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.

This blog was almost too easy to write. 

Texas Senator Ted Cruz made himself into an easy mark.  And, guess what?  Even I could hit it.

If there is any justice in politics, Cruz won’t survive his latest escapade.

Talk about hypocrisy.

His trip to Cancun while his state, Texas, suffered through an historical cold snap, including the lack of drinkable water supplies, takes the cake.

What he chose to do is beyond the pale.  Plus, he blamed his family when it became known that he had left the state during an emergency.

Here’s the way The Atlantic Magazine put it to indicate that Cruz is more than a hypocrite:

“Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Ted Cruz jetted to Cancún. And although the emperor was at least ensconced in a lavish, louche palace, the senator from Texas was stuck in economy class with the peasantry.

“Cruz’s appeal as a politician, such as it is, has never been about being lovable or relatable, but the latest incident is embarrassing even by his standards.  He was spotted on a flight to Mexico, amid a catastrophic storm that has left Texans without power, heat, and sometimes water, huddled in freezing homes and community centers as the state’s electrical grid verges on collapse.

“More than a dozen of his constituents have already died. Cruz is headed home today—if not necessarily chastened, at least eager to control the damage.  In a statement, he said he took the trip at his daughters’ behest.  Blaming your children is a curious tack for an embattled politician, but he doesn’t have much else to work with.

“The pile-on was nearly as fierce as the storm. A Cruz tweet from December resurfaced in which he lambasted the mayor of Austin, a Democrat, for flying to Cabo San Lucas during coronavirus stay-at-home orders. ‘Hypocrites. Complete and utter hypocrites.’

“It is tempting to turn the ‘hypocrite’ label on Cruz, but his sin is worse.  Every politician is a hypocrite at some point.  Cruz’s error is not that he was shirking a duty he knew he should have been performing.  It’s that he couldn’t think of any way he could use his power as a U.S. senator to help Texans in need.  That’s a failure of imagination and of political ideology.”

To illustrate his duplicity, Cruz, in the past, tried to make political points by going after other politicians who had made serious mistakes during the pandemic.

One of those was California Governor Gavin Newsom, who went to a resort for dinner in wine country.  He is still paying a political price for the action.  One assumes that Cruz now won’t mention Newsom again.

Playing the villain is nothing new to Cruz.  In 2013, he helped shut down the government, and the next year, in the weeks before Christmas, he attempted a repeat performance, forcing the Senate into a rare weekend session that recalled all its members — furious with Cruz — back to Washington.

So, going after Cruz was more than I could resist.  He is the archetype of the worst political actor – a hypocrite guilty of rank duplicity.

Again an easy mark.  So I hit it.