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 past-time – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Is this the last blog I’ll write about impeachment?

Probably not, though on this Friday morning, it appears we are all about to witness the acquittal of President Donald Trump from two charges that, truth be told, are exactly right – he tried to bludgeon a foreign country into helping him win the next election and he told Congress to take a hike when it tried to investigate his conduct.

I call this a pyric victory because, as the word is defined, it means “relating to, or resulting from burning” – and that’s clearly what is happening – our sense of ethics and comportment is being consumed by fire, just as is our equilibrium in the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Senate is deciding not to proceed and senators there may end up paying a price as more and more information emerges about the over-the-top actions of Trump.

If I allow myself to focus on the specifics of the impeachment process over the last couple weeks, I end up with a fear that our sense of democracy has turned to ashes. No conduct is beyond the pale.

Here’s the way Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank put it in his Impeachment Diary this morning:

“In the beginning, the president’s lawyers made a relatively benign argument: He didn’t do it. No quid pro quo.

“But House managers tried their case too well. Evidence piled up on the Senate floor over the past 10 days that the president withheld military aid to force Ukraine to announce probes of his political foes. And former national security adviser John Bolton’s firsthand account leaked about the quid pro quo.

“In response, Trump’s defenders shifted to a far more sweeping, and dangerous, defense. They stepped away from denying misconduct and instead declared that the president can do as he pleases — or, as Trump puts it, that the Constitution gives him “right to do whatever I want as president.”

And, this from one of Trump’s lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, who apparently will say anything someone pays him to say: “If a president did something which he believes will help him get elected — in the public interest — that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”

According to Dershowitz, because Trump believes he is the greatest of all presidents, then what he does to win-election is, by definition, in the national interest.

Again, Trump, with Dershowitz as his mouthpiece, says he is above all law.

Pick your word. Startling. Appalling. Ludicrous. Jaw dropping.

Or, pyric? Yes.

Who wins and who loses with Trump’s apparent acquittal?

• Trump wins. His contention that, as president, he can do what he wants whenever he wants, incredibly, has been endorsed by Congress – or at least by the U.S. Senate. Who knows what this worst of all U.S. presidents will do next to express his narcissism.
• The Senate loses because it has demonstrated, not its stance as supposedly the “world’s great deliberative body,” but, rather, its decision to bow at the altar of Trump, the Constitution be damned.
• The House loses because its decision to move ahead with impeachment, whatever the merits of the action in the first place, will only now accrue to the credit of Trump who will claim vindication as he heads toward the 2020 election.
• Americans lose because they now will be voting in an election later this year that already has been tainted by Trump and no doubt, with the no-strings-attached freedom Trump thinks he has and which the Senate is poised to convey upon him, will be tainted again.

With their apparent votes to acquit, senators are embracing a new concept: Right is whatever the president says it is.

And that’s one of the main reasons why I worry for the future of American democracy.

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And this unrelated footnote: Forgive me, but I almost laughed out load late yesterday when news emerged that part of Trump’s vaunted anti-immigrant wall between the U.S. and Mexico had fallen due to high winds. So, it appears there is something more powerful than Trump – Mother Nature.