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.

Clear results show that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the presidential election.

But that reality isn’t stopping Donald Trump from acting like he won and ignoring conventional ways to enable a transition from one administration to the next. 

His “administration” (there’s that non-sensical word again, when it pertains to Trump) has not provided any national security briefings to Biden and company.  Nor has it conceded that Biden and team will have access to classified international relations information.

The trouble, of course, is that Trump intransigence, enabled by many Republicans, could feed the interests of terrorists out to disable America, perhaps to the extent as occurred in the 9/11 tragedy.

The fact Trump is now a lame-duck president will not stop him from taking unilateral actions.

I note that I made a pledge earlier that, with his defeat, I would no longer write blogs about Trump.  Now, I revise that pledge to say that I will not write blogs about Trump as president, which is easy to do since he is almost not president.

His conduct, as well as that of his enablers, is too egregious to ignore as all Americans should be making whatever adjustment is necessary to welcome a new president and vice president to their solemn leadership responsibilities.

Here is the way Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, one of my favorites, wrote about the bad faith of Trump and many Republicans this morning:

“It is not over.

“The presidential election is certainly over and the result was not particularly close.  President-elect Joe Biden won a decisive majority of the popular and likely a considerable electoral college victory.  Claims of widespread electoral fraud would be spurious even if they weren’t made by a prating fool in front of a Philadelphia landscaping firmThe 2020 election is done.  Concluded.  Finished.

“What has not ended — what seems endless — is Republican bad faith and poltroonery.

“I am not referring here to those voters for Trump who have been misled into false hope.  It is not hard to convince people who distrust elites and are prone to conspiracy theories that elites are plotting to deny “real” Americans their influence.  It does not even matter if the vote-counters are Republicans, because that is exactly what a conspiracy would do to hide its nefarious work.

“No, it is Republican leaders who are responsible for poisoning whatever wells of goodwill still exist in our republic.  Having aided Trump’s autocratic delusions, they are now abetting his assault on the orderly transfer of power.  Through their active support or guilty silence, most elected Republicans are encouraging their fellow citizens to believe that America’s democratic system is fundamentally corrupt.  No agent of China or Russia could do a better job of sabotage.  Republicans are fostering cynicism about the constitutional order on a massive scale.  They are stumbling toward sedition.”

Strong words, you may say.  Yes, strong words are in order.

What Trump is doing is sabotaging the future of the country, which based on his last four years, comes naturally to him.

It’s time for Trump, the narcissist, to recognize reality, if that is not a conflict in terms.  It’s also time for his enablers to do the same – for the good of the country.