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.

Here I go again writing about impeachment when I sit in the California desert far from the action.

But I have a TV, so I watch the historical process unfold in the nation’s Capitol – the second impeachment trial of the same president of the United States.

If there is a bottom-line question in the trial of former president Donald Trump, it is this:

What did he do after he knew a mob of “his people” had invaded the U.S. Capitol?

The answer?  Nothing.

• He let the riot go on without any effective social media intervention. 

• He did not use the regular news media to ask “his people” to stand down.

• He did not head down to the Capitol to instruct the rioters to stop.

• He did not call for reinforcements – including the National Guard — to defend the Capitol.

• He left his vice president, Mike Pence, open to attack and anger, only steps and seconds from being accosted by “his mob.”

So, if there are questions about what he did before the riot, if there is disagreement about the words he used to tell “his people” to fight (just normal political speech, his lawyers contended), if there is a question about his First Amendment right to speak, so be it.

But there is no question about what he did after the insurrection started.  Nothing.

Several Republican senators — Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine – asked Trump lawyers about this in yesterday’s proceedings.  And each of these senators said they were unsatisfied with the answers.

That’s likely because there were no answers.

Consider what the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post wrote this morning.

From the Journal:  “Instead of bowing to dozens of court defeats, Trump escalated.  He falsely claimed that Vice President Mike Pence, if only he had the courage, could reject electoral votes and stop Democrats from hijacking democracy.  He called his supporters to attend a rally on Jan. 6, when Congress would do the counting. ‘Be there, will be wild!’  Trump tweeted.  His speech that day was timed to coincide with the action in the Capitol, and then he directed the crowd down Pennsylvania Avenue.

“Now his legacy will be forever stained by this violence, and by his betrayal of his supporters in refusing to tell them the truth.  Whatever the result of the impeachment trial, Republicans should remember the betrayal if Trump decides to run again in 2024.”

From the Post:  “It wasn’t a defense. Not in any serious factual, legal, or logical sense.

“What former president Donald Trump’s lawyers offered on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Friday was an attack — a misleading, distortive, gas-lighting, repetitive, irrelevant and, at times, absurd although mercifully brief — attack.  It was an attack on the House impeachment managers, on Democrats, on the impeachment process. It was an attack on everything but the evidence against Trump.  It was a disgrace, like the man it failed to defend.”

I hope Trump’s actions and inactions will land indelibly in the hearts and minds of Americans.

It appears Trump won’t be convicted in the Senate, but I join the Wall Street Journal to say, “let his legacy be forever stained.”