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.

As I sit mostly at home during the coronavirus pandemic, I don’t have much else to do than to think of new blog topics.

So, this morning, in recognition of the fact that I run the three departments named in the headline, I prepared this blog not knowing for sure in which department the various posts belonged.

Doesn’t matter, for, as the director of all three, I get to make the final decisions without regard to what anyone else thinks.

Sound familiar?

Yes, you may say, reminds of the guy sitting the Oval Office today who makes all the decisions without regard to what anyone else thinks other than the group that has come to be called “Trumpians.” All of us are paying the price for his unenlightened leadership – but that is a topic for another post.

So, for today, here goes.

FFOM THE WASHINGTON POST: “President Trump often speaks of federal payments coming to many Americans as an act of his own benevolence, calling the bipartisan stimulus legislation “a Trump administration initiative” and reportedly musing about printing his thick-and-jagged signature on the government checks.

Trump touts the deployment of the USS Comfort to New York Harbor in personal terms, saying it was his choice to allow the hulking Navy hospital ship to be used to for coronavirus patients — and even traveling to “kiss it goodbye” before its trek north.

“And Trump talks about the Strategic National Stockpile of ventilators and medical equipment being shipped to hard-hit states as if it were his own storage unit, with governors saying they recognize that in turn they are expected to tread gingerly with him or risk jeopardizing their supply chain.”

COMMENT: Sounds like Trump whose rhetoric is bolstered by his own belief that he is the smartest person in any – yes, any – room., That arrogant view is bolstered by Trump’s son-in-law Jarod Kushner who described federal medical stockpiles as “his” stockpiles.”

When we need enlightened leaders who will put America first, we get Trump who puts himself first.

THE SPEED OF VACCINES IN A PANDEMIC: The Wall Street Journal reported this late last week:

“Everyone is eager to find a cure for covid-19. Some people — notably President Trump, in his nightly press briefings on the pandemic — have touted the promise of hydroxychloroquine, an old malaria treatment. He’s suggested that patients should take it, asking, ‘What do you have to lose?’

“Even experienced scientists and clinicians tend to overestimate the promise of new drugs and minimize the risks. This is why randomized clinical trials are the gold standard in medicine, and why we use randomization even when testing treatments for patients who might be willing to try anything (those with late-stage cancers, say, or highly fatal infectious diseases like Ebola).

“The question today is: How do we conduct such trials at pandemic speed? Officials, families of patients and the public are clamoring for results; researchers, even scrupulous ones, may find it tempting to jump the gun on announcing promising news. The answer is to stick with the gold-standard research methodology — no shortcuts — but look closely at each of the steps involved in running a trial, to see how to make them faster. The good news is that we can accelerate the process without compromising scientific standards.”

COMMENT: It always s has struck me that the key to our future without COVID 19 is to find a vaccine. Not a brilliant thought, I know, but still ”a thought.”

And, without trying to come across as some kind of expert, it also has struck me that it should be possible for smart scientists, supported by smart government managers, to bring vaccines to market in shorter time frames than the customnary one year.

Here’s hoping for the smart people to prevail, thus leading us out of the COVID 19 thicket.

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST: Columnist Max Boot does a great job in his most recent piece excoriating Donald Trump for his outrageous conduct. Here’s how Boot wrote it:

“The most dangerous contagion we now confront is the coronavirus, which has killed more than 20,000 Americans and thrown more than 16 million out of work. The second-most-dangerous contagion is the conspiracy-mongering, hostility to science and outright irrationality promulgated by President Trump and his loudmouth media enablers. It will take intensive contact tracing to follow the spread of crackpot ideas: Is Trump infecting the cable news hosts, or are they infecting him? Suffice it to say, the president and his media fans are both afflicted with perilous misconceptions that are making the threat from the coronavirus far more acute.”

COMMENT: There is a proper balance between the views of government scientists and the views of the nation’s political leaders. And Trump has not found it.

The latest indication  is that Trump may be thinking of firing the nation’s leading epidemiologist in the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has come across to many Americans as a reasonable and reasoned expert.

If Trump does fire him, it will only confirm our worst instincts about this president. But, then again, those instincts, at least for me, are pretty well carved in stone already.