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.

6.

Or, some of us are rooting for fewer.

I almost stopped this countdown by returning to one of the major issues of the Trump Administration – his intentional policy to rip immigrant children from their families as they crossed the U.S. border.

Imagine that!  A strategy for intentional kidnapping!

Here’s the way Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman described the tragedy in a Washington Post story this morning:

“If you had to pick a single thing that captured the extraordinary nexus of cruelty and lawlessness that has characterized President Trump’s tenure in office, you could do worse than choosing his family separations policy.

“All this is crystallized by a scathing new report from the inspector general of the Justice Department on the family separations policy, a report that exposes the startling depths of depravity and contempt for good governance and basic humanity that drove its implementation.”

This policy was so depraved that those who executed should be held to account and the best place to do so is in prison.  At the same time, I express hope that the Biden Administration will place a top priority on fixing the mess six days from now.