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.

It’s often interesting how a well-turned phrase can get to the bottom of an issue without going through all of the detail.

Thus, the one in the headline.

“If President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has taken the Trump approach, this column would be in German.”

The column in question was one written by the Washington Post’s Max Boot and skewers Donald Trump for his strategy – if he actually operates with a strategy – to distract from his huge mistakes by criticizing someone else — everyone else.

As Boot says, if this happened in World War II, we’d be speaking German.  Roosevelt concentrated on winning the war, so the allies did.

The Boot quotes lead the opening again of one of three departments I run – the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering. [The others are the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of “Just Saying.”]

From Max Boot in the Washington Post: “It remains to be seen whether the ‘very stable genius’ will succeed in distracting the public. He has definitely distracted himself.

“Trump has been distracted recently from managing the pandemic by fixating on Michael Flynn and related matters, ranting in private about the Russia investigation, complaining about James Comey and others in the FBI, and making clear he wanted to talk in the run-up to the election about law enforcement targeting him.

“If FDR had taken Trump’s approach, this column would be in German.”

Comment: Read the last paragraph. Nothing more needs to be said.

From Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler: He and his colleagues explore Trump’s tendency to double down on falsehoods in their forthcoming book, “Donald Trump and His Assault on the Truth.”

“One hallmark of Trump’s dishonesty is that, if he thinks a false or incorrect claim is a winner, he will repeat it constantly, no matter how often it has been proven wrong,” they write. Though “many politicians are embarrassed,” Trump “keeps going long after the facts are clear, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to replace the truth with his own, far more favorable, version.”

Comment: So true. Trump’s instinct is to lie all the time, especially if lies reflect great, undeserved credit for him given his narcissistic personality.

From the Washington Post: Like Governor Jared Polis, Gina Raimondo in Rhode Island is accepting the reality that the coronavirus will be with us for some time, and the state needs to focus on protecting the vulnerable while mitigating stress on health-care providers.

“Just because we may re-open the economy with the stay-at-home order doesn’t mean people are going to stop getting sick,” she said recently.

Comment: Raimondo sounds to me like one of the good governors who is trying “to do the right thing,” as tough as that is when there is tension between life and livelihood.

From Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post: “But then, this has been the story from the get-go: Trump minimizing, ignoring and contradicting expert advice as part of his magical thinking that refuses to grapple with reality, especially when reality reflects poorly on him.

“The president sought to obscure major problems by trying to recast them as triumphs. He repeatedly boasted, for instance, that the United States has conducted more tests than any other country, even though the total of 6.75 million is a fraction of the 2 million to 3 million tests per day that many experts say is needed to safely reopen.’

“Where Trump leads, his cult will follow. Trump can rely on his base’s anti-science bent, especially when he drowns out or ignores his own advisers. If he does not pay attention, why should his followers?”

Comment: For the life of me, I cannot understand why so many Americans continue to support Trump who clearly stands as the worst president in U. S. history.