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 those who chose to watch the State of the Union address by President Donald Trump (I did, I admit), it could properly have been called “the State of Disunion.”

We saw a vivid display of what I call “the two Trumps.”

One reaches out to Democrats and Republicans, asking for joint work on major public policy issues facing this country.

The other Trump is one who practices what he said he decries, which is “revenge, resistance and retribution.” Those are just what he does nearly every day.

As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sat in the accustomed seat behind Trump, she was on camera as much as Trump was. It appeared she conducted herself with appropriate decorum most of the time, though she must have thought Trump was talking out of both sides of his mouth as he called for cooperation and conciliation, two traits he rarely, if ever, illustrates from day to day.

While I thought Pelosi conducted herself well in a hot seat, the Washington Post said “she smirked or shook her head, making her disagreement plain.” And, at one point, the way she clapped for a Trump line became an Internet sensation, for many observers believed she was ridiculing Trump, not applauding him.

And, as for the definition of the word compromise, it is not one side giving in totally to the other side. It is two sides working together to find the smart middle. Both sides give and get so that, often, the resulting compromise is not liked totally by all who produced it.

Trump, Pelosi and their crowds would do well to understand the real definition of compromise.

The clearest partisan moment of Trump’s 82-minute speech came when he warned the only thing that can stop the country from flourishing would be “foolish wars, politics or ridiculous partisan investigations.”

Putting aside the irony of Trump — who wanted to hire a private investigator to unearth Barack Obama’s birth certificate and encouraged chants of “Lock Her Up” referring to Hillary Clinton at his campaign rallies — making such a critique, it was also heard by many Democrats as a not-so-veiled threat for them to back off.

Guess what happened the next day in response? House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-California.) announced that he was pursuing a wide-ranging congressional probe into Trump’s ties with Russia, ranging from “Russia’s election interference to the question of whether foreign governments have leverage over Trump, his relatives or associates.” Schiff told reporters that he and other Democrats “were not going to be intimidated or threatened” by Trump.

So, how did Trump respond when hearing about Schiff’s plans? By reverting to his normal style of name-calling, referring to the nine-term congressman “a political hack who’s trying to build a name for himself” and calling it “presidential harassment.”

While some Republican elected officials and commentators lauded the State of the Union as being “presidential,” for Trump it appeared to be just another short episode in his day. One day he says one thing. The next day he says another thing that completely contradicts the first.

It’s the way he is and anyone who watched the State of the Union address this week saw the two Trumps.

It is impossible to rely on what he says. What he says could be true, I suppose, but usually he engages on one of three tactics – inflating statistics to make them reflect well on his performance, taking statistics out of context, or just downright lying.

Here’s are just two examples as pointed out after the speech by the Washington Post Fact-Checker column:

Trump said, “Unemployment has reached the lowest rate in half a century. African American, Hispanic American and Asian American unemployment have all reached their lowest levels ever recorded.”

Fact-Checker reports that this is all in the past. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that the unemployment rate had increased to 4 per cent in January. The unemployment rate in December had no longer been at a 49-year low, but an 18-year low. Now it was merely the best since the beginning of 2018.

The African American unemployment statistic has been in existence for less than 50 years. It reached a low of 5.9 per cent in May 2018, but had risen to 6.8 per cent in January. The Hispanic American unemployment statistic has been in existence for less than 50 years. It reached a low of 4.4 per cent in 2018, but had risen to 4.9 percent in January. The Asian American statistic has been around for less than 20 years. And while it reached a low of 2.1 percent in May 2018, it rose to 3.2 percent rate in January.

Trump also said, “More people are working now than at any time in our history — 157 million.”

This is an essentially meaningless statistic. The U.S. population is growing, so of course more people would be employed.

Overall, the Washington Post called Trump’s State of the Union a “dissonant” speech, suggesting that he appeared “to seek unity while depicting ruin.”

Here’s how the Post story began:

“President Trump confronted a split Congress for the first time Tuesday night by delivering a dissonant State of the Union address, interspersing uplifting paeans to bi-partisan compromise with chilling depictions of murder and ruin.

“Calling the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border ‘an urgent national crisis,’ Trump again called on Congress to approve construction of his long-promised wall — and argued that without the physical barrier, working-class Americans would lose their jobs and grapple with dangerous crime and overcrowded schools and hospitals.”

I suspect we are going to be stuck with two more years of Trump, unless the investigations he derides put him out of office first.

For me, there have been some policy gains during the Trump Administration, if only because, with a Republican in the Oval Office, there is less emphasis on big government to solve every perceived problem.

One commentator I read this morning called the State of the Union address “a masterpiece—for Trump’s purposes.” “Two chaotic years into his term,” the writer said, “Trump appeared presidential for seemingly the first time and dramatically advanced his chances for re-election in 2020.”

“On Tuesday Mr. Trump enlarged the public’s idea of himself and his presidency, and in proportion diminished his enemies. That was his most effective stroke on Tuesday night: To make the left seem to be lost in irrelevant obsessions and guilty of misinterpreting—falsifying—America and its values.”

Right? Not sure. But does Trump get at least some credit for some of the perceived gains that have occurred in the first two years of his term? A reasonable answer is yes, but he often obscures even the gains by his own over-the-top rhetoric and the ridicule he piles on top of anyone who has the temerity to disagree with him.

More to come.