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 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.

Well, guess what?

Donald Trump and his acolytes in Congress reacted in an over-the-top and incendiary matter to the FBI’s search of Trump’s residence as officers looked, with the concurrence of a court-ordered warrant, for the possibility of classified records Trump took from Washington, D.C. – perhaps including records related to nuclear warfare, which, if proved to be true in court, would be a gross violation of classified record-keeping statutes.

You could almost predict what Trump and his acolytes said, claiming that the Biden Administration was out to get Trump.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, in an apparent response to the heated rhetoric from Trump and company, said he wanted to unseal the search warrant so all could see its basis.  In this, he called the Republican bluff – and the court agreed, unsealing the warrant, which served to answer most, but not all, of the questions about the rationale for search.

Two opinion writers from the Washington Post, Ruth Marcus and Jennifer Rubin, set the record straight in their columns.

From Marcus:  “Trump immediately denounced the search as “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.”  No surprise there — it’s a trademark Trump move to accuse others of what he himself has done and to then try to transform his legal trouble into political advantage.

“And no surprise either, to anyone who’s watched his cringeworthy Trump sycophancy, that Trump’s message was dutifully amplified by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.  ‘I’ve seen enough,’ McCarthy tweeted. “The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.  When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned.

“Where was McCarthy on the department’s ‘intolerable state of weaponized politicization’ when Merrick Garland’s predecessor, William P. Barr, was busy overruling career prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation for Trump ally Roger Stone or dismissing the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, after Flynn’s guilty plea?  Or when Trump himself was trying to, yes, weaponize the Justice Department in his desperate effort to undo the election results?

“Other members of the lap dog brigade went further.  ‘At a minimum, Garland must resign or be impeached,’ tweeted Senator Josh Hawley, calling the search’ an unprecedented assault on democratic norms.”

Columnist Michael Gerson added this:

“While other Republicans have accused the Biden Administration of making the United States a banana republic, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has pledged his fealty to a disgraced authoritarian wannabe, who actually attempted a coup and now rages against his fate in gold-plated, palm-tree-shaded grandeur, when not giving Castro-length speeches to worshipful crowds that have a history of engaging in political violence at his command.”

From Rubin:  “Republicans are using the incendiary claim — including comparisons of the FBI’s lawfully executed warrant to Nazi violence — to rile up their base and undermine the rule of law.  They risk inciting violence from the same unhinged forces that stormed the U.S. Capitol.”

Commentary from Marcus and Rubin need no amplification other than this:  No one should be above the law – and that’s not just some kind of tired phrase as suggested by the Wall Street Journal – it is a key FACT.  No one being above the law includes Trump.

And The Atlantic Magazine wrote an even more scathing paragraph:  “Nothing can ever be ruled out where Donald Trump is concerned (a reference to comments from Trump critics that he might even set out to sell nuclear secrets to other countries) and it’s certainly possible that Trump — whose history suggests that he never does anything for reasons other than profit or to service his debilitating narcissism — thought he could use America’s secrets for his own financial or political gain.”

If Trump squired records out of the Oval Office based on narcissistic impulses, no one would be surprised.

Finally, Washington Post writer Matt Bai added this appropriate coda:

“The larger point here is that the whole fiasco underscores the most disturbing thing about Trump’s term in the White House.  Trump functioned as a president, more or less, but the underlying concept of the presidency somehow always eluded him.

“Everyone who preceded Trump accepted the idea that the office is held in a sacred and temporary trust.  The White House and everything that comes with it — the salutes and the planes, the couches and carpets, the weird things people gift you in foreign countries — belong to the country and its history, not to you.  You’re just hired to manage the place for a while.”