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

I read a foreboding article in The Atlantic a few days ago that catalogued major, billion dollar disinformation campaigns that may affect our next presidential election…disinformation campaigns by all sides.

Without belaboring the text of the article, let me just posit this as the takeaway: Be Skeptical about everything you read or hear these days – yes, everything – and be sure that you develop positions on issues facing this country by relying on various sources of information, not just one or two.

Enough said!

Otherwise, as a director of the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering, I am opening the department again today. Remember, it is one of three I run, the others being the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of Just Saying.

So, here are the good quotes.

From columnist Max Boot in the Washington Post: Maine Senator Susan Collins bless her heart, claimed Donald Trump had learned a lesson from impeachment. She later admitted that such talk was “aspirational” — delusional is more like it — because the only lesson Trump has learned is that the Fifth Avenue Republicans will let him get away with anything.

Trump is un-chastened, un-chained and un-hinged. I fear for the future of our democracy with such a vindictive bully wielding the awesome powers of the presidency with less and less restraint. He is making an example of all those who have exposed his misconduct in the past to ensure that he can get away with even greater wrongdoing in the future.

Comment: I also fear for the future of American democracy, given that disinformation is so rampant.

From Karen Tumulty in the Post: This is the better Biden (what we have seen over the last couple weeks as his poll numbers have dipped, raising the possibility that he might even withdraw from the race), embracing personal vulnerability over electoral invincibility. He is perhaps the most authentic tribune of empathy in public life today — and the starkest contrast imaginable from the man who sits in the Oval Office.

“We have a president who has not an ounce of empathy in his body,” Biden said at a campaign stop Sunday in the ocean-side town of Hampton. “I don’t think he can connect in any way. It’s not about him being a Republican. There’s just simply no empathy. What in God’s name are we doing?”

Comment: Columnist Joe Scarborough also writes recently to credit Biden for rising from the huge personal tragedies, including his own where a tumor almost killed him years ago. The ability to rise may not take him to the presidency, but it does bring him credit as a genuine human being.

From Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal: By ceding moral authority to the far left, the Democrats have lost the power to counter bizarre proposals with simple common sense. When a freshman congresswoman proposes a wildly improbable Green New Deal, instead of responding as Democrats of an earlier day would have —“Whaddya, kiddin’ me?”— they now take it seriously and several adopt it.

When two other freshman Democrats make anti-Semitic pronouncements, no one in a party overwhelmingly the choice of Jewish voters has the authority to tell them to knock it off. When Democrat presidential candidates propose to provide free health care for all, or eliminate college tuition and college debt, or enlarge and pack the Supreme Court, or eliminate the Electoral College, all this is taken in earnest.

And the Democratic Party is being held hostage to identity politics, so that no national ticket can ever again be without a black or female candidate.

Donald Trump’s aggressive personality has hastened the Democrats’ radicalization. Party members measure the intensity of their idealism by their hatred of Trump. The tone and temper of the contemporary Democrat Party encourages — indeed fully supports — this sad condition.

Comment: By adopting so many far left big government proposals, Democrats effectively may be taking themselves out of the chance to win the presidential election later this year.