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.

I wrote the other day about the incredible fact that Donald Trump’s polling numbers are going up despite all of his bumbling in the coronavirus pandemic, which he has made worse by actions, inaction and exaggerations, if not outright lies.

But a column by Colbert King, deputy editor of the Washington Post editorial page, gave me more perspective on why the numbers may be going up.  To posit that Trump has a strategy for anything gives him too much credit for the ability to think – which he does not have – but King says Trump’s relentless attacks on the media are designed as a strategy to boost his poll numbers.  Because, I guess, he or his handlers recognize that, for various reasons, many Americans don’t hold the media in high regard.  So, capitalize on the antipathy.

As a former newspaper reporter, I care a lot about quality journalism, the kind practiced by such outlets as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Oregon Public Broadcasting, the Salem Reporter and the Oregonian.  To be sure, there are reporters who go beyond the bounds of quality and solid practice by making themselves “the issue.”  Rather than report stories, they become the stories.  Still, my sense is that most reporters are trying “to do the right thing” by informing Americans.

To buttress my blog on Trump’s poll numbers, I reprint here King’s column which appeared under this headline:  “Wondering what’s behind Trump’s improved poll numbers? His attacks on the press.”

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Seems like President Trump can get away with saying and doing just about anything he wants. The extent to which he has achieved that end is demonstrated by the credit he is getting for his handling of the coronavirus crisis. Trump, in truth, has contributed more to the confusion and disruption plaguing the country’s response to the pandemic than any other public official in the land. Yet he was able to call in to “Fox & Friends” last Monday morning and brag, “I’ve gotten great marks on what we’ve done with respect to this. I’ve gotten great marks.” He happens to be on to something. How did it come to this?

Because Trump is accomplishing what he set out to do when he launched his presidential bid: bring down the press in the public eye to the point where his word, not ours, is believed.

Some of us could see it coming.

In February 2017, one month after his inauguration, I wrote that there was more to Trump’s attacks on the media than just demagogic assaults to manipulate coverage. There was, I speculated, a more strategic calculation at play. He regards us as rivals standing between him and what he wants. He knew as a candidate, and knows as president, that we are going to watch and report relentlessly on what he does — or fails to do.

“His aim,” I warned, “is to denigrate the work of the media so that our reporting and analyses are summarily dismissed by the public.” And regretfully, that goal is being achieved.

Half the country approves of his handling of the crisis, according to RealClearPolitics, and his overall approval rating has been on the rise.

How else to explain Trump’s improved standing in the face of irrefutable evidence of his failures in leadership? When competence, mature judgment and trustworthiness in the White House are most needed, Trump is giving the nation untruths, wild exaggerations and irresponsible declarations off the top of his head. “Have the country opened up and raring to go by Easter”?

How adrift is he from common sense?

He said at a campaign rally in New Hampshire on Feb. 10, “Looks like by April . . . when it gets a little warmer, [the coronavirus] miraculously goes away.”

As of noon on Friday, the United States had more than 245,000 confirmed cases and the death toll exceeded 6,000, more than the number of people who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The numbers have risen higher since.

Petty, impulsive, vindictive and completely out of his depth, Trump is the narcissist who has made this crisis all about himself.

And yet he’s riding high.

He is pulling it off by successfully disparaging the one force in the country that can put the spotlight on his presidential incompetence and hold him accountable — the media.

His barrage against us has been steady and unrelenting: “among the most dishonest human beings on earth,” “scum,” “the news is fake.” These are not off-the-cuff invectives.

They are essential weapons in Trump’s arsenal. It’s called branding.

Trump tipped his hand during a March 2016 campaign rally in Boca Raton, Fla., when he said, “You have to brand people a certain way when they’re your opponents.”

That’s what he was doing when he berated NBC’s Peter Alexander in a rant over a coronavirus question, calling him “a terrible reporter” and characterizing Alexander’s question about hospital shortages and possible fear among Americans as “a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people.”

Trump was doing the same thing when he scolded and insulted “PBS NewsHour” correspondent Yamiche Alcindor for asking him perfectly legitimate questions about charges he had leveled on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.

To a well-grounded question in November 2018 by CNN correspondent Abby Phillip, who, like Alcindor, is black, Trump responded, “What a stupid question . . . but I watch you a lot. You ask a lot of stupid questions.”

There’s a point to his verbal bullying and abuses.

Trump aims to slime the media as unintelligent, untrustworthy and undeserving of respect. He wants his supporters to judge reporters as out of line if they pursue questions that raise the possibility that someone like him may be capable of moral corruption.

So, he belittles, and demeans, and searches for chances to publicly put us in our place. He wants a media that is as undemanding and agreeable as the supplicants at Fox News.

Trump, with Republican help, has neutered Congress. Try as he might, however, he can’t make us cower.

Trump didn’t create the coronavirus. But he sure as hell has contributed to the country’s woes by playing down the threat and fumbling the federal response — all the while blaming state and local governments, local hospitals and the media for the chaos he helped cause.

Ratings be damned. If anything, now’s the time to double down on coverage, and tell the public all it needs to know about this public health and economic calamity.

The public won’t get the truth from Trump.

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So, Trump trashes the media and becomes more popular.  Not with me.

Footnote:  And, I cannot resist the impulse to post this comment from Washington Post writer Daniel Drezner who compares Trump to a toddler.  “…not even a crisis as massive as the novel coronavirus has stopped the president from behaving like a cranky toddler.  His toddler traits have significantly hampered America’s response to the pandemic.  They aren’t new, either.  In the first three years of his term, I’ve collected 1,300 instances when a Trump staffer, subordinate or ally — in other words, someone with a rooting interest in the success of Trump’s presidency — nonetheless described him the way most of us might describe a petulant 2-year-old.  Trump offers the greatest example of pervasive developmental delay in American political history.”