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 cannot help but start the new year with a collection of words from Dave Barry, a humorist who, this time, has prepared a “2018 Year in Review” for the Washington Post.

If you want to have a few laughs over “stuff” in 2018, skim Barry’s piece in the Post.

To save you from that full errand, here is a collection of his prescient comment on the past year.

“We can summarize 2018 in two words,” Barry says: “It boofed.”

“We’re not 100 per cent sure what ‘boofing’ is, despite the fact that this very issue was discussed in a hearing of the United States Judiciary Committee. All we know for certain about boofing is that it is distasteful and stupid.”

“What made this year so awful?” Barry asks. “We could list many factors, including natural disasters, man-made atrocities, the utter depravity of our national political discourse…” Instead, we’ll cite one event that, while minor, epitomizes 2018: The debut of “Dr. Pimple Popper.” This is a cable TV reality show featuring high-definition slo-mo close-up videos of a California dermatologist performing seriously disgusting procedures on individuals with zits the size of mature cantaloupes. You might ask, ‘Who on Earth would voluntarily watch that?’ The answer, in 2018, was: MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. That is the state of our culture. We can only imagine what new reality shows lie ahead. We would not rule out ‘Dr. Butt Wiper’ or ‘People Blow Their Noses Directly Onto the Camera Lens.’”

So, here’s more from Barry:

• As you recall, we, as a nation, spent all of 2017 obsessing over 2016: The election, the Russians, the emails, the Mueller probe, the Russians, the Russians, the Russians. … That was all we heard about, day after soul-crushing day, for the entire year.

So when 2018 finally dawned, we were desperately hoping for change. It was a new year, a chance for the nation to break out of the endless, pointless barrage of charges and countercharges, to move past the vicious, hate-filled hyper-partisan spew of name-calling and petty point-scoring, to end the 24/7 cycle of media hysteria, to look forward and begin to tackle the many critical issues facing the nation, the most important of which turned out to be……the 2016 election.

• World tensions rise when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un states that he has a nuclear missile launch button on his desk. This leaves U.S. Commander in Chief Donald Trump with no viable military option but to fire up his Random Capitalizer App and tweet, “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his,” thereby leaving no doubt as to which leader is more secure regarding the size of his button.
• The intellectual level of the national discourse soars even higher when it is reported that, during an Oval Office meeting on immigration reform, the president referred to some poorer nations as “s-holes.” This upsets many people, especially the frowny panel-persons of CNN, who find the word “s—hole” so deeply offensive that they repeat it roughly 15 times per hour for a solid week. Washington is consumed by a heated debate over what, exactly, the president said; the tone and substance of this debate are reflected in this actual sentence from a Washington Post story: “Three White House officials said Senator David Perdue and Senator Tom Cotton told the White House that they heard ‘s—house’ rather than ‘s—hole,’ allowing them to deny the president’s comments on television over the weekend.” (This is known in legal circles as the “s—house defense.”)
• In non-s—hole news, the residents of Hawaii experience an exciting Saturday morning when they receive the following message on their phones from the state’s Emergency Management Agency: “BALLISTIC MISSLE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” Hawaii’s governor, David Ige, is quickly informed that it’s a false alarm but 17 extremely tense minutes go by before he gets the word out on social media. Asked later about the delay, he says — we are not making this quote up — “I have to confess that I don’t know my Twitter account logons and the passwords.” This statement arouses powerful feelings of longing among high-level Trump advisers.
• The fiasco leads to the resignation of the head of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, who immediately accepts a position as director of pet transportation for United Airlines.
• With yet another government shutdown looming, Congress, whose irresponsible spending practices have put the nation on the road to fiscal disaster, faces a choice. It can either:

1. Continue to spend huge amounts of money that we don’t have, or
2. Not.

After much late-night drama, Congress agrees on a compromise deal under which it will continue to spend huge amounts of money that we don’t have. This display of leadership solves the budget problem permanently until March, when Congress will once again tackle the complex problem of government spending.

• In domestic sports, the Eagles defeat the Patriots to win their first Super Bowl, and huge crowds of joyous Philadelphia fans celebrate by destroying downtown Boston.
• Secretary of State Rex Tillerson learns that President Trump has fired him when, during an official visit to Africa, he is ejected from his State Department plane at 35,000 feet.

No, seriously, Tillerson learns of his firing via a presidential tweet which says: “Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service!” So mid-air ejection would actually have been more dignified.

• Speaking of incompetence: Congress averts yet another government shutdown by passing, with President Trump signing, a bill under which the government will — prepare to be shocked — spend a truly insane amount of money that it does not have.
• Meanwhile President Trump, faced with — among other problems — a continuing immigration crisis, increased Russian aggression in Syria and a looming trade war with China, launches a barrage of assault tweets at what is clearly the biggest threat to the nation: Amazon.com. Trump is forced to back down when the retail giant threatens to suspend the White House’s Amazon Prime membership and cancel delivery of a large order placed by the Defense Department, including six nuclear submarines, two aircraft carriers and a missile defense system with a five-star average rating from other nations.
• The biggest story by far is the wedding of American ex-actress Meghan Markle to Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, who is in the direct line of succession to the British throne behind Prince Louis of Cambridge, who is behind Princess Charlotte of Cambridge, who is behind Prince George of Cambridge, who is behind Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, who is behind Charles, Prince of Wales, who is 70, but any year now could get his shot at becoming the anachronistic ceremonial figurehead of one of the world’s most second-rate powers. With the stakes so high, the media giddiness level soars to Defcon 1; the wedding cake alone gets more media coverage than Africa and global climate change combined.
• In entertainment news, Roseanne Barr sends out a tasteless, idiotic tweet and immediately has her network show canceled, thereby illustrating a key difference between being a sitcom star and being president of the United States.
• In other domestic news, Sen. Chuck “The Human Bandwagon” Schumer, citing studies showing that every living American adult except Mitt Romney has tried pot, introduces a bill that would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level and “create a massive bureaucracy tasked with wasting millions of dollars on things like bong-safety regulations.”
• Meanwhile, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announces his decision to retire, creating an important opportunity for the nation’s political leaders to demonstrate that, although the public might have a low opinion of them as a group, it is nowhere near low enough.
• Meanwhile Seattle becomes the first major U.S. city to ban plastic straws and utensils in all restaurants. San Francisco, sensing a threat to its status as front-runner in the Progressivelympics, responds by banning food and beverages in all restaurants.
• In a coordinated nationwide response to Trump’s repeated attacks on the press, sternly worded editorials rebuking the president are published in more than 300 newspapers with a combined editorial-page readership estimated at nearly 14 people. For his part, CNN’s Jim Acosta courageously confronts White House press secretary Sarah Sanders over this issue, despite the very real risk that he will have to feature himself prominently in his report on this harrowing incident.
• In business news, Apple becomes the first publicly traded U.S. company to be worth $1 trillion, thanks to its shrewd business model of constantly coming out with costly new products that require costly chargers that are completely different from all the costly Apple chargers you already have, and sometimes spontaneously mutate overnight in such a way as to require even newer and costlier Apple chargers.
• Washington is atingle with a level of excitement that can only result from a clash of two high-voltage personalities: Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, both having served in the Senate since shortly before the Big Bang. The committee holds two hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, the second devoted to explosive allegations contained in a letter that was delivered back in July to Feinstein, who, what with one thing and another, failed to mention it until September.

1. The senators have no idea what, if anything, actually happened.
2. Nor do they care.
3. The truth is utterly irrelevant to them.
4. They all decided long ago how they were going to vote, based entirely on political calculations.
5. Given exactly the same testimony but different political circumstances, every single senator would passionately espouse the position diametrically opposite the one he or she is passionately espousing now.

• The nation braces for what political analysts agree will be the most important mid-term elections since the dawn of time. Voters prepare for the big day by binge-watching Netflix, because regular TV has turned into a gushing sewer of political attack ads apparently created by and for dimwitted 4-year-olds.
• For their part, the Democrats appeal to voters with a three-pronged message:

Prong One: The Democrats are the party of fairness, diversity and inclusion.

Prong Two: Anybody who disagrees with the Democrats about anything is Hitler.

Prong Three: But more racist.

• The election goes smoothly, except of course in Florida, which should seriously consider outsourcing all of its government functions to a competent organization, such as Montana. As usual the most confused county in Florida is Broward — often called “the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency of counties” — which to this day is not 100 per cent certain how it voted in Dewey vs. Truman.
• Meanwhile the ongoing saga that is “The Jim Acosta Story, Starring Jim Acosta as Jim Acosta” takes a thrilling turn when Jim gets into a dramatic struggle with a White House intern over a microphone.
• In business news, Amazon, after a much-publicized nationwide search, announces that it will locate new headquarters in Arlington, Va., and New York City, in return for tax breaks, infrastructure improvements, four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and replacement of the Statue of Liberty with a 340-foot-tall statue of Jeffrey Bezos naked.
• Meanwhile in a devastating blow to the U.S. humor industry, Michael Avenatti announces that he will not run for president. His departure narrows the potential Democratic field to pretty much every Democrat politician ever, including Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, somebody called “Beto” and the late Hubert Humphrey, all of whom believe Trump will be vulnerable in 2020, as confidently predicted by the many expert political observers who also confidently predicted Hillary Clinton’s presidency.
• All this happens as congressional Democrats prepare to take control of the House of Representatives, where they plan to implement an ambitious agenda focused on the No. 1 concern of the American people, which of course is …The 2016 elections!

Once again, Barry knocks it out of the park. Good to have a little humor at the expense of political figures who conduct themselves as if they are the most important people in the world.

Better for them to heed the words of incoming U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, former candidate for president of the United States. He wrote this in a piece in the Washington Post:

“To re-assume our leadership in world politics, we must repair failings in our politics at home. That project begins, of course, with the highest office once again acting to inspire and unite us. It includes political parties promoting policies that strengthen us rather than promote tribalism by exploiting fear and resentment. Our leaders must defend our vital institutions despite their inevitable failings: A free press, the rule of law, strong churches, and responsible corporations and unions.”