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.

NOTE: This is the first of two blogs on the chief of staff issue now percolating in Washington, D.C. Part 1 focuses on Trump, who cannot find an “expert” to take the job because he has no respect for experts. Part 2 will describe credentials for a chief of staff, at least here in Oregon based on my 40 years of experience in state government.

A writer for the Wall Street Journal captured the essence of President Donald Trump’s quest for a new chief of staff. He doesn’t want anyone who is qualified for the job.

“Trump’s inability to recruit, or to even to listen to, top people has hampered everything from Trump’s foreign policy to his own legal defense. His hostility to sound advice, coupled with reliance on his frequently terrible instincts, has produced a kind of synergy (to use a newly infamous word) of incompetence in the White House and beyond: Things go wrong on the world stage, Capitol Hill or with the media.

“Trump never blames himself, instead blaming everyone else, including the people who work for him. Experts — also known as people who know what they’re doing — have had two years to observe this and have understandably become less willing to work for him. Their numbers inside the administration dwindle, lesser lights take over, more mistakes are made; lather, rinse, repeat.”

The writer was someone I have never heard of – Tom Nichols, a professor at the Naval War College and the Harvard Extension School. He is the author of “The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters.”

His comments about Trump as he searches for a new chief of staff strike me as right on to replace military general John Kelly who sought to bring a sense of discipline to an undisciplined place, the Oval Office under Trump.

“Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson,” Nichols avers, “found it ‘challenging’ to work with Trump after ‘coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented ExxonMobil Corporation.’ No surprise there, and Tillerson should have seen it coming.

“As an engineer who had been the steward of a major multi-national company, Tillerson must have found it jarring to take orders from someone who makes most decisions by putting his finger to the wind.”

This chaotic approach to management and governance has undermined the president’s search for a chief a position that requires — or should require — serious managerial ability, broad policy knowledge and sound political judgment.

But even outgoing chief of staff Kelly, a four-star general who shared several of Trump’s basic views and who spent a career commanding thousands, had very limited success in imposing Oval Office discipline.

Trump himself has no discipline and doesn’t want anyone to enforce it.

Accordingly, the list of people who won’t take the chief of staff job that was once among the most sought-after posts in Washington, D.C. is likely as long as the list of those who still want it.

“Trump,” Nichols writes, “has taken a nebulous resentment — that the experts are the source of ordinary Americans’ woes — and etched it into the minds of his supporters. He has succeeded in this largely by writing off his worst failures either as temporary blips or as someone else’s fault.

“Shifting blame might work, at least for a while, in politics. It is a far riskier strategy in front of a prosecutor, and it is positively dangerous during a national security or economic crisis. The president’s voters have cheered as he has smeared capable public servants and denigrated the very idea of competence. The whole country might ultimately pay the price.”

So, in the quest for a new chief of staff, Trump is acting like himself. He, in fact, probably wants to be his own chief of staff because, when he finally appoints someone, he will likely treat that person like he treated John Kelly. No respect.

Kelly tried to impose a sense of discipline in the White House and that, alone, irritated Trump who treated the Oval Office like a carnival barker’s tent. Let anyone in at all times. Let anyone say what he or she wanted to say because, in the end, it wouldn’t matter as Trump headed off for his Twitter account.

If I was Kelly, I would be glad to be leaving. And, if I was asked by Trump to take the position, perish the thought, I would yell an aggressive “no.”