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.

This blog headline was similar to one the Washington Post ran this morning in an opinion piece by one of its writers, Dana Milbank.

It appeared on the occasion of the second day of a Democrat convention to nominate Joe Biden as its candidate for president.

Milbank is not one of my favorite commentators, but in this piece, he makes a number of good points about what is at stake in the fall presidential election.

So, the election is not just a contest between two differing personalities – Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s.

Would that that was the case because, if so, Biden would win in a landslide.

What’s more at stake in the very future of our nation, which to follow the image, has a soul – and that soul has been corrupted by Trump.  What is a soul?  Well, if you are a Christian, as I am, it is the base of who you are and, thus, is difficult to define.

So, then, what is the “soul of a nation?”  For this purpose, the dictionary defines the word soul as “emotional or intellectual energy or intensity.”  That would exactly what Trump lacks.

And it is exactly what Biden has, especially that he knows how to display empathy, if only because of the tragedies he has endured in his life, a fact which enables him to understand and express “empathy” for and about others.

From Milbank, regarding the second day of the virtual D convention:

• “Democrats from Maine to Guam, assembled virtually for their convention Tuesday night, spoke of a nation that has lost lives, jobs, fairness and friends because of President Trump’s leadership. But at core they were talking about a nation that has lost its soul.
• “’We are in a battle for the soul of our nation,’ Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried began in a keynote montage of elected officials from around the country.
• A young Naval Academy graduate and former Marine Corps officer, DeMarcus Gilliard, told he convention that “there is nothing more important for me right now than making sure that we restore the soul of our nation.”
• Colin Powell, the Republican former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, from Washington: “What a difference it will make to have a president who unites us, who restores our strength and our soul.”
• And Jill Biden closed the night by saying that kindness and courage are “the soul of America Joe Biden is fighting for now.”

Of course, it could be said that Democrats didn’t have to convince anybody that the heart and soul of our Republic are on the ballot in November.  Trump had already done it for all of us when, earlier on Tuesday, he again reminded the country that he has little regard for democracy itself.

“It’ll end up being a rigged election,” he said from the White House, continuing his baseless campaign to discredit mail-in balloting during the pandemic. “Or they will never come out with an outcome.  They’ll have to do it again.”

Milbank wrote:  “A do-over! Trump supposes the election is like his golf game:  If he shanks one into the woods, he simply takes a mulligan and hits a new ball.”

I say that, if American democracy still has a pulse, voters will join the battle for our national soul and elect Biden as president.