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 Trump impeachment hearings – not to mention Trump’s conduct as president – illustrate that many Americans have lost their faith in government. Call it what it is – a lack of trust.

A recent PEW Research Study confirms the failure.

Americans, PEW says, report record levels of mistrust in institutions of government, religion, business and media.

From the study: “Two-thirds of adults think Americans have little or no confidence in the federal government. Majorities believe the public’s confidence in the U.S. government and in each other is shrinking, and most believe a shortage of trust in government and other institutions makes it harder to solve some of the nation’s key problems.”

Yet at the same time, the PEW Study says, “the gig and sharing economies have transformed Americans into a people ready and willing to trust complete strangers to drive us around town, share our homes, borrow our cars, and lend us money.”

Fascinating contrast.

To deal with lost of trust issues, Oregon Common Cause formed a committee several months ago to look at trust issues. Could something be done to restore trust in the public consciousness?

Early in its work, the committee heard comments, via teleconference, Walter Schab, the retired director of the Federal Ethics Office – yes, there is one. [In the spirit of full disclosure, I serve on the committee.]

Given Watergate, or, more accurately, the response to it in the immediate aftermath of the crime and attempt to cover it up, Schab said ethical behavior was viewed more than 40 years ago as critical by public, if only because then-President Richard Nixon and his cronies had so violated the public trust.

Now, so many years after Watergate, he said trust in government has receded from the public consciousness, a perception confirmed by the PEW Research Study cited above.

From my post in the cheap seats out West – not to mention in retirement – I posit these thoughts as among reasons for the decline.

• The fact that the Trump approach to government – he lies on every issue and uses government for his own ends, including to benefit his personal bank account – breaches trust. Further, his conduct prompts many citizens to believe every public official lies and that government cannot be trusted to do the public good.

 

• The fact that Democrats and Republicans cannot seem to agree on anything – even the time of day – breaches trust. There is no middle ground.

 

• The fact that public officials, including staff members for the president, and, even, members of Congress, conduct themselves with no recognition of the “common good” breaches These officials talk and act with impunity toward the public.

I have three examples here, though there are many more.

Number One: Stephen Miller, the aide to President Trump, who appears function as a person who hates ALL immigrants and sides with white supremacy organizations.

In the Washington Post, columnist Michael Gerson wrote this about Miller:

“All this is evidence of a man marinated in prejudice. In most presidential administrations, a person with such opinions would be shown the White House exit. But most of Miller’s views — tenderness for the Confederacy, the exaggerated fear of interracial crime, the targeting of refugees for calumny and contempt — have been embraced publicly by the president. Trump could not fire his alt-right alter ego without indicting himself. Miller is safe in the shelter of his boss’s bigotry.

Number Two: Congressman Jim Jordan has mastered the art of talking utter rubbish in tones of utter conviction. His version of events at the heart of the impeachment inquiry? Rather than committing corruption, Trump was fighting corruption. Military assistance was suspended, in Jordan’s telling, while the president was deciding whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “legit” in his determination to oppose corruption. When Trump found that Zelensky was the “real deal,” the aid was released.

For Jordan and his colleagues on the far right, consistency and coherence are beside the point. Their objective is not to convince the country; it is to maintain and motivate the base, and thus avoid Trump’s conviction in the Senate. The purpose is not to offer and answer arguments but to give partisans an alternative narrative. And the measure of Jordan’s success is not even the political health of his party (which is suffering from its association with Trump); it is the demonstrated fidelity to a single man.

Number Three: Lest anyone believe that I pillory only Republicans, consider this. U.S. Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, walks and talks like Trump. She has no time for facts or views other than her own and she spends all of her time making government the answer for every question in life.

If she knew what she was talking about, she would be even more dangerous. She doesn’t, so thinking people can do to Ocasio-Cortez what the same people do with Trump – consider the source, ignore the source and move on.

The trouble, of course, is that trust in government is continuing to recede and, for me, it is not an overstatement to contend that the very future of U.S. democracy is at stake.