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.

Late-night TV host Jimmy Fallon asked a good question the other night as he started his monologue.

“Before we begin,” Fallon said, ‘I just want to give a shout out to our show’s No. 1 fan: the president of the United States!’

“The audience laughed appreciatively. ‘As you may have heard, last night, the president of the United States went after me on Twitter,’ Fallon said. ‘So Melania, if you’re watching, I don’t think your anti-bullying campaign is working.’

“When I saw that Trump insulted me on Twitter, I was gonna tweet back immediately, but I thought, ‘I have more important things to do.’ Then I thought, ‘Wait, shouldn’t he have more important things to do? He’s the president! What are you doing? You’re the president! Why are you tweeting at me?!’”

I agree.

With immigration issues flying around, with trade threats harming U.S. relations around the world, with those trade wars roiling the U.S. economy, you would think Trump would find more important actions to take than to send a tweet berating a late-night TV host.

No.

He heads off to flout Fallon for an interview a number of years ago in which Fallon took his hands to Trump’s hair.

Speaking of trade war surprises, consider this – even though, when I started to write this blog, it was going to be only about Trump tweets.

Trump expressed shock late this week when Harley Davidson, Inc. decided to move some of its motorcycle plant operations overseas because of trade war threats from the European Union.

“In February 2017, Trump welcomed Harley executives and workers to the White House, where he celebrated the company’s success and predicted more to come. ‘Thank you, Harley-Davidson, for building things in America,’ the president said then. ‘And I think you’re going to even expand.’”

Well, Trump, expansion now is occurring overseas!

All of this is more Trump than we should be able to tolerate. We should expect better things from the president, no matter who that person is.

For one thing, I say take Trump’s twitter machine away from him and force him to focus on the process and product of U.S. actions (to use a phrase from one of my previous blogs).

Then, expect him to be more careful about his trade war threats, which, even if it is possible the outcome down the road turns out to be positive, they hurt U.S. business interests in the interim. Just ask Harley Davidson.