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.

On the theory that 2021 will be better than 2020, I headline the salutation, adding the phrase, “sort of.”

Even on this first day of the year, another act in the Donald Trump debacle is playing out in the Nation’s Capital.

Why, I ask.  Why can’t we just be through with Trump, the loser, as the New Year dawns.

Well, it’s because at least one Republican senator just won’t let the election be over.

What’s ahead on January 6 is a procedure that is usually just a pro-forma one where the U.S. Senate and House simply hear and ratify the results of the election using documents that have been produced by the states.

This time, no. 

Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri who appears to fashion himself as presidential candidate in 2024, is going to oppose endorsing the results – the real, actual results.

In the Washington Post today, columnist Michael Gerson inveighs against Hawley’s incredible promise on January 6 to try to overturn the will of the people.

Gerson wrote:

“This is the type of politics that Hawley is enabling — a form of politics that abolishes politics.  A contest of policy visions can result in compromise.  The attempt to delegitimize your opponent requires their political annihilation.  And a fight to the political death is always conducted in the shadow of possible violence.”

Hawley’s effort won’t succeed, if only because the U.S. House would have to go along with his injustice – and it won’t.  The Senate might no go along, either.

Another Washington Post writer, Paul Waldman, put it well when he wrote:

“…there is a silver lining to be found in this final act, the election. The point of rituals like the one that will take place at the Capitol on January 6 is to demonstrate the power of the system under which we all live, to show us that it is larger than any one person or any one party.

“That is the wall against which Trump will beat his tiny fists next week, with the help of Hawley and a few members of the House Chucklehead Caucus. For all the damage he has done to American institutions and all the systemic weaknesses he has revealed, this is one place where Trump will fail spectacularly.  The ceremony will be the sight, not of his deliverance but his abject defeat.

“So bring it on Trump and Senator Hawley.  Take your spectacle of sore loserdom to the floor.  Show us how pathetic you are, one more time.  We’ll all watch while you make a last attempt to bend the system to your crude and selfish will.  At a time of so much misery and despair, the sound of that gavel banging down will give us something to feel good about.”

So, on with 2021.  I am hoping for inauguration day January 20 when Trump and his sycophants will be confirmed, once and for all, as losers.