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.

I have said many times that one of my favorite columnists these days is Michael Gerson, who writes for the Washington Post.

Nearly everything he writes prompts me to think – and that, for any writer, is a high compliment.

Plus, he uses words very well, which is another high compliment.

Gerson’s work is nationally syndicated and appears twice weekly in the Post.  He is the author of “Heroic Conservatism” (Harper One, 2007) and co-author of “City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era” (Moody, 2010).

He appears regularly on the “PBS NewsHour,” “Face the Nation” and other programs.  Gerson serves as senior adviser at One, a bi-partisan organization dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable diseases.

Until 2006, he was a top aide to President George W. Bush as assistant to the president for policy and strategic planning.  Prior to that appointment, he served in the White House as deputy assistant to the president and director of presidential speechwriting and assistant to the president for speechwriting and policy adviser.

So, to provide a rationale for my “like,” here is a selection of quotes from recent Gerson columns:

• Under this headline, “Prominent evangelicals are directing Trump’s sinking ship. That feeds doubts about religion,” Gerson wrote this:

“President Trump’s naked attempt to overturn a fair election — with key elements of Joe Biden’s victory vouchsafed by Republican state officials, Republican-appointed judges and even the Justice Department — has driven some Trump evangelicals to the edge of blasphemous lunacy.”

• Under this headline, “Evangelicals need to follow Christianity’s morals, not Trump’s,” Gerson wrote:

“It is in this context that the recent commentary by Mark Galli in Christianity Today calling for President Trump’s removal from office should be read.  Here, in contrast to Fox News, is an institution trying to use a specifically Christian lens to examine the president’s conduct in office.  

“Galli argues that cheating to influence a presidential election is not merely a threat to the Constitution but also ‘profoundly immoral.’ Trump’s lies and slanders on Twitter are ‘a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.’   The corruption and cruelty of the president and those around him have ‘rendered this administration morally unable to lead.’”

• Under this headline, “This is a massive failure of character among Republicans — with evangelicals out in front,” Gerson wrote:

“One of the better speeches I helped produce for George W. Bush was never given.  On election night 2000 — standing outside in the rain, at an Austin victory rally that never happened — I had the copy of a concession speech in my pocket.  As I remember it, the first lines were:  “I have just talked to my opponent, who is no longer my opponent. He is the president-elect of the United States.”

“I had no doubt that then-Governor George W. Bush would have delivered that speech if necessary.  The 2000 presidential election was far closer than the one we just experienced — a slight electoral wind could have blown it either way.  But Bush, had he lost, would have played by the rules and accepted the outcome, just as Vice President Al Gore eventually did.  And how do I know that Bush would have done this?  Because he is a man of character who would have put the good of the country ahead of his own interests when the moment called for it.

“What America is now experiencing is a massive failure of character — a nationwide blackout of integrity — among elected Republicans. From the president, a graceless and deceptive insistence on victory after a loss that was not even close.  From congressional Republicans, a broad willingness to conspire in President Trump’s lies and to slander the electoral system without consideration of the public good. Only a few have stood up against Republican peer pressure of contempt for the constitutional order.”

• Under this headline, “Trump’s handling of race is the single most important issue in this election,” Gerson wrote:

“There is one particular way that Trump has made this a directional, perhaps a definitional, election:  He has purposely brought the issue of race to the center stage of American politics.  His re-election would mean, in part, the public vindication of his approach to racial matters.

“He probably views this as one issue among many — just another way to rile and rally his base.  That is the measure of his historical ignorance.  The struggle for racial equality is the defining American struggle.  Much of our history has been spent dealing with the moral contradiction of America’s founding — how a bold experiment in liberty could also be a prison for millions of enslaved people.  That hypocrisy and its ramifications have been our scandal.  Our burden. Our sin.”

• Under this headline, “The election is over, but there’s no end to Republican bad faith,” Gerson wrote:

“The presidential election is certainly over, and the result was not particularly close.  President-elect Joe Biden won a decisive majority of the popular vote 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 firm.  The 2020 election is done.  Concluded.  Finished.

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

• Under this headline, “This election was a reflection of who we are as a country,” Gerson wrote:

“Trumpians feel confirmed in their belief that a hostile establishment and hidden “deep state” are conspiring against their dignity and influence.  Democrat progressives feel confirmed in their belief that the politics of compromise has gained liberalism nothing.  Democrat centrists feel confirmed in their belief that they are saving liberalism from political oblivion.  No large group of voters came away chastened or sobered.”

• Under this headline, “Trump and his party are threatening our constitutional order,” Gerson wrote:

“President Trump’s coup attempt has failed in every place but his fevered mind.

“The president’s claim of comprehensive electoral fraud has been distinguished by a complete lack of supportive evidence.  Legal representation by swaggering, bungling windbags has done little to advance the president’s cause.  And Trump’s diversion into deranged conspiracy thinking while national challenges mount is a fitting end to this sad, shabby chapter in the American story.  One imagines the other 43 presidents in Walt Disney World’s Hall of Presidents pointing and laughing at their most embarrassing successor.

“… the challenge has been a relatively weak one.  Trump combines the ambitions of a despot with the strategic planning and operational competence of a hamster.  He is an evil mastermind without the mastermind part.  Would our system have held firm in a closer election against a more talented authoritarian plotter?  We have no idea.  

“And the openness of the question should terrify us. Democracies tend to end not by revolt from below, but by erosion from above.  They are less vulnerable to revolutionaries than they are to demagogues.  While we have not lost our republic, we have glimpsed how it might eventually be lost.”

Enough, at least for now.  All of this shows Gerson’s fluid attempts to prod thought and reflection, as will, I suspect, future columns.  Clearly worth reading.