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.

The word “peril” in this blog headline comes from a book I just finished reading.

It is “Peril” by Washington Post writers Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

If you want to have nightmares, read the book.  Or, better said, if you want to understand recent political history in order to avoid repeating it, read the book.

It is a well-researched account of how former President Donald Trump behaved so badlyin office, as well as how he hopes to be able to rise again as president.

In the last days of his presidency, various figures in government, including chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, worried that Trump would initiate military action to try to save himself in office.  So, Milley and others took action to make sure that any attempt by Trump to adopt a “wag the dog” strategy, including pushing the nuclear button, would not succeed.   

Now, if Trump succeeds in doing what he appears to be doing, which is working to become president again, we will have to contend with his “it’s-all-about-me” narcissism.  And that could lead, literally, to the end of democracy in this country.  After all, he wants to “the leader” – albeit a despot.

The authors, in a note at the end of the book, report that all interviews were conducted under the journalistic rule of “deep background.”  This means, they say, that all the information they gleaned could be used in the book, but they would not attribute comments to specific individuals by name.

They drew “Peril” from more hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 200 firsthand participants and witnesses to events of Trump’s loss and President Joe Biden’s win.

Does “deep background” taint the work?  I say “no” and I say that as a former journalist myself, though I lay no claim to being in the same major league with Woodward and Costa.

One excerpt from the book quotes Republican operative Karl Rove as saying this:

“Look, I’ve been through a couple of presidential elections.  The president (Trump) was given over 50 times to make this case (a stolen election) in court.  The pleadings don’t match up with rhetoric.  But we have a number of people who believe that it was stolen from him and that’s their first touch point.

“Moving forward, the question is going to be, are there people whose lives depend on division and dissension and disruption in the party (the Republican party), who fight for the sake of fighting?  Who say, you know that you can’t disagree with me unless – if you’re not with me, you’re a zero and I’m going to punish you.”

I won’t report other excerpts from “Peril,” thus leaving that to you, if you choose to read the book.  In doing so, you will learn more about the terrifying events of our recent past – and, perhaps, of our future.

Kudos to Woodward and Costa for giving us a glimpse of what all of us managed to avoid, which is more Trump.  Let’s hope Trump remains in our past, not in our future.