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 is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The perception conveyed by the headline for this blog was posited recently by Washington Post opinion writer Matt Bai.

He’s right and, in just a few words, he summarized the problem with Donald Trump.

You can provide lots of detail about Trump’s missteps as president, many of them intentional as he attempts to fool the public into believing “he is great.”

But, in the end, it’s this that is true:  He is a bad person.  As evidenced by his narcissism, which illustrates that, in his mind, he is involved as the centerpiece in every issue – and everyone else be damned…the American people, the late Senator John McCain, military veterans, anyone who cares about racial justice, anyone who accepts the notion that immigrants should have a chance for a better life in the U.S., etc.

Here’s how Bai started his column:

“A group calling itself Republican Voters Against Trump released a powerful video this week featuring an endorsement of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden by Michael Hayden, the retired Air Force general who headed the National Security Agency and the CIA under President George W. Bush.

“The most bracing part of Hayden’s message comes at the end.  ‘I absolutely disagree with some of Biden’s policies, but that’s not important,” he says.  ‘Biden is a good man. Donald Trump is not.’”

That one jolting line, Bai avers, gets to the bedrock issue of the 2020 campaign — and why the electorate could be poised to reject an incumbent president for the first time in 28 years – or, at least, that is my hope that voters reject Trump and the dishonest, inhumane, selfish policies he stands for.

Here are just a few instances of the “bad” Trump:

• He is a narcissist who believes everything revolves him.
• He blames victims for anything and everything, which is why he hates immigrants and continues to separate immigrant children from their families.
• He lies incessantly.  It is second nature to him.
• He eschews the work of being president as he avoids briefings, doesn’t read anything, and flies by the seat of his pants.
• He has made the pandemic worse by his own inaction.

Enough. 

This list could go on and on.  But let’s hope that, later this fall, we’ll have had enough of this worst of all American presidents.