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.

I have found it hard over the last few days to imagine a president in this country using the word “s___h___” during a meeting in the White House.

If you would have asked me a year ago or so, I would have said, no, think again.

But, then we get Trump.

Not only do his comments illustrate that he has no sense of decorum, they compromise the ability to get anything done, including elements of his own agenda…that is, if he has agenda. In this case, rather than working on immigration reform, Trump’s agents and those in Congress spent hours discussing what he said and whether he uttered the “s___h___” comment.

Try to imagine yourself serving in the White House or in Congress with a person like Trump as president. The White House has some accomplishments in the first year of the Trump presidency, but, then, Trump says what thinks, without thinking, and you forget the accomplishments. Nearly everyone focuses on Trump’s disdain for decorum.

So it was this morning that I read again about Jeff Flake, the senator from Arizona, who can no longer tolerate serving in what once was the “world’s great deliberative body.” He is quitting and there are those who would say that he would not have won re-election again anyway.

Yet, even as he contemplates his departure from the Senate, I give kudos to Flake for his willingness to speak out against Trump, not for the president continuing to flout decorum, but for the damage Trump does to traits like truth.

Here is how, Flake put it on the Senate floor this week.

“2017 was a year which saw the truth – objective, empirical, evidence-based truth – more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government.

“It was a year which saw the White House enshrine ‘alternative facts’ into the American lexicon, as justification for what used to be known simply as good old-fashioned falsehoods. It was the year in which an unrelenting daily assault on the constitutionally-protected free press was launched by that same White House, an assault that is as unprecedented as it is unwarranted. ‘The enemy of the people’ was what the president of the United States called the free press in 2017.

“It is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase ‘enemy of the people,’ that even Nikita Khrushchev forbad its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of ‘annihilating such individuals’ who disagreed with the supreme leader.

“This alone should be a source of great shame for us in this body, especially for those of us in the president’s party. For they are shameful, repulsive statements. And, of course, the president has it precisely backward – despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot’s enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy. When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn’t suit him ‘fake news,’ it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press.

“I dare say that anyone who has the privilege and awesome responsibility to serve in this chamber knows that these reflexive slurs of ‘fake news’ are dubious, at best.”

William Galston, writing in the Wall Street Journal this morning, goes even farther, saying democracy is at risk, though he does hold out hope for its survival despite Trump.

“Many Americans worry about our democracy, and some fear for its survival. I believe we will emerge from these dark times with our institutions intact, and with a renewed commitment to the principles and norms that made us—until very recently—a symbol of hope around the world. I am confident the American people will ultimately reject a president whose public and private statements imply that he rejects the premise of our founding document, that all men are created equal.”

We need more political figures like Flake and Galston who are willing to call them as they see them. We’ll miss Flake’s honesty in the Senate and here’s hoping, with Galston, that democracy can prevail against Trump’s machinations.