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.

“In this abundance of distractions and dramas, the political fate of the nation oscillating between extremes, a fairly subdued President Trump delivered his annual address to Congress in a monotone. From time to time, he would cock his head in a quizzical, half-challenging way, working his smiles and freeze-pose grimaces.

“Behind him sat Vice President Mike Pence, as mysteriously impassive as always, and the woman who stage-managed Trump’s impeachment.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi compulsively worked her teeth with lips and tongue, her fidgeting countenance alive with fury. When the president was finished, she emphasized the theater of the evening by dramatically ripping up the text of the speech, as if to say, like Samuel Johnson kicking a stone to dismiss that bishop (Berkeley) who preached the unreality of things: I refute him thus!”

This is how essayist Lance Morrow described the scene in the U.S. House as President Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union address only a day before the U.S. Senate stooped to new depths by acquitting him of impeachment, even in the face of substantial evidence that he demanded that a foreign country intervene in the next presidential election.

Does the way I wrote the previous paragraph indicate my bias?  Yes.

Trump compromised the good of this country – an open and fair election – for his own good because he relates the two as being equal.  What is good for him is good for the country.

With impeachment acquittal, it is useful to consider the long-range implications of what has happened in Congress over the last couple months.

The main implication:  Abuse of power by the president has now been ruled entirely appropriate.

As for the State of the Union address — normally a time when the country comes together to review the past and look toward the future — I didn’t watch Trump’s reality show appearance where again he took credit for everything even when he doesn’t deserve it and ridiculed everyone who does not bow at his altar.

Many Democrats in the chamber couldn’t stand his bluster, so walked out.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in what had to be a planned demonstration, tore up a copy of
Trump’s speech just as he finished — and all of it was caught by TV cameras.

As I write this, I cannot help but remember the governor I worked for in Oregon, Victor Atiyeh.  A hallmark of his style was that he did not seek credit for good things he did or that happened on his watch.  Rather, he deflected credit and took solace in the simple fact of the good things.

A contract to Trump?  Yes.

After impeachment acquittal, we, as Americans, face several realities:

• One is that Trump, emboldened by what has happened, will continue abusing his power because, after all, even he has said there are not bounds — zero — and the Senate has now concurred with him.  Would he ever learn from a failure — being impeached is a failure — and change his behavior.  No.
• A second reality will be that new presidents — and I hope there is a new one after Trump, either in 2020 or 2024 — will face no guardrails on their actions.
• A third reality is that the U.S. Senate has lost all claim to being the “world’s greatest deliberative body.”  It will take years to reclaim that standing, if it ever will happen.

Here’s the way Washington Post political writer Philip Rucker put it in last weekend’s edition of the newspaper:

“The evidence of President Trump’s actions to pressure Ukraine was never in serious dispute.  After a systematic presentation of the facts of the case, even some Senate Republicans concluded that what he did was wrong.

“But neither was the verdict of Trump’s impeachment trial ever in doubt.  The impending judgment that the president’s actions do not warrant his removal from office serves as a testament to Washington’s extraordinary partisan divide and to Trump’s uncontested hold on the Republican base.

“The expected acquittal also has profound and long-term ramifications for America’s institutions and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, according to numerous historians and legal experts.

“In effect, they say, the Senate is lowering the bar for permissible conduct for future presidents.”

Speaking of lowering the bar, consider what Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz told the Senate (yes, I have written about this before, but I do so again because the comment still stuns me).

If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected “in the public interest,” Dershowitz intoned, “then that cannot result in impeachment.”  So, Trump can demand that Ukraine interfere in the U.S. election and can ask China to do the same.

No problem,  Dershowitz says.

George Washington Law School attorney Jonathan Turley wrote this:

“That idea provided the most dramatic — and damaging — moment of the trial.  Dershowitz’s argument produced audible gasps.  It was an argument that would have made Richard Nixon blush and suggested that any abuse of power short of a criminal act would be by definition unimpeachable.

“The damage had been done. The president’s defense was then tied inextricably to this extreme and chilling argument.”

We, as Americans, are victims of Trump and it is possible, if Democrats don’t get their act together by proposing a candidate who can appeal to folks who don’t reside in Trump’s alternate universe, then we’ll face four more years of presidential abuse.

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.

Several of my former colleagues at CFM Strategic Communications – now called CFM Advocates – will be spending long days at the Capitol in Salem for the next month or so.

They are there as lobbyists for what has come to be called “the short legislative session.”

But the reality is that the session may be even shorter than originally planned.

That’s because Republican members of the Oregon House and the Oregon Senate may decide to walk out rather than tolerate what they believe is an over-the-top climate change bill called “cap and trade.”

If they walk out, it would deprive the process of a quorum which must exist for any business to be done. And, in an already short session, that could be the death of the session this time around.

Here’s how my CFM colleagues wrote about the issue in their Capitol Insider blog:

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2020 Session Opens Under Shadow of a Potential GOP Walkout

“The 2020 Oregon legislative session convenes today, but it isn’t certain what will happen when it does as both Senate and House Republicans have shown signs they will walk out to block passage of another Democratic attempt at a cap-and-trade measure.

“’It’s just ungodly how many bills and what type of bills are being proposed for a 35-day session,’ Senate Republican Leader Herman Baertschiger Jr. was quoted as saying in a story by Oregon Public Broadcasting. ‘To try to do climate change policy in 35 days when it should be done over five or six months — it’s a crying shame.’”

“In addition to cap-and-trade, other controversial issues abound – foster care, public records, gun control measures, a declaration of a statewide homeless emergency, increased funding for mental health services, more investment in emergency preparedness and a handful of new taxes.

“Governor Brown and Democrat leaders have made cap-and-trade legislation a top 2020 session priority after a similar bill failed to pass in the Senate in the waning days of the 2019 session. Democrats say they have made concessions to lessen opposition and ease impacts on rural areas. Republicans have expressed doubts the concessions go far enough.

“Budget issues will be prominent in the 2020 session. The Department of Human Services is requesting an additional $126.8 million in spending authority, $14.3 million of which would go toward reducing the number of children placed in foster care. The Oregon Health Authority is seeking $30 million to bolster staffing, open additional mental health beds and lay groundwork for new residential treatment centers.

“Brown wants $12.7 million to ensure the ShakeAlert warning system is operational by 2012. She also wants $150 million or more to enhance the state’s wildfire capability and forestland management to avoid fires.

“A certain flashpoint will come from a Democrat proposal, House Bill 4005, to require gun owners to secure their weapons with trigger locks. Senate Bill 1538 would allow local governments and school districts to ban concealed weapons.”

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When the idea of annual legislative session was proposed in 2010, it required changing Oregon’s Constitution to achieve the objective and that would require a ballot measure. The idea was sold to voters as a way to address emergency budget issues and to consider other non-major issues that could not wait for the normal long legislative session every other year.

Things have changed, so much so that some of those interested in legislative processes in Oregon have begun saying it may be time to re-think the annual, short-session idea. Do away with it, they say.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I did not vote in favor of annual sessions. I thought it was a mistake then, suggesting that we were moving toward a professional legislature that could end up resembling Congress.

And that would not be a good result.

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.

This is day President Donald Trump will deliver his “State of the Union” address from the rostrum of the U.S. Senate chamber and the day before Republican senators will turn a deaf ear to his abuse of power.

So it is a significant day in the political life of this country.

For me, however, something purposeful – golf – will take precedence and I will find a way not to watch both events, the State of the Union and the Senate impeachment vote.

But, as both events are pending, there is no better way for me to “commemorate” them than to post a column by one of my favorite writers, Michael Gerson, whose material is published in the Washington Post.

He makes a series of great points this morning under this headline —To cheer Trump is to submit to him.

Here is the Gerson column, word for word.  I wish I would have been smart enough to write this stuff.

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If a divine censor were to remove everything deceptive, exaggerated, malicious and hypocritical from President Trump’s third State of the Union address, I suspect the president’s walk to the rostrum would take longer than the speech itself. But since a mysterious Providence is unlikely to intervene, citizens will need to make their own analysis. And as a former speechwriter, I have a few tips for informed viewing.

My main advice? Distrust the words. All of them.

Here I mean not just the specific words Trump uses, but their overall aim. Normal presidents have employed words in the State of the Union challenge and unite. They have taken, of course, some partisan potshots at opponents along the way. But their broader goal has been to assert and serve some vision of the common good. Even their exaggerations and simplifications were generally dedicated to this objective.

In the case of our abnormal president, rhetoric is bent to a different purpose. Trump — with the apparent approval of congressional Republicans — conflates his political fortunes with the national interest. This is the reason he saw nothing wrong with twisting Ukrainian arms to undermine an opponent and cheat in a presidential election. Nothing done to help him can ultimately be judged corrupt because he regards his success as identical to the nation’s.

This is the plain meaning of the Dershowitz Doctrine — the theory advanced during the Senate trial by legal expert and Trump defender Alan Dershowitz that, since public officials universally regard their election as serving the public interest, this intention can’t be the basis of a “quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” (Dershowitz now denies this was his actual meaning, but he will be forever remembered as the scholar who gave constitutional blessing to malignant narcissism.)

This approach to politics has rhetorical implications. Some are relatively innocent. To Trump, self-praise is a kind of patriotism. So major portions of his speeches are occupied with infantile boasting. This may not do great damage to the republic, but it can be uncomfortable to watch.

Other strategies are more sinister. Much of Trump’s rhetoric is not an attempt at persuasion; it is the assertion of dominance. When he declares — as he recently did — that Mexico is currently paying for construction of his border wall, he is not seeking a response of “true” or “false.” He is requiring a decision to “submit” or “resist.” Swallowing his interpretation of facts and events is the evidence of loyalty to his person. To cheer is to yield.

More than any other recent politician, Trump uses language as an instrument of power. To him, epistemology is ideology. A willingness to accept his claims — and to view all competing information as fake and false — is what defines his movement. And his job is made easier by a conservative media bubble that allows people to live in Trump’s alternative reality 24 hours a day.

So how does Trump employ such profound influence over so many American lives? First, he attempts to keep his followers in a constant state of agitation against elites, presented as their oppressors. Both red and blue America can discover — in a vast nation made minuscule by social media — sufficient material for daily outrage. We now have a president who finds it politically useful to turn natural differences into the trench lines of an endless culture war. It is deeply damaging to the health of our union. And no three-minute peroration about national unity at the end of a State of the Union is going to change this.

The second way Trump employs his power is to encourage hostility toward some of the most vulnerable members of the human family, including migrants and refugees. If Trump dares to repeat the charge that he has been unjustly treated by Congress, viewers should recall the kind of due process found in Trump’s “Remain in Mexico program.

More than 56,000 asylum seekers — including rape victims, pregnant women and children with autism — have been condemned to squalid camps, victimized by crime and kidnapping, denied adequate access to counsel, and subjected to a review process rigged against them. In God’s eyes, they are Trump’s real jury.

Here is my viewing advice: Any claim of credit deserves deep skepticism. Any claim of exoneration for an abuse of power that everyone — really everyone — knows he committed deserves laughter. Any attempt at rebranding deserves derision. And any claim of victimization deserves the quality of justice that Trump himself provides.

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.

Did I say my last post might, in fact, be my last on the impeachment process?

Yes, I did.  But I was wrong.

Here is another one.

I simply cannot avoid posting again given the incredible significance of what’s poised to happen in the U.S. Senate this week – acquitting Donald Trump despite the grievous actions he took to benefit himself, including in the 2020 election.

Senate acquittal will do nothing but embolden Trump.

Beyond demanding that Ukraine interfere in the election – with national security money held out as a brige — he went one up on that by asking China to do the same.

If you think he won’t do it again, think again.

Senate Republicans, who bowed at the altar of Trump, have had guts to say that the best approach, for all of us as Americans, is to allow the presidential election to go forward.

Sure.

We all should vote in an election that already has been tainted and, inevitably, will be tainted again.

Not surprisingly, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post editorial writers came to different conclusions as impeachment nears its end.

From the Wall Street Journal:

“It is too low a constitutional bar for the House to claim, as it does, that Trump can be impeached because Democrats think his motives were corrupt. The acts themselves must qualify as ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ Trump’s acts don’t qualify—because asking aid recipients to investigate corruption isn’t illegal, and in any case the aid to Ukraine was delivered on time and no investigation of Joe Biden was started. T his does not condone Trump’s request, which was reckless and dumb, but it isn’t an impeachable offense.”

From the Washington Post:

“Republican senators who voted to suppress known but unexamined evidence of President Trump’s wrongdoing at his Senate trial must have calculated that the wrath of a vindictive president is more dangerous than the sensible judgment of the American people, who, polls showed overwhelmingly favored the summoning of witnesses. That’s almost the only way to understand how the Republicans could have chosen to deny themselves and the public the firsthand account of former national security adviser John Bolton, and perhaps others, on how Mr. Trump sought to extort political favors from Ukraine.

“So cowed are Republicans that they have echoed the president’s indefensible claims that there was nothing wrong with the pressure campaign. Their votes against witnesses have rendered the trial a farce and made conviction the only choice for senators who honor the Constitution.”

And this from the New York Times:

“Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to foresee the lesson of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. ‘When you strike at a king,’ Emerson famously said, ‘you must kill him.’

“Trump’s foes struck at him but did not take him down.

“With the end of impeachment, a triumphant Trump emerges from the biggest test of his presidency emboldened, ready to claim exoneration and take his case of grievance, persecution and resentment to the campaign trail.”

Apart from the impeachment result – acquittal – the most convulsing impression for me over the last few weeks resides with the attorney, Alan Dershowitz, who always is seeking the limelight.

A Washington Post editorial said this about Dershowitz:

“When a lawyer for President Trump suggested to senators that whatever a president does in pursuit of re-election is inherently in the public’s interest, the moment crystallized fears among some of Trump’s critics about creeping presidential autocracy.

“’If a president does 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,’ said the lawyer, Alan Dershowitz.”

In this way, Dershowitz parrots Trump.

If something is good for Trump – in this case a tainted election – that that something is good for America. Because, remember, Trump is a great president and, thus, anything is does to promote his re-election equates to the public good.

What has happened over the last week in the impeachment trial contains huge risks for America. The main one is that it has now been confirmed by Congress – or, at least the U.S. Senate – that Trump can do whatever he wants without fear of recrimination.
To him, that even means shooting someone in the middle of Times Square.

It also means rigging the next election.

Only time will tell what Trump does next in his dictatorship.

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.