identity politics. Who’s going to unite or find the place of common ground between the rising left and the older middle? What program can accomplish that?”

Comment: Without Trump to lambaste, Democrats have nothing to say. No one says what Democrats stand for, except being anti-Trump. That approach might work, especially in the upcoming mid-term elections, but it won’t provide them with a way to govern and lead.

Charles Blow in the Washington Post:  “I know that there are things of graver consequence in Donald Trump’s regime than his diction, but as a person whose vocation concerns him with language, I am simply appalled by Trump’s savage mauling of that language.

“His usage isn’t only idiosyncratic or some act of bungling idiocy, although it is surely both. But his usage is also a way of reducing language to the point that it is meaningless because the use of it is mindless, and in that compromised state, language becomes nearly worthless. As a consequence, truth becomes relative, if not altogether removed.

“I would submit that Trump lie in two ways: First, by directly and intentionally saying things he well knows aren’t true, and second, by obfuscating with linguistic obtuseness, by overusing a nebulous relativism and by spouting an excess of superlatives to stand in for meaningful description and disclosure.”

Comment:  Blow is right. Trump doesn’t have the first clue about using language to help achieve his objectives. It’s always words such as “nice” and “great,” without any supporting documentation. I saw a bumper sticker yesterday with a photo of Trump and the saying “liar in chief.” For me, I agree with the “liar in chief” moniker, which without using words that provide any chance that he could be believed.

David Von Drehle in the Washington Post:  “Donald Trump learned a powerful lesson while running for president. The rules don’t apply to me. Trump blew through one political stop sign after another as he sped recklessly past the competition; again and again, he burned rubber away from the feckless, doughnut-munching cops of the media, the swamp and academia. The rule about not calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” in your announcement speech? The rule about not attacking a war hero or a Gold Star family? The rule about releasing your tax returns, and the one about never, ever boasting of sexual assault while wearing a live microphone?

“Trump squealed his tires and waved a one-finger salute.

“But it appears the lesson was mistaken, for the long arm of political law is catching up to the president. That’s one of my takeaways from the special U.S. Senate election this last week in Alabama, where hogs sprouted wings, rivers ran backward and a Democrat won. Trump believed he could get away with flouting the political commandment that says Thou Shalt Not Endorse Accused Child Molesters. He thought his cloak of immunity was large enough to enfold Roy Moore, with room for Stephen K. Bannon left over.”

Comment:  The litany of offenses by Trump grows daily.  In this piece, Von Drehle says Trump’s basic enemy will be gravity.  He’ll fall far enough to continue losing the thin layer of support he now enjoys. If Democrats control Congress, he stands to undergo an impeachment trial.  I say good.  He deserves what he gets for having cast so much discredit on the nation’s highest political office, not to mention our overall democracy.