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.

Election politics often revolves around finding scapegoats to blame for whatever bugs a certain candidate.

Today, look no farther than Democrats who have found a new one – corporations which can be blamed for almost everything.

Daniel Henninger, deputy editor of Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, makes this point in a column that ran this morning.

“With Halloween in the air,” Henninger writes, “it’s the right moment to discuss the central role played in presidential politics by bogeymen—creatures conjured to distract and scare the citizenry. In politics, the bogeyman is always just around the corner. For John F. Kennedy it was ‘the missile gap;’ for Barack Obama, the ‘wealthiest;’ and for Donald Trump, criminals pouring across ‘the border.’

“Naturally, the Democrats running for their party’s presidential nomination needed a bogeyman, and they have created one even scarier than the Trump monster. It’s them—‘corporations!’ At their recent presidential debate, one candidate after another claimed corporations were wrecking the country.”

Henninger writes that Senator Elizabeth Warren, “who knows a thing or two about scaring people,” said this: “They (corporations) have no loyalty to America. They have no loyalty to American workers. They have no loyalty to American consumers. They have no loyalty to American communities. They are loyal only to their own bottom line.”

Politics can get crude. It is possible to understand, if you lose judgment in the quest to win at all costs, why candidates play the race card, the class-warfare card, the anti-immigrant car or any other card.

But, I ask, with Henninger, how has the Democrat Party arrived at playing the anti-corporation card?

First, not all corporations are evil. A number of them make huge mistakes, which generate national headlines. Look no farther than Boeing.

But the anti-corporation rant comes against a growing economy that is producing historically high job creation and rising wages for people regardless of income level, race, sex or sexual orientation.  Corporations provide jobs for thousands of Americans.

The New York Times wrote recently that the jobs boom was forcing corporations to dig deeper for workers: “With the national unemployment rate now flirting with a 50-year low,” the Times “noted that companies are offering work-from-home options to parents, accommodating employees with disabilities, reducing educational requirements and waiving criminal background checks.”

In his Wall Street Journal column, Henninger posits that Democrat presidential candidates aren’t talking about the real economy “because most of them don’t understand it.” They give no credit to private sector job-creating efforts even as they advocate for more and bigger government.

The same negative view of corporations appears to be under way in Oregon.

In the Secretary of State race, for instance, one candidate is pinning the campaign on limiting corporate political contributions without one mention of political contributions from public employee unions. The latter, of course, fuel Democrat campaigns, so the question to win for a Democrat argues against any mention of the extent of union contributions even as corporate contributions are described as evil.

As I watch politics these days – both in Oregon and Washington, D.C. – I wish those running would appeal to our best interests as Americans. Avoid finding bogeymen — immigrants, those with certain sexual orientations, those with different economic status.

Advocate for the public interest. Find middle ground solutions.

And, to put a point on it for this post, don’t go after corporations, unless they deserve the scrutiny. Recognize that many of them contribute to economic gains and hire workers – and it is those very workers who pay taxes, thus funding government programs important to all, including Democrats.

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.

Here’s the reality for a single payer system.

If the United States moves to such a system, the cost will be a huge, defining issue. Depending on your point of view, it may be a cost worth paying or one too high to contemplate.

There are essentially three options:

1. Impose higher taxes to pay for the multiple trillion-dollar price tag.
2. Allow the federal budget deficit, already at record levels, to go even higher.
3. Divert money from other programs to pay for health care.

Add to this the possibility, also difficult to achieve, that it might be possible to cut the cost of health care at a time when many citizens believe access is a right.

Analyzing these costs issues is incredibly difficult, as illustrated by a piece by economist Richard Rubin in the Wall Street Journal.

Rubin wrote: “The Democrat presidential hopeful from Massachusetts (Elizabeth Warren) could propose a plan to partly pay for a single-payer system by finding ways to reduce health-care costs, expanding budget deficits or adding new levies on the richest Americans. But replacing insurance premiums would likely require taxes on individuals and businesses.

“And she has to find a way to explain the shifts in payments and coverage to voters. If her plan works as advertised, many Americans would pay less for health care but owe more to the government, trade-offs that wouldn’t be easy for individuals to estimate or calculate.”

Rubin’s point strikes me as exactly right. Which is one reason why Warren is taking so long to announce her plan for how to fund her preoposed single payer health care system. I am not defending her silence on costs to this point, but arriving at a conclusion is difficult for her, both in terms of substance and politics.

Meanwhile, Time Magazine – yes, it still exists –- showed up with an interesting story on how many physicians are becoming pointedly more active on health care reform, often in favor of a single payer system, rather than sitting on the sidelines or, as the magazine remembers, adopting a conservative approach.

Here is how the article started:

“Miriam Callahan remembers the patient who clarified her decision to become a political activist. He was homeless, suffered from severe arthritis in his hip and was self-medicating with fistfuls of Advil. That gave him a bleeding gastric ulcer that landed him in the emergency room at a public hospital.

‘Callahan, who is a medical student at Columbia University, and her colleagues patched him up and sent him back to the shelter, where he began self–medicating once again. He was stuck in a horrific cycle. Arthritis isn’t a disease that should kill people, Callahan says, but in this case, it was becoming a real possibility. ‘It’s immoral,’ she says, ‘the way that we treat people in this country.’

“In the months since seeing that patient, Callahan has channeled her frustration into political organizing—and she’s hardly alone among her fellow medical professionals.

“With roughly 27.5 million Americans uninsured and nearly 80 million struggling with medical bills, doctors, nurses, medical students and other patient-facing professionals are finding themselves on the front lines of a broken system.

“Like Callahan, many are looking for ways to fix it. The result is that the medical field, which was once one of the most conservative professions, is becoming an unlikely hotbed of progressive political activity. One of these advocates’ top goals? Single-payer health care, now known most often by its politically charged nickname: Medicare for All.”

Immoral, as Callahan contends?

Perhaps.

But it also would be immoral for this country to embark on a trillion dollar health care system – some credible estimates put the cost at more than $32 trillion — without knowing how to pay for it.

Back to Warren.

Rubin, the WSJ columnist, suggests that Warren “has to find a way to explain the shifts in payments and coverage to voters. If her plan works as advertised, many Americans would pay less for health care but owe more to the government, trade-offs that wouldn’t be easy for individuals to estimate or calculate.

“Financing is just one piece of the proposed shift to a single-payer system that would expand coverage, upend health-industry jobs, and put the government more firmly in charge of cost control and access to care.

One key question for Warren relates to how much money she needs to generate to fund her proposal.

Single-payer advocates argue that such a system could reduce health-care costs by removing insurance-company profits and administrative inefficiencies. Skeptics say it would increase total costs by covering more people and encouraging the use of free services that now cost money.

Rubin reports that, according to the Urban Institute, a non-profit economic and social-policy research organization, increased costs would outweigh savings in any single payer approach. The Institute says the most generous single-payer plan would require between $29 trillion and $34.8 trillion in additional federal revenue over a decade.

A “single payer lite” plan, excluding undocumented immigrants and imposing cost-sharing on individuals, would need between $13.3 trillion and $17.3 trillion.

My wife asked a very good question this week. How, she asked, did countries with socialized medicine reach political consensus to embark on such a system – and she asked this question after “our” recent experience with socialized medicine in England, a good experience.

I don’t know how the consensus was reached, but, for me, the question prompted thoughts of the political dislocation in this country – dislocation that ignores potential middle-ground solutions in favor of extremes.

The left-wing wants a full and complete federal government entitlement on the apparent theory that federal employees should control health care access for you and for me.

The right-wing, for its part, wants nothing to do with any larger government role, so ritually opposes everything, even better health care.

Never the twain shall meet.

Too bad, because this country deserves better on one of the most momentous issues of our time – health care.

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.

Washington Post editorial writers have posted this axiom, which says volumes:

“There is an old Washington saying that if you’re arguing about process, you’re losing.”

That would apply to the 30 or so Republicans who stormed a House Intelligence Committee hearing in a secure Capitol facility, objecting that Democrats have, so far, conducted impeachment proceedings behind closed doors.

The stunt disrupted the testimony of Pentagon official Laura Cooper and temporarily distracted Washington from the evidence – and the roster of evidence is growing — of President Donald Trump’s misconduct.

The fact Trump’s Republican defenders are focusing on process, not substance, means the latter – substance – doesn’t matter, at least to Trump supporters.

Every day, the evidence mounts against Trump and, even White House strategists, if there are strategists in the White House at all, appear flummoxed about what to do or say. Plus, the Washington Post reports today that Republicans in the Senate are concerned about what new revelations will emerge about Trump’s misconduct.

This summary ran in the Washington Post over the weekend:

“Anyone who tried to follow the bouncing ball of Trump’s hourly utterances and tweets was doomed to fail, and there is no relief on the horizon. Simply tracking the provocations, contradictions and exhortations that fill the average day of this president can be an overwhelming task.”

“But,” the Post adds, “it has also become an increasingly consequential one as the impeachment case against Trump unfolds and his foreign policy decisions come under greater scrutiny both in the United States and abroad.

“He ordered a surprise withdrawal of troops from Syria, prompting immediate fighting, loss of life and a shift in the balance of power in the Middle East.

“He also announced his intent to award his own golf course a major federal contract for an international summit, and then reversed that decision days later amid criticism he was using the power of his office to help his struggling business.”

In all of this, by tweet and overstatement, Trump tries to control the news as he done so often as a reality TV star, not to mention president for now, what is it, three years. He often succeeds as many reporters focus on his provocations, not the substance of the charges against him.

Still, the weight of the evidence against Trump continues to mount. And that, for this country, is a good thing. Time to throw him out of office.

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.

Given that we are in the middle of a presidential election, perhaps it should not be surprising that health care policy remains off track in the nation’s capital.

Most who are running tend to utter platitudes to appeal to a political base, not real-world proposals for better health care policy.

On one side, Democrats, including those running for president, want health care to be a full federal responsibility, even though most don’t want to deal with how to pay for the federal largesse.

On the other side, Republicans are no better. All they appear to have the will to say is “no” – nothing to contribute to a reasonable, middle-of-the-road outcome.

For this to be the case in America, which ought to have better ideas, is a crime. Both sides are to blame.

And, amid all of the failure to articulate a sound, compromise plan, we continue to see Democrat presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren touting the benefits of a plan they cannot describe.

At least, Sanders, on occasion, admits that taxes on the middle class will have to increase to fund his new federal entitlement. Warren won’t, saying only that she has a plan, but will wait weeks before disgorging it.

Republicans simply utter typical right wing dogma.

From the cheap seats out West, I have developed my own plan, at least in part so I would be able to say something other than no to health care reform ideas. My notions are informed by more than 25 years of dealing with health care policy in Oregon on behalf of hospitals and insurers.

I have summarized my plan in previous posts, here are the four planks in my health care policy plan.

1. It won’t be popular in some quarters, especially with some Republicans, but, first, a critical component of reform is to require all citizens to have health insurance, either by buying it if they can afford it, or by having it provided by government if they cannot.

Without everyone in the to-be-insured pool, any system will collapse, much as occurred with ObamaCare. The very rationale for insurance is that the largest pool possible should be covered in order to spread the risk.

Think of this way. All of us who drive cars are required to have automobile insurance. If we don’t, we pay a price. The same policy should exist for health insurance.

2. Second, a catastrophic health insurance plan should be provided so that those who cannot afford regular insurance have an option for a lower-cost plan.

As the American Enterprise Institute has written: “Health insurance is also important for financial security. The ObamaCare replacement should make it possible for all people to get health insurance that provides coverage for basic prevention, like vaccines, and expensive medical care that exceeds, perhaps, $5,000 for individuals.

“Those Americans who don’t get health insurance through employers, or Medicare and Medicaid, should be eligible for a refundable tax credit that can be used to enroll in a health-insurance plan. The credit would be set at a level comparable to the tax benefits available to individuals with employer-sponsored insurance plans. The subsidy would be enough to make a basic level of catastrophic coverage easily affordable for all Americans.”

3. Third, any new middle-of-the-road health coverage approach should accommodate people with pre-existing health conditions.

I have mixed emotions about this because, inevitably, the price of insurance will go up with the added risk of covering pre-existing conditions. Yet, there is a reasonable social consensus that people should not be penalized financially for health problems largely outside of their control.

And, I firmly believe in the concept that human being should take care of other human beings (if they are willing to accept help) rather than leave the differently-abled to the scrap heap.

4. Fourth, any new plan should allow broad access to health-savings accounts (HSA). ObamaCare pushed millions of Americans into high-deductible insurance without giving them the opportunity to save and pay for care before insurance kicks in. There should be a one-time federal tax credit to encourage all Americans to open an HSA and begin using it to pay for routine medical bills. And HSAs, combined with high-deductible insurance, could be incorporated directly into the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

My views also are informed by a recent experience with health care in England, where there is nationalized health care. While on a European cruise, I came down with a potentially significant health care problem that resulted in me staying in an English hospital for 14 hours of emergency are before I was discharged – in full health, I add.

The charge for my 14 hours was zero – yes, zero – which means that, while I was not paying for my care, someone else was…taxpayers in England. Through this experience, I could not help but that think that smart policymakers on both sides of “The Pond,” should be able to take the best of England and the best of America and produce a meld of both. It would mean a better system in both places.

But, sigh, developing a smart solution is not likely in the presidential election. Those on the left will advocate for a government-run system without knowing the price. Those on the right will advocate for doing nothing, again without knowing the price.

And, surely, there will be a price if we do nothing – a price in the form of higher taxes or a price in the form of lesser health care than we deserve.

AN UNUSUAL POST FROM ME: TWO VIEWS ON IMPEACHMENT

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.

Competing propositions:

• What Trump did violated presidential norms and should result in his removal from office.
• What Trump did doesn’t matter because he won in 2016, has blanket immunity as president and should remain in office unless he gets beat in 2020.

Those, essentially, are two views of the Trump impeachment process making the rounds in Washington, D.C.

So, I was struck this week when I read commentaries – one in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and a second in the Washington Post – that came to opposite conclusions on the impeachment process.

The differences suggested to me that the only way to go would be to post these commentaries to illustrate the two views, which are, in many ways, representative of what is going on in America as Trump faces a real threat to his office. The post, therefore, is long, but, to me at least, worth reading.

Paul Waldman from the Washington Post and Dan Henninger from the WSJ are both very capable journalists. Waldman says the Democrats are proceeding effectively to build a case against Trump. Henninger contends the Ds have moved far too quickly and should have waited to oust Trump through the 2020 election.

Whom do you believe? I favor Waldman, given the height, depth and breadth of Trump’s misdeeds. But Henninger’s points also are worth considering.

*********

Surprise: Democrats are actually mounting an effective impeachment inquiry

By Paul Waldman, Washington Post columnist

If there’s one thing everyone in the political world agrees on, it’s that Democrats are a bunch of screw-ups who can’t get anything right. The impeachment process was supposed to be just one more example: They were fools for not starting it sooner, then they were dumb for starting it at all, then everything about it was supposed to be disastrous.

But now? From both a substantive and political perspective, the impeachment inquiry is going about as well as you could hope. Democrats are, in fact, getting this right.

That’s not to say everything’s been perfect. For instance, the leadership chose to focus on the Ukraine scandal and not include the many other impeachable acts Trump has committed as part of the inquiry. There’s a reasonable case you could make for either approach, but there are certainly plenty of high crimes and misdemeanors just around Ukraine.

So let’s look at where we are now. Keep in mind that we’re in only the first phase of the inquiry, in which depositions are being taken privately from key officials. What have we learned?

Despite the White House’s attempts to obstruct the investigation, several officials have testified, and their accounts of events are beginning to fill in a shocking picture of presidential misdeeds. At this point, it’s undisputed that Trump ordered his “lawyer” Rudolph W. Giuliani to set up a separate, quasi-official Ukraine policy, which Rudy did with his (allegedly criminal) friends, to coerce Ukraine into helping Trump’s reelection. Along the way, Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine, attempting to get the country to mount a probe of Biden that would produce something damaging — or at least provide a justification for Trump to publicly proclaim that Biden was corrupt.

Giuliani’s parallel foreign policy initiative sucked in a range of officials, nearly all of whom understood how inappropriate it was, and many of whom are sharing what they know with Congress.

Every time another one of them testifies, we get alarming new revelations of how unusual, improper and incompetent the whole thing was. Critically, those testifying are not partisan opponents of the president but respected career civil servants who have worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations. Their testimony has been devastating to Trump — and there’s more to come.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are left resorting to buffoonish stunts such as the one they pulled Wednesday, storming a secure room to protest the fact that they were being kept out of a deposition of a Pentagon official — except they weren’t being kept out, because Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee were in the room ready to question the witness, and members of the other two committees participating in the impeachment inquiry were welcome to attend as well.

Their strategy, if you can call it that, is being shaped by the president himself, who cares only about whether Republicans are angrily shouting at a sufficient volume on his behalf. If he turns on Fox News and sees them snarling and red-faced, he thinks he’s winning. Meanwhile, “Republicans have increasingly complained that defending Trump against those accusations is a herculean task made more difficult by the president’s impromptu tweets and the lack of coordinated messaging at the White House.”

The biggest problem Republicans have, however, is the facts. It’s indicative of how brutal this process has been for the administration that the president and his advocates can’t seem to decide on what the defense of him is supposed to be. Are the allegations all fabricated? Did Trump not pressure Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden to help his reelection campaign, or was it completely fine that he did so? Was there no quid pro quo, or are quid pro quos good? Whatever they’re saying today, they’ll probably be saying something different tomorrow. They can’t decide because there is so little ambiguity around what Trump did, and no good way to justify it.

Which is why the methodical approach the Democrats are taking is working well. In the current phase, they’re gathering testimony from officials, which is adding up to a damning indictment of the president. Then next month, they’ll move to public hearings, which will provide dramatic, made-for-TV moments in which Trump’s abuse of power will be laid bare.

This will then lead almost inevitably to a vote on impeach. The president is unlikely to be convicted in the Senate, which would require 20 Republican senators voting to remove him, but by then Democrats will have done all they could to gather information, display his wrongdoing for the public to see and understand, and impose what accountability they can.

And according to polls, it’s already working. Up until a few weeks ago, a majority of Americans opposed impeachment, but that has flipped. Now the polls show a plurality, or in some cases a majority, saying Trump should be impeached.

I suppose it’s theoretically possible that next month’s public hearings will finally show that the whole thing is a witch hunt, that Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) suddenly display competence and dismantle witnesses so skillfully that the entire American people realize how innocent Trump is. It’s also possible that by next month I’ll be the starting point guard for the Golden State Warriors.

More likely, the process from this point forward will make Trump’s malfeasance even more clear and widely understood. Republicans will continue to flail as they try desperately to find a defense of Trump that doesn’t sound ludicrous. The president himself will grow more unhinged, rage-tweeting day after day in order to keep his base from abandoning him. And all of it will play out against the backdrop of the 2020 election, when the voters get to decide if they want four more years of this.

It’s almost as if the Democrats know what they’re doing.

*******

Pelosi’s Impeachment Blunder

By Daniel Henninger, deputy editorial page editor, WSJ

Nancy Pelosi had the Democrats’ impeachment strategy right the first time: Don’t do it. But apparently even a lifetime in the mud-filled trenches of politics wasn’t enough to toughen the House speaker against the Democratic left’s compulsion to impeach Donald Trump.

Anyone of any political stripe knows that the most psychologically distressed Democrats have wanted to impeach this guy, somehow just get rid of him, from day one.

Before Democrats regained control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections, the Trump takedown was supposed to result from the Russian-collusion narrative, which got up to speed in January 2017 and then steamrolled across the country for two years of media leaks and the Mueller investigation, ultimately and fantastically going nowhere.

Within a day of the Mueller report’s release, dismissing the Russian-collusion story lines, the opposition pivoted to the obstruction-of-justice narrative. Somehow, the pivoters must have assumed that the American people, after enduring the Mueller odyssey, would not notice that this extraordinarily disruptive investigation had come to nothing. And that people would saddle up to join the next get-Trump posse. That didn’t work.

We’ll pause in our own narrative to posit a de minimis level of legitimacy to what they’ve done. If the opposition party and, in our unique times, the opposition press want to spend what capital and credibility they have in a round-the-clock effort to take down a sitting president, that’s their prerogative. Nothing in the Constitution says elected officials are obliged to do anything productive.

But translating the public’s votes into a permanent presidential takedown had better work, because if they don’t pull off impeachment and drive Donald Trump out of public life next year, the losses for the Democrats and the media will be devastating. It’s the familiar do-or-die stakes of trying to take out the king.

Because Donald Trump loves living dangerously, he and the increasingly mysterious Rudy Giuliani handed his opponents the unexpected excitement of the Ukraine-Biden narrative—and at last an opening for impeachment. The New York Times, delirious at the prospect, has even created an ominous little logo for its coverage, typically several pages a day—“The 45th President: Impeachment.”

Maybe it really will be the third time’s the charm for the Trump-elimination forces, but the impeachment project looks like it’s starting to go wobbly.

For starters, it’s still just sort-of an impeachment. There’s been no vote in the House and no sign the Judiciary Committee is drawing up articles of impeachment, as in the past. Instead, Adam Schiff’s intelligence committee is interviewing Ukraine-related State Department officials—in secret hearings. It resembles a show trial, with the “public” parts emerging as selective leaks to the impeachment press.

But the most telling impeachment development this week wasn’t any paraphrased testimony from Mr. Schiff’s private hearings. It was the news that Speaker Pelosi’s impeachment timetable has been delayed “to sharpen their case” for doing it.

It is now evident that a vote to impeach President Trump isn’t likely to occur before Thanksgiving, as many assumed, but will slip to December. Then, of course, the trial phase will pass to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Mr. McConnell reportedly wanted it all over by the end of the year, but what’s the rush? The Trump trial could run through January—31 priceless campaign days before the Democratic Party’s intensely competitive primaries. The Iowa caucus vote is Feb. 3, then comes New Hampshire’s primary on Feb. 11; Nevada’s caucuses are Feb. 22; and the crucially important South Carolina primary arrives Feb. 29.

Instead of competing for their party’s nomination, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Michael Bennet will spend invaluable campaign time planted on Capitol Hill during the days that the Pelosi-Schiff Trump trial drones on. Sens. Sanders and Harris can’t call Mr. Trump the “most corrupt president” in the history of the country and then skip out on the trial of public enemy No. 1 to campaign in a downstate Iowa diner.

Joe Biden, Mayor Pete, and Hillary’s new friend Rep. Tulsi Gabbard get to romp daily through the primary states, but who’s going to notice with the Trump impeachment trial siphoning away the nation’s media’s attention?

Surely Nancy Pelosi knew when she stood firm against opening the impeachment dam that the interests of her party’s anti-Trump compulsives—nearly all from safe seats—and her party’s broader election interests were not aligned.

The left has always believed that some deus ex machina, such as Robert Mueller or a nonstop storm of negative press stories, would magically make the Trump presidency just go away—rather than the more plausible likelihood that the relentlessly combustible Mr. Trump would eventually discredit himself in the eyes of most voters.

The American left throughout its existence has had a deep mistrust of the U.S. system, so rather than wait until November 2020 for voters to sort all this out, we get this crypto-impeachment. Like the sure-thing election of 2016, it too could backfire.

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.

Yes, this is a blog about golf, one of my favorite subjects.

A major change is coming at the first of the year, January 1, 2020. It is the date of implementation of a new World Handicapping System.

No longer will there be six separate systems around the world. There will be one system.

If you don’t know what handicapping is in golf, here is a quick definition as provided by the United States Golf Association (USGA):

“The USGA defines handicap as a measure of his current ability over an entire round of golf, signified by a number. The lower the number, the better the golfer is.” A handicap essentially signifies how many strokes above or below par a golfer should be able to play.”

And, whatever else is true, the handicap system allows golfers of any ability to play straight-up against any other golfer.

To prepare for the new one world system, Oregon Golf Association (OGA) handicap director Kelly Neely has provided a summary for golfers in Oregon. And, without apology, given Neely’s credentials, I repeat here what she wrote. [By credentials, I mean that Neely just completed 25 years as the OGA handicap manager and all of us in Oregon are lucky to have had her involved on our behalf.]

Here, then, is what she wrote.

There are several items to keep in mind as we prepare for the new World Handicap System set to debut in 2020. Below is a sneak peak at what’s to come.

1) The minimum number of scores to establish a Handicap Index will be three 18-hole rounds made up of any combination of 9 or 18-hole scores. A new player establishing a Handicap Index will use PAR + 5 as their maximum score per hole.

• Current system requires five 18-hole rounds (or 10 nine-hole scores combined)

2) For a full scoring record of 20 scores, the system will take the 8 lowest score differentials to calculate the Handicap Index.

• Current system takes 10 lowest score differentials

3) When abnormal playing conditions cause scores to be unusually high or low on a given day, a Playing Conditions Calculation, or PCC, will adjust score differentials to better reflect the player’s actual performance.

• Current system has no comparable adjustment

4) Net Double Bogey (or Double Bogey Plus) will be used when a player’s actual score or most likely score exceeds a maximum number derived using the following formula. All players, no matter their Course Handicap, will use Net Double Bogey:   Net Double Bogey = Par + 2 +/- Handicap strokes received or given on a hole

• Current system uses Equitable Stroke Control and can change according to the Course Handicap range in which the player falls

5) The Maximum Handicap Index for men and women will be 54.0. This will encourage more novice golfers to get a Handicap Index.

• Current system has a max of 36.4 for men and 40.4 for women

6) Under the World Handicap System, a Handicap Index will update daily. This feature ids designed to encourage golfers to post their scores immediately following their round.

• Current system updates Indexes on the 1st and 15th of each month

There. Now you know about the new system. It will be good for golf.

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.

It is possible that the Trump presidency hangs on three Latin words – quid pro quo.

Democrats in the U.S. House are gathering evidence to show that Trump engaged in a quid pro quo, which means getting “this for that” and that he did so to gain an advantage over a political opponent in the coming U.S. presidential election.

Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, provided more evidence by using a recent press conference to say, yes, his boss did condition aid on Ukraine actions to prompting an investigation of the Bidens.

Mulvaney tried “to walk back” his comments, but that attempt only served to underscore what he said initially.

Washington Post columnist Mark Thiessen shows up this week with an interesting column on the “quid pro quo” phrase. He says there is nothing wrong with quid pro quos in general – “it just depends on what the quo is.”

Here are excerpts from what Thiessen wrote:

“…The United States engages in quid pro quos all the time when it comes to foreign assistance. Our aid is not charity; Americans expect to get something in return for it. We have leveraged U.S. assistance in exchange for a host of objectives: Economic reform, democratic reform, better pursuit of corruption, access to strategically important areas and so on.”

In 1978, Thiessen says Jimmy Carter agreed to provide Egypt with billions of dollars in foreign aid in exchange for making peace with Israel, as part of the Camp David Accords. In 2004, George W. Bush created the Millenium Challenge Account, which required countries to meet a host of eligibility requirements — free speech, free assembly, rule of law, property rights, transparency — before they could receive a grant of aid.

Thiessen reports that Congress also imposes quid pro quos on U.S. foreign aid all the time.

“Even former vice president Joe Biden has admitted to a quid pro quo with Ukraine. He held up $1 billion in loan guarantees (a quid) to get them to fire a prosecutor who was not investigating corruption (a quo). This was perfectly legitimate, he says, and he may well be right.”

In the current case, the problem is there is substantial evidence that the quo for Trump was a foreign investigation of Biden, one of his potential opponents in the 2020 presidential race. So, to build off Thiessen’s column, the quo matters.

As more evidence emerges to confirm that quo, it could doom the Trump presidency, though, of course, it is still possible that Republicans in the Senate won’t vote to convict and Trump will continue to get away with serious misdeeds that compromise the presidency, if not the country.

Here’s one person hoping the “Trump quo,” as I now will be calling it, will bring down this president.

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.

Pick your image.

Each one in the headline could portend problems for Donald Trump.

As we learn more about his misdeeds each day, a vote on impeachment articles by the U.S. House looks more and more likely, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi now says it will be delayed and won’t occur for several weeks instead of at Thanksgiving.

The U.S. Senate, of course, is a different story; conviction may still be a stretch, no matter when articles come over from the House.

But, I hearken back to the impeachment processes involving Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton – yes, I lived through those – my sense is that, the farther we go through the process, the more the weight of evidence falls negatively on Trump.

In Nixon’s case, he was not convicted, but resigned from office because he would have been convicted based on the results of his work in an alleged criminal enterprise, plus the cover-up. Clinton wasn’t convicted, but his presidency was tainted until its end.

Of course, if Trump has a strategy here – he rarely has a strategy for anything – his approach may be to portray himself as a victim so that status inflames his base. Even his use of the word “lynching” this week sparked some support from his supporters who believed the over-the-top word was accurate, even if it implied a linkage to incredible crimes against black persons in our past.

But back to images. As we learn more information:

• It appears that a tsunami is building and, soon, could crash over Trump.
• It appears that a series of small shocks could result in “the big one” – a major earthquake that topples Trump.
• It appears that a snowball is rolling down, gathering more weight and speed as it makes the traverse to engulf Trump.

Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle made a similar point this week.

“At this point, it’s clear Trump is going to be impeached. What’s open to question is whether the Senate will remove him. For a long time, that answer had seemed equally obvious: Of course it wouldn’t. There would be a quick trial amid complaints about ‘lynching’ and similar rhetoric, and Trump would stay in office. That’s still the conventional wisdom — but allow me to outline why I think it might be wrong.

“Start with the fact that congressional Republicans don’t much like him. They defend him mostly because they are afraid of his loyalists. It’s hard to know how numerous those voters are, but here’s one reasonable proxy: On Super Tuesday, 2016, when the Republican primary race was still hotly contested, Trump failed to garner 50 per cent of Republican primary voters in any of the 11 states.

“While most GOP would like to get rid of Trump, any individual who stands up to him faces a backlash from the Trump loyalists — and while they could probably prevail if they all shifted at once, so far, they haven’t been able to coordinate a collective action.”

McArdle suggests that impeachment hearings on Trump “might expose the public to his administration’s internal decision-making processes, at length, and not filtered through anonymous sources and a left-leaning mainstream media.”

She also avers that “Trump’s ill-conceived outbursts could start generating undeniable real-world consequences rather than eliciting fuzzy complaints about his lack of ‘civility’ and ‘norms.’ Outbursts could cost him his more weakly attached voters. More and more Republicans hear from previously Trump-loyal friends that that’s it, they’re through. That opens up emotional space for them to consider rejecting him, too.

“With Trump’s numbers worsening, it will then become harder to maintain the illusion that Trump is somehow immune to normal political rules. By the time the poll numbers for removal inch up to somewhere in the range of 55 to 58 per cent, it becomes clear Trump will almost certainly lose in 2020 — and worse, take the Senate down with him.

“Now his support really begins to collapse, particularly among evangelicals.”

Yet, this morning, one of my favorite columnists, Daniel Henninger, deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, disagrees. He contends that Pelosi has gone too far by starting the impeachment process as a sop to the left, especially the far left, which still cannot believe that Trump won in 2016.

The left, Henninger writes, wants more government and cannot get the result with Trump, so wants to force him out office before 2020.

Well, with all due respect to Henninger who is closer to the process than I am, I believe a reckoning is coming for Trump.

To go back to the images, I believe a tsunami, an earthquake or a snowball downhill are building and could spell the end of Trump. Good.

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.

Sometimes I feel a little like Dana Milbank, the columnist for the Washington Post, who has made a living over the last three years lodging huge criticisms of Donald Trump.

I, too, find it within reason to rail against the excesses of Trump, perhaps even, as Milbank does, on a daily.

You know the guy, Trump. Incredibly, he occupies the Oval Office in the White House. Though who knows if he spends much time there, preferring to be out on the campaign trail inflaming his political base.

Patterning myself after Milbank, I include in this blog several quotes about Trump and, goodness knows, there are many options for inclusion.

All of this goes into one of three departments I run, the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering. Along with the other departments – the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of Bits and Pieces – I have a free hand to run the operations as I see fit.

Now, about Trump.

APPROPRIATELY, THIS FIRST ITEM FROM MILBANK:  “He was straight out of Foggy Bottom central casting.

“Lean and bespectacled, with neatly combed gray hair and a pressed charcoal suit, William B. Taylor Jr., the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, gave not so much as a glance toward the massed cameras as he arrived Tuesday (to provide a deposition to the U.S. House).

“But once inside, he delivered words that could end a presidency.

“In August and September of this year, I became increasingly concerned that our relationship with Ukraine was being fundamentally undermined by an irregular informal channel of U.S. policy-making and by the withholding of vital security assistance for domestic political reasons,” Taylor testified. Taylor said President Trump himself made the release of military aid to Ukraine contingent on a public declaration by Ukraine’s president that the country would investigate Joe and Hunter Biden and the 2016 election.

“In an instant, the impeachment inquiry no longer rested on the credibility or motives of a whistleblower, nor arguments about the meaning of quid pro quo. Taylor, an Army veteran and a respected diplomat who obviously kept detailed notes, will not be easy to discredit.”

Comment: Milbank is right. The case against Trump is getting stronger every day.

FROM COLUMNIST ROBERT SAMUELSON IN THE WASHINGTON POST:  “No one has worked more aggressively to trigger impeachment than the president. You may remember that, during the campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump suggested that, should he win, he might become one of the most “boring” presidents in history. There was in this curious pledge — which, as we now know, has been broken along with many other campaign promises — at least the slim possibility that Trump would recognize the crucial difference between running for office and running the country.

Imagine, if you will, the consequences if Trump had embraced this pivotal distinction…What mattered was tone — the ability to debate issues without impugning the character of his opponents. To be sure, partisan debate is full of exaggerations and simplicities. Still, it usually respects some bounds of truth and civility. Following this traditional path, Trump might have boosted his popularity, especially given the strong economy inherited from President Barack Obama. Even fierce critics might have conceded that, in practice, the “boring” Trump wasn’t so bad.

“Trump appeals to his supporters’ basest human instincts. He regularly uses immigration to stir racial and ethnic tensions.”

Comment: Yes. Trump appeals to base instincts because, in fact, that’s all he has himself.

FROM KIMBERLEY STRASSEL IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  “The nation has struggled to categorize the Democratic presidential candidates. Senator Elizabeth Warren is some days a “populist,” others a “liberal.” Senator Bernie Sanders is at pains to define “democratic socialism” as apart from plain, old “socialism.” The media describes Senator Amy Klobuchar as a “centrist” or “moderate,” even as she insists on “proven progressive.”

“There’s an easier taxonomy: Lefties vs. Crazy Lefties. That’s the choice Democrats have in the primaries, and the two pools from which Donald Trump’s opponent will come.”

Comment: I am not sure where Trump fits on any political spectrum, but almost all of those still running as Democrats hew so far to the left it is also hard to find them.

I am waiting for someone to emerge from the center. May be a long wait.

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.

One of my favorite quotes was uttered by former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

She said: ‘The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

She’s right.

And many of those competing for the Democrat nomination for president express that aspiration exactly.

One is Bernie Sanders who expresses no hesitancy to spend other people’s money. But the leader could well be Elizabeth Warren.

Here is the way Wall Street Journal editorial writers put it this morning:

“If it’s Monday, it must be another giant spending proposal from one of the Democrat presidential candidates. This week, like most weeks, the winner is front-runner Elizabeth Warren, who called in a post for another $800 billion in federal spending on K-12 education.

“Her ‘plan’ — she loves that word — would quadruple current spending on Title I funds for schools with low-income students to $450 billion over 10 years. She also wants $200 billion more for students with disabilities, $100 billion in other grants, and $50 billion for school buildings. Remember when K-12 used to be largely a state and local responsibility? It won’t be with Ms. Warren.

“The Warren campaign said she will pay for this with her proposed wealth tax, which she claims will raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years. If you believe that, you probably don’t have a good tax lawyer or accountant. The senator nonetheless says this wealth windfall will finance her $1.07 trillion universal child-care plan, $610 billion for free college tuition, her plan to cancel $640 billion in student debt and now $800 billion for K-12 education. This will be the hardest working wealth tax in history.

“No word yet from the senator on how she will finance her Medicare for All plan, which would cost the mere pittance of $32 trillion over 10 years.”

Spending other people’s money?

Yes. That’s exactly what Warren wants to do as she appeals to voters who want more government spending and hand-outs.

Before you know it, she will run out money. Or, better put, you will run out of money to fund her grandiose government-centric schemes.

Or, the country will be bankrupt.

For me, I have had enough of Donald Trump and his violations of law, not to mention failing, in any respect, to do what is right as president as he favors his own aggrandizement over any benefit for the country.

But, the big-government schemes of Warren and others on the far left are no better.

We need a candidate from and for the center to make sure Margaret Thatcher’s quote doesn’t come true here.