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 to 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 press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as 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.

Remember the movie, “Dumb and Dumber?” I do.

But the movie title could just as well apply to politics these days.

Just when you think things couldn’t get worse, the combatants – and that’s what they like to call themselves – on the right and left go off the deep end.

President Donald Trump, on the right (if that is where he really is) and Democrats on the left have absolutely no use for each other. So, they result to name-calling, innuendo and charges of racism.

Dumb and Dumber is a 1994 American comedy film starring Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels. It tells the story of Lloyd Christmas (Carrey) and Harry Dunne (Daniels), two dumb but well-meaning friends, who set out on a cross-country trip to return a briefcase full of money to its owner, thinking it was abandoned as a mistake but was actually left as ransom money.

Today, the title captures all that is wrong with politics.

Who is dumb and who is dumber, the Republicans or the Democrats? Take your pick. Both qualify either nickname.

Former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal put it this way in a piece for the Wall Street Journal:

“The political world has gone absolutely crazy. America has seen event after event that broke every precedent and seemed to set a new standard that couldn’t be surpassed — until it quickly was.

“Trump’s penchant for personal attacks and undisciplined tweets drives even some of his supporters crazy. They wonder if he is his own worst enemy and hope he doesn’t sabotage his success. Yet, many more supporters want a disruptive force and view his unorthodox behavior as a positive feature rather than an unfortunate price to pay for conservative judges and lower taxes.”

The craziness on the Democrat side, Jindal writes, “lies in its leaders’ policies and the plan they want to impose on America. The party’s inability to condemn anti-Semitism with a unified voice and the current debate on whether America owes reparations to African-Americans and Native Americans are the tip of the iceberg. Democrats like Elizabeth Warren favor a steep wealth tax, even as Europe is largely abandoning such schemes.

“Others want to abolish the Electoral College and pack the Supreme Court.

“Whereas President Obama realized fully government-run health-care was too radical for the American people, many in his party now believe the problem with ObamaCare was that it forced too few people off plans they liked. The misnamed Medicare for All would cost more than $30 trillion and force almost 200 million Americans off private health insurance.

“The Green New Deal dwarfs Medicare for All in potential cost and damage to the economy. Its supporters aim to do more than merely eliminate the use of oil, gas, coal and nuclear power — they aspire to rid the country of commercial airline travel and flatulent cows, retrofit every building, and provide a universal federal guarantee of economic security even to those ‘unwilling to work.’”

For his part, Jindal says he would choose Trump over the Ds, a point which, perverse as it is, makes just a bit of sense to me if, as reported by the Washington Post this week, U.S. Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is viewed as the “standard bearer” for the Ds.  I would never choose her for anything and, no doubt, I’ll be called a racist for saying so.

To call her a standard-bearer makes little sense because she has no standards. She prefers to fight about problems rather than work to solve them. In that way, she is much like Trump.

I say they deserve each other.

What I long for is someone from the middle who works for the middle. That means it won’t be Trump or any of those running as Ds, except, perhaps, for Joe Biden if he can survive the slings and arrows of others in his own party.

As another movie phrase went, “we need serious people who will work to solve serious problems.”

It’s just so far each day proves that there are almost no such leaders either on or vying for the national stage in politics. As Americans, we are worse for the failure.