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 (Les AuCoin), 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 could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that it what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions like.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I wrote a week or so ago about the fact that almost every day Donald Trump one-ups himself with a new example of stupidity.

I suppose this could be a daily occurrence because, guess what, he did it again yesterday.

Here is what he said:

“If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”

Really?

No kidding?

Columnist Dana Milbank explained all of this in a column he wrote for this morning’s Washington Post under this headline:

Forget vaccines and treatments. The very stable genius has a foolproof coronavirus cure.

Milbank went on:

“Precisely! And if I stop weighing myself right now, I will gain very few pounds, if any.  What we don’t know cannot possibly hurt us. This is very much a part of Trump’s governing philosophy.

“If he stops John Bolton’s book from being published, there will be very few damaging revelations, if any.

“If his Office of Management and Budget stops releasing economic forecasts in its midyear review, the economy will have very few problems, if any.

“If Trump’s Labor Department asks states to stop the release of their unemployment claims until later, there will be very few jobless people, if any.

“If the administration stops the public disclosure of recipients of the Paycheck Protection Program, there will be very few cases, if any, of waste, fraud and abuse.”

Milbank writes that the head-in-sand strategy has become endemic during the pandemic.  Florida fired the manager of its virus-data website after she objected to the removal of records showing people had symptoms or positive tests before the cases were announced.  Georgia reorganized its data in ways that made things look better than they were.

Arizona attempted to stop the running of models showing the virus spreading.  And the Trump administration for several weeks blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from issuing its guidelines for reopening.

“Trump, Milbank said, “has evidently decided that, if enough Americans are willing to suspend disbelief, there are few problems, if any, that can’t be solved by averting the public gaze.”

The biggest test for this “Trump head-in-sand” policy will come with the presidential election.

“If his voter-suppression efforts stop enough people from voting, there will be very few elections, if any, that he could lose.”

My fond hope is that Trump will lose the upcoming election precisely because he has no interest in the public good, or ethical behavior, or honesty,  He only looks out, always and only, for his own good, which is far different from the country’s.

Often, the exact opposite.