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.

There is a notion around that the impeachment process under way in Washington, D.C. will not claim a wide television audience because it is so, well, boring.

Perhaps and that may, in fact, be the intent for how Senate Republicans have designed the process to support “their” president, Donald Trump. Long hours. Late evenings. Limits on media access. Etc.

But, for me, a political junkie, the reality is this: I have made time to watch the impeachment process.

Not a strange admission for me because I spent more than 40 years in a career devoted to politics — from reporting on it, to helping to run it, to lobbying in and around it.

So, for me, the impeachment process is a study in one of the most serious political processes for this country, one the founders set out with specific intent, not to mention incredible foresight.

A few perceptions about the process so far:

1. TRUMP HAS BEEN IMPEACHED: That inescapable fact is that President Donald Trump has been impeached, an action taken against only three other presidents in the history of this country.

Impeachment is like an indictment in court – it is not a conviction. But, still, impeachment will be a stain on the presidency of Trump, one I say he richly deserves.

2. THE CLOWNS WHO REPRESENT THE WHITE HOUSE: White House lawyers have conducted themselves with a lack of class – not to mention a lack of accuracy – as they have stood in the well of the U.S. Senate chamber to defend their boss.

It should be no surprise that the lawyers representing a president who has made more than 16,000 false statements since taking office should resort to their own lies — and it won’t matter to the president’s die-hard supporters.

Here’s the way Washington Post columnist Max Boot put it in today’s edition:

“White House Counsel Pat Cipollone claimed on Tuesday that, ‘Not even Schiff’s Republican colleagues were allowed into the SCIF’ — referring to the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility in which the House Intelligence Committee conducted depositions of witnesses.

“False. The 48 Republican members of the three committees involved in impeachment proceedings had access to the basement SCIF.

“Cipollone also repeated the absurd claim that Schiff ‘manufactured a false version’ of the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky.

“False. Schiff did not deceive anyone about a partial transcript that had already been made public. Schiff said at the time, ‘Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates.’”

Making his own contribution to this blizzard of hokum, another White House lawyer, Jay Sekulow, claimed that “the president was denied the right to cross-examine witnesses … denied the right to access evidence … and denied the right to have counsel present at hearings.”

Again, Boot writes: “False. The president was offered a chance to have his lawyers participate in House proceedings and declined to take it.”

3. WHAT’S THE DEFINTION OF ”HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS?:   Much has been written about this, including a claim from some that the phrase must encompass an actual crime based on a statutory violation.

Not true.

According to Boot: “But these are relatively inconsequential whoppers (the previous ones uttered by Cippilone and Sekulow) compared with the biggest lie of all.

“This is the oft-repeated claim that a president can only be impeached for breaking the law — not for abuse of office. Not even Jonathan Turley, the star Republican witness during the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearing (and a law professor at Georgetown University), is buying it.

“He wrote in Wednesday’s edition of The Post: ‘It is a view that is at odds with history and the purpose of the Constitution. While framers did not want terms such as ‘maladministration’ in the standard as dangerously too broad, they often spoke of impeachable conduct in non-criminal terms.’”

4. AND THE WORLD’S GREATEST DELIBERATIVE BODY?: That’s what the Senate often has been called, but the title often struck me as an overstatement, if not an oxymoron.

Most of the time senators head to the chamber to speak on this bill or that bill, but almost no other senators are there to listen. Cameras are positioned so as to avoid showing the empty chamber. Of course, senators have to show up when the time comes to vote.

For impeachment, the rules require senators to be in the chamber, if not in their assigned seats, at all times. We’ll see if, in the end, it matters.

The Senate is not likely to convict Trump (though I say it should), but at least current processes require them to be in their seats and give the appearance of listening.