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.

For me, it has been an exercise in futility to figure out what motivates one of the strangest persons ever to occupy the Oval Office – Donald Trump.

He says one thing one day and then contradicts himself the next day, if not the next minute. One Democrat leader in the U.S, House said that negotiating with Trump was like “poking jello.”

Or, for Trump, fake news is anything with which he disagrees. And, he himself, appears to have no accuracy funnel through which he decides what to say. Who cares if what he says is accurate or, for that matter, makes sense? He doesn’t.

Commentators, almost all of whom are smarter than me, not to mention closer to the action, appear to have the same difficulty I do. Witness these assessments:

From Michael Gerson in the Washington Post: “But for all this, Trump seems utterly incapable of ruling even the 18-acre kingdom of the White House. Recent reports describe chaos, tumult, disarray and pure madness. With the policy process completely broken, staffers seem to occupy their time with blood feuds, leaking and legal consultations. Trump himself — brooding, isolated and angry, mad as hell — takes it out on Jeff Sessions and Alec Baldwin.

“The president’s self-generated governing crisis is disturbing. But when paired with authoritarian envy, it is pathetic. An exercise in autocratic jock-sniffing. Other would-be strongmen have turned to Karl Marx for inspiration; for Trump, it is more like the Marx Brothers. Absurdly stereotyped characters — Anthony Scaramucci, Sebastian Gorka, Stephen K. Bannon — pop randomly in and out of well-appointed rooms, while the main character feeds chaos all around him. It is the Duck Soup dictatorship.”

From Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal: “The presidency, I can hear critics claiming, is not a charm contest. If President Trump is a boor, that may be regrettable, but better a boor with sound policies than a gentleman with unsound ones. True enough, yet this does not, as the philosophers say, exhaust all cases. A man likes to think that one day we may again have a president with both sound policies and dignified behavior.

“Such a combination is of course possible, but at present more than merely unlikely. Boors in their 70s do not change. Donald Trump is incorrigible. Not even John Kelly, a tough retired Marine Corps general, has been able to whip him into anything resembling presidential shape. With Trump, what we see is what we get, and what we get distinctly isn’t Cary Grant. And we have three more years, possibly seven, to live it.”

From Washington Post reporter Marc Fisher who was asked to be one of the reporters who, on occasion, wrote an opinion column: “A royal mess? Not in Trump’s version of reality. As yet another chief of staff twists in the wind, the president makes clear two essential points about how he governs:

“1) Always double down on your position. Through the most trying moments of the past two years, Trump has regularly argued in favor of men on his side who’ve been accused of bad behavior against women, whether that was Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama; Fox News figures Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly; last week’s case du jour, Rob Porter; or Trump himself. He weathered the “Access Hollywood” tape that many of his aides thought would sink his campaign, and he successfully batted away allegations from more than a dozen women that he was guilty of sexual misconduct toward them.

“2) The president must always be the focus of attention. Aides who get too big for their britches won’t be around for long.”

From Peter Baker in the New York Times: “Trump is the 45th president of the United States, but he has spent much of his first year in office defying the conventions and norms established by the previous 44, and transforming the presidency in ways that were once unimaginable.

“Under Mr. Trump, it has become a blunt instrument to advance personal, policy and political goals. He has revolutionized the way presidents deal with the world beyond 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, dispensing with the carefully modulated messaging of past chief executives in favor of no-holds-barred, crystal-breaking, us-against-them, damn-the-consequences blasts borne out of gut and grievance.”

So, I say what we have in the Oval Office is just another “reality show,” led by the host of the show, one Donald Trump.

Michael Gerson, the Post writer mentioned above, put it well in the conclusion to one of his most recent columns: “Though weakness and incompetence are preferable to authoritarianism, they are unequal to the real challenges of the nation.”

We need an enlightened leader in the Oval Office. One who responds to issues and crises with an even-hand. One who doesn’t rail against critics. One who puts the nation above his own ego.

So, with Epstein above, I wonder if we can survive with three more years of the Trump reality show, not to mention an almost unthinkable seven.