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 no idea how Trump Administration – there’s that word again, administration, which implies that Trump and his minions are organized rather than flying by the seat of their pants – can defend what it is doing with immigrants.

No matter how you cut it, separating children from parents at borders makes no sense. It is inhumane, as many photos have shown literally.

Of course, Trump, in his characteristic fashion, always blames someone else instead of taking responsibility for his own actions or for those who work for him.

No, it’s the Democrats he will say with a straight face. No, it’s the media he will add.

Never him!

In a late action, after a major hue and cry over the policy to separate children from their parents, Trump did sign an executive order to end the practice – at least theoretically. But, is it really the end? Sort of. What Trump is now doing is locking up children with their parents, marginally better, I guess.

Before the executive order, here is the way the Washington Post put it in its “fact checker” column:

“President Trump — a man already known for trafficking in mistruths and even outright lies — has been outdoing even himself with falsehoods in recent days, repeating and amplifying bogus claims on several of the most pressing controversies facing his presidency.

“Since Saturday, Trump has tweeted false or misleading information at least seven times on the topic of immigration and at least six times on a Justice Department inspector general report into the FBI’s handling of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. That’s more than a dozen obfuscations on just two central topics — a figure that does not include falsehoods on other issues, whether in tweets or public remarks.”

Some of the regular citizens to whom I spoke suggested they thought Trump was effecting – and should continue – the family separation practice in order to prod action out of Congress to get what he really wants, which is a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

If that is really true, I find that approach to be abhorrent – sacrificing children for a wall.

In the “Wonder Land” column by Wall Street Journal’s deputy editor of the editorial page, Daniel Henninger, he wrote this:

“For more than 30 years, our ‘solution’ to the illegal immigration problem has been to throw wave after wave of federal bureaucracies at it. What could go wrong? More accurately, how could it not get worse?

“Among the proposals to emerge from the Senate this week were . . . build more detention facilities and hire 375 more immigration judges. That’s the answer: More swamp!

“We have run the experiment on letting the federal bureaucracies solve the illegal-immigrant problem and have proved conclusively: They can’t. So why not give the market a chance to solve it?

“Give these adults work visas that let them enter and exit the country at legal entry points as the labor market requires. A reason they bring their children with them is that if they leave the U.S. now, there is no legal way to re-enter for work.

“Yes, there are details, but surely this market-based solution would be easier to administer than the never-ending travesty at the Mexican border.

“We can either let the world’s strongest economy control the immigration flow, or let politicians and bureaucrats keep trying. The latter will produce another bog of embarrassment, like the one we all stared at in Texas this week.”

Finally, a solution that begins to make sense.