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.

On the golf course this week, I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine who, like me, has been involved in politics here in Oregon for many years.

Also like me, he usually eschews talking about politics on the golf course for fear of getting into arguments, which deflect from involvement in the game.

This was a bit different if only because both of us knew we had had just about enough of a scurrilous president and his administration, if you could call what he does “administration” in the first place.

My friend made this point.

If he was in Congress, he said, he would have no choice but to vote his conscience rather than to vote, based on some political calculus, to preserve his chances for re-election. If he did the latter, he said he couldn’t live with himself.

In this case, he would be very wiling to consider and vote for impeachment articles against President Donald Trump, even if his political base, somehow, supported Trump.

A story in the Washington Post this morning made the same point in better language than I could have used.

“Republicans,” the story said, “will be judged by history on whether they were judicial and operating on behalf of the United States or just rubber-stamping Trump’s behavior, It puts Republicans in the Senate in a moral conundrum.” [The quote was from historian Douglas Brinkley.]

Impeachment stories from the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post this morning paint a confusing picture of how members of Congress are reacting to what appears to me to be a crisis of our democracy.

Let me add quickly that, in the spirit of an impeachment process itself, the process has to play out rather than reaching decisions based only on early and incomplete information.

I don’t often like to quote Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank because he has made a career in recent years by excoriating Trump, seemingly writing every day about the mercurial and dishonest president (when, to be sure, there is so much to write about).

In a column earlier this week, Milbank asked a good series of questions about what he called the duplicity of Republicans seeking to support Trump.

He asked, “Would Republicans, with their votes on Trump’s impeachment, condone the actions of, say, future President Elizabeth Warren when she:

• Defies congressional power of the purse by unilaterally raiding the Pentagon budget to finance her pet projects?
• Rejects the authority of congressional oversight, disregards subpoenas and refuses to furnish documents, including a whistleblower complaint about the president deemed “urgent” by the intelligence community?
• Is found by an independent prosecutor appointed by her own administration to have engaged in 10 possible instances of obstruction of justice but is not charged because regulations prohibit such a move against a sitting president?
• Approves and reimburses secret payments, in violation of campaign finance law to a person threatening to put out damaging information about her?
• Fires an FBI director who refuses to call off a probe of one of her close associates?
• Declares federal law enforcement officials who investigate her guilty of treason, demands they be put under investigation and succeeds in getting one of them fired and brought to the brink of indictment?
• Rescinds the security clearances of a former CIA director critical of her, as well as the press credentials of journalists who criticize her administration?
• Persuads a foreign leader not to admit Republican members of Congress into his country?
• Grounds the jet used for official business by the congressional leader of the Republican Party?
• Repeatedly releases highly classified intelligence, some to a foreign enemy and some only to Democrats
• Threatens to cut off highway funds and disaster aid to states and territories controlled by Republicans, and declares she has the “absolute” right to move criminals to jurisdictions governed by Republicans?
• Funnels millions of taxpayer dollars to her own businesses, pressures federal agencies and international organizations to do business with her personal enterprises, invites foreign governments to pay millions of dollars to her businesses, and rejects a law requiring her to provide Congress with her tax returns?
• Calls for a boycott of the parent company of a media outlet critical of her, threatens an antitrust action against the owner of another media outlet critical of her, says she can unilaterally order businesses to disinvest from a country and calls for federal punishment of individual businesses she doesn’t like?
• Circumvents the Constitution’s advice-and-consent provision by running the government with “acting” officials (unqualified but loyal to her) not confirmed by the Senate?
• Offers to pardon those who commit crimes enforcing her policies, questions the authority of certain judges because they are GOP appointees and pardons a political ally who ignored court orders?
• Without congressional approval, establishes a de facto network of internment camps, run under inhumane conditions, for a class of people she disdains?
• And, finally, asks and coerces foreign governments to sabotage her Republican opponents’ campaigns?

“Republicans, Milbank concluded, “have blessed all of this and more with their silence. They must now state their positions explicitly. If they vote to accept such conduct by this and, therefore, future presidents, the American experiment will be badly damaged. But if they aren’t at least forced to answer the question, it has already failed.”

As is the case with my friend in the golf course, even as I wait for the impeachment process to play out, I would vote to convict Trump.

He deserves no less than to lose his office for the high crimes he has committed.