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.

Remember the time about three years ago or so.

Donald Trump has just been elected president and many of us who favor reasonable and credible government couldn’t believe that a blabbermouth TV reality show how could ascend to the highest political office in the land.

Then, he and his sycophants contended that the largest audience ever had gathered at the Capitol to watch his inauguration.

That was only the start of a litany of lies and exaggerations that has marked this president, putting him clearly in the position as the worst president in U.S. history.

And, if that was all it was – a ranking among presidents – it would be one thing. But Trump’s actions and behavior risk the lives of Americans, which has become especially clear in the coronavirus pandemic. He is a narcissist who thinks always and only of himself.

Then, just what you thought Trump had gone as low as possible, there comes more.

He advises Americans to inject poisonous bleach “for a cleaning” in response to Covid 19.

Say what?

You heard right. Inject poison to save yourself!

Here’s how several Washington Post columnists wrote about this surreal line of comments from Trump:

FROM ALEXANDRA PETRI: “The nightmare of the Trump years is the nightmare of watching someone pour bleach onto a plant and not understand that he is killing it, and then not care that he is killing it. It is the nightmare of watching someone listen to the president, self-administer chloroquine and die. It is a president who does not know poison from medicine and is too ignorant to care that there is a difference.

“Please, don’t inject bleach.”

FROM DANA MILBANK: “My study hasn’t been peer reviewed yet, but my evidence is very strong: President Trump has overdosed on hydroxychloroquine.

“Trump, who claims a “natural instinct for science” not from formal training but because his late uncle was a scientist, once used this innate ability to determine that climate change was a hoax and that windmills cause cancer. More recently he mobilized the U.S. government to make sure thousands of covid-19 patients were treated with the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin — because Trump’s instinct told him the drug cocktail would be a ‘phenomenal game changer.’

“Sadly, evidence from all over suggests that the drugs cause heart problems and worsen death rates.

“No matter! The stable genius dropped his hydroxychloroquine hypothesis faster than you can say ‘snake oil’ and is now touting a new miracle cure for the virus: Injecting the ling with bleach, alcohol or other common disinfectants, possibly along with massive doses of heat and ultraviolet light.

“This was an extended conversation reflecting the grotesque ignorance and total unfitness of the man who at every turn has failed to protect the country during the worst domestic crisis since the Great Depression. It illustrated how he intellectually corrupts those around him, forcing them to sacrifice their own credibility to defend his inanities.”

FROM JENNIFER RUBIN: “But this is not simply another gaffe for Trump or even another dumb idea like the wall. This was an extended conversation reflecting the grotesque ignorance and total unfitness of the man who at every turn has failed to protect the country during the worst domestic crisis since the Great Depression. It illustrated how he intellectually corrupts those around him, forcing them to sacrifice their own credibility to defend his inanities.”

FROM DAVID VON DREHLE: “I thought — hoped — we had hit a low point in the federal response to the covid-19 pandemic when Vice President Pence, chair of the White House task force on the novel coronavirus, toured Sunday morning news shows last week to set a world record for saying nothing in the most possible words.

“Yet this paled next to Trump’s ramblings about disinfectants. Somewhere on the short walk from a scientific briefing to the press room podium, a notion had lodged in the presidential cranium, which meant it had to come out: If Lysol or Clorox can kill viruses on countertops, maybe an ‘injection’ could provide covid-19 patients ‘almost a cleaning.’”

To all those who voted for Trump and could think of doing so again, I say just look at the record and double-dealing. Think of your own word to describe the ignoramus in the Oval Office and find someone – anyone – better to do the job of leading this country.