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.

The headline in this blog contemplates an unthinkable prospect – me being involved directly in the impeachment process.

If I somehow got stuck in the process, I wouldn’t want the involvement. I would not volunteer for it or allow myself to be drafted.

All of that said, I do have a few thoughts about the process, if, perish the thought, I was involved:

• I would never look at polls because, frankly, in today’s news cycle, they are not accurate. Because co-called “news” trips out moment by moment, it is impossible to test public opinion. At least not possible to do so accurately, even if the reputation of the pollster or polling firm is beyond reproach.
• I would avoid trying to keep up with the incessant tweets from President Donald Trump who strikes me as increasingly unhinged. He illustrated his off-the-wall craziness when, earlier this week, he made the Finnish president sit through his by-the-seat-of-his-pants news conference.

As a general rule, I think even the reputable press – such as the Wall Street on the center right and the Washington Post on the center left – pay far too much intention to Trump’s tweets. Let him emote without giving what he happens to say even more air time and space?

• I would work hard to come to my own conclusions on the impeachment inquiry, given the gravity of such a process in our political life.

For me, it is tempting to come to an early conclusion because the president has reacted so brazenly over his now-three years in office. I find his behavior beyond the pale for someone who holds the highest political office in our land – and I say that without regard, at this moment, to supposed policy positions on various issues, if, in fact, Trump ever works hard enough to establish a “policy position.”

I also worry that the person who is leading the House impeachment process, Representative Adam Schiff, is behaving so far in a way that does not lend credibility to the process. Rather, his conduct gives aid and comfort to Trump and those who believe the impeachment process is only a coup for those who still cannot believe Trump won the presidency in 2016.

The process needs to work effectively to reinforce faith on the part of the American public that it – the process – will proceed in a fair and fact-based approach, not one oriented to various public pronouncements from the politicos among the Ds, the Rs or Trump.

For once in our recent political life, let’s facts prevail.

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.

Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University, contends, in the Wall Street Journal today, that the current Trump scandal is different from all previous Trump scandals.

No way to know, at this moment, whether Drezner is right or not. And Trump will continue his routine tactic, which is, via various over-the-top tweets, to accuse everyone else of wrong-doing in an attempt to absolve himself.

Drezner posits that there are five reasons why Ukraine is far worse than previous probes of Trump, including the one that involved Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Here are the reasons, according to Drezner:

1) This is a presidential scandal. Trump’s treatment of women, his tax fraud, even the Mueller investigation primarily concerned Trump’s activities before becoming president. The Ukraine business is entirely about his alleged abuse of presidential power for personal gain. This is not about his staff or subordinates; it’s about him.

2) Trump’s staffers are making everything worse and not better. As the Mueller report concluded, “The president’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the people who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.” It is a credit to those staffers that ,in refusing Trump’s orders, they helped stop him from committing crimes.

Now, the staff response to the Ukraine call was to try to cover up its contents, thus successfully adding a cover-up to the original scandal.

3) Trump is making everything worse. Maybe Trump believed that ,after the Mueller investigation, he was bulletproof. This time around, however, every Trump response has been a disaster. If he thought the release of his conversation with Zelensky would put this all to rest, he was mistaken. His Twitter attacks on the whistleblower and on Representative Adam Schiff have only added another possible article of impeachment to the list. [I add that Schiff, the leader of the impeachment process in the House at the direction of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, needs to be more careful than he has been about maintaining a commitment to the process, not arguing with Trump.]

4) The White House’s talking points stink. The reasons for this are unsurprising, as White House talking points cannot obscure Trump’s apparent abuse of power. Efforts to muddy the waters have not succeeded.

5) Previous Democrat reticence gives this more meaning. No one can say that Pelosi wanted to take this path. She had been the primary brake on impeachment since January. Now she is saying that pursuing impeachment would be worth losing the House in 2020. GOP partisans will dismiss her previous reluctance, but for everyone else, that switch in her rhetoric is a powerful signal.

Good points from Drezner who says he is only a politics professor from a small university in a small town. He sells himself short.

Meanwhile, as always, Trump doesn’t sell himself short.

In his effort to attack the whistleblower and Democrats’ impeachment push, Trump has grasped at the tools he knows: Communication and storytelling, according to Meena Bose, executive dean at Hofstra University’s Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs.

“President Trump understands public communications, and this is an effort to gain the upper hand publicly, to control the narrative,” Bose said.

She doesn’t think he is serious about trying to have Schiff arrested, but “he’s speaking to his most loyal supporters” when he suggests that his — and their — political enemies should be strung up, Bose said.

There is little doubt but that Trump will continue lofting broadsides against anyone who he feels doesn’t concur that he is the smartest person in the room and, as president, can do what he wants without reproach.

I always have thought that an impeachment process, if undertaken in the U.S. House, could work to Trump’s favor, energizing his base to support him in 2020 no matter what. That might still be the case.

But, recent public opinion polling suggests that support for voting for impeachment articles is growing and, in terms of politics, could force Senate Republicans to take a difficult position if articles from the House head over to the Senate.

With new evidence about Trump’s behavior and conduct, the Senate Rs would have to decide whether to support him. Could be a tough vote.

The point is this: The more we know about Trump’s behavior and conduct (through the impeachment process) the more any reasonable person might support his exit, by whatever means – conviction through impeachment or losing at the polls.

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.

This, remember, is one of three departments I run with a free hand to manage as I – and only I – see fit.

The others are the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering.

I suppose what appears below could fit into Good Quotes Department, but I choose Bits and Pieces. 

From James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal: “Virtually every major candidate has a proposal that would cost a trillion dollars or more, and even those positioning themselves as moderates, like Pete Buttigieg, have multiple trillion-dollar plans.

“It increasingly looks like an arms race in which case a proposal needs a 13-digit price tag to appear bold and plans costing mere billions risk being taken as not serious. Both Kamala Harris and Julián Castro have $10 trillion plans to address climate change.

“Sanders has at least four mega-proposals dealing with Medicare, climate change, college-tuition costs and, most recently, affordable housing.

“Even Amy Klobuchar, who has repeatedly criticized her opponents’ proposals as unrealistically large, has a $1 trillion infrastructure plan.”

Comment: All of this calls to mind a good phrase – “it is easy to spend other people’s money.”

I wish at least a couple of those running for president from the left would limit the “government hand-out” emphasis from their proposals. Is there a role for government? Sure. Should it cost everyone more money than they have? No.

Notable & Quotable: Pelosi Against Impeachment: The Wall Street Journal shows up today with a quote from Representative Nancy Pelosi back in 1998 when she represented California and was not Speaker of the House.

Here is what she said: “Today, the Republican majority is not judging the president with fairness but impeaching him with a vengeance. In the investigation of the president, fundamental principles which Americans hold dear—privacy, fairness, checks and balances—have been seriously violated.

“And why? . . . We are here today because the Republicans in the House are paralyzed with hatred of President Clinton. And until the Republicans free themselves of this hatred, our country will suffer.

“I rise to oppose these unfair motions, which call for removal of the president of the United States from office.”

Comment: Now, to be sure, the current situation involving Donald Trump is different from the one involving then-President Bill Clinton. But, in the current case, Pelosi needs to be careful to run an impeachment process that, whatever the result, comes across as fair and open.

At the moment, she is coming under some criticism from House Republicans that she has not held a vote on whether to begin the process, just starting it on her own motion. That, Republicans contend, silences them from discussing whether they agree or not. Surely, they would not agree.

But, even in my role as a huge critic of Trump, I also believe leaders should pay close attention to the process so it appears to be fair, though there is little doubt but that Trump will impugn it at every turn.

Columnist Hugh Hewitt in the Washington Post: “If you are a member of #TheResistance or a #NeverTrumper, it is doubtful you will allow yourself to see the enormous problem with the move toward show hearings in the House and a vote on articles of impeachment.

“If you are an #AlwaysTrumper, you will be in a position to believe that an off-the-rails House is abusing the provisions of impeachment for purely partisan purposes.”

Comment: First, the Washington Post deserves credit for giving Hewitt space to write when he disagrees staunchly with the Post’s editorial position in favor of impeachment.

Second, Hewitt is right. AlwaysTrumper and NeverTrumper folks will never agree on impeachment. To Trump troops, it will be another attempt by the left to invalidate the 2016 election. To Trump opponents, it will be about time for Trump’s conduct and rhetoric to be unveiled as beyond the scope of a “real president.”

The term “real president” is mine and indicates where, for what it’s worth, I stand on the reality of government run amok. Trump is the worst president in U.S. history. The Ds may recognize that, but are moving so far left as to be off any kind of political spectrum.

I say a pox on both – or all – sides. The risk is that the very future of American democracy is at stake.