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.

If you didn’t know about the indictment, you have not been paying attention to politics over the past few days.  Or, you have been sleeping under a rock.

Understandable!

What political developments have come to in this country could not have been predicted years ago, even if some of us remember when then-president Richard Nixon got engulfed in what came to be called “Watergate,” then was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.

Hindsight suggests that Ford’s act could have been described as an example of statesmanship, regardless of the political consequences.

But, today, we have a former president, Donald Trump, who faces criminal trials on multiple issues, including his indictment on violating national security by keeping a huge trove of confidential papers after he left office – papers that we lying around at his residence at Mar-A-Lago for anyone to see.

My view:  Given Trump’s stunning disrespect for the rule of law – everything is always about him — he deserves to be held to account.

A couple media writers over the last couple days produced comments worth considering.

In the Wall Street Journal, retired editor Gerard Baker wrote under this headline:  Trump’s Indictment May Pull Us Back From the Brink:  But if we’re stuck with a rematch between him and Biden in the 2024 presidential election, the losing side is sure to call it illegitimate.

Here is how Baker started his column:

“If you perused Twitter, sampled a cross-section of our leading newspapers, or dipped randomly in and out of the ever-rising tower of Babel on cable, talk radio and podcasts in the past few days, you were given a vivid demonstration of the binary principle on which our political discourse now operates.

“You have the impression that approximately half the people of this country regard the federal indictment of Donald Trump as the greatest affirmation of republican democracy since the surrender at Appomattox, while the other half view it as the greatest abuse of power since George III tried to levy a stamp tax on his colonial subjects.

“One lachrymose letter-writer to the New York Times, Dody Osborne Cox of Guilford, Connecticut, captured the former sentiment perfectly in a missive directed at the prosecutor:  ‘Jack Smith, all I can say is thank you. Thank you for believing in our country.  Thank you for trying to uphold our democracy.  Thank you for your courage.  I have tears in my eyes.  You have restored my hope.  Grateful.  Stay well.’

“Any moist eyes on Trump’s side are tears of hot rage. ‘It’s disgusting,’ Linda Clapper, 75, of Plum Borough, Pennsylvania, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  ‘I think they’re after him and going to do anything they can to stop his momentum.’”

Baker says many believe that the case against Trump “is a devastating charge sheet that, if validated in court, suggests behavior by a former president so recklessly indifferent to U.S. national security, so contemptuous of the law, and so preening and vain as to be — on its own, aside from anything else we may have ever heard or read about this man — disqualifying for any public office, let alone the highest in the land.”’

The other commentator was Tom Nichol who writes for Atlantic Magazine.

Here are excerpts of what he wrote:

“Perhaps former Attorney General William Barr said it best:  ‘I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were … and I think the counts under the Espionage Act that he willfully retained those documents are solid counts.  If even half of it is true, then he’s toast.’

“I’m not so sure about the ‘toast’ part.  Trump lucked out by drawing Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed and whose last involvement with one of his cases produced a decision so biased in his favor and so poorly reasoned that a federal appeals court — including two more Trump appointees — overturned her ruling in a judicial body slam.

“And a Florida jury raises the odds that someone in one panel will simply refuse to convict no matter how strong the case.

“Let’s just say that I will be pleasantly surprised if Trump one day faces anything worse than a few rounds of golf with an ankle monitor.”

As for the ankle monitor, despite the principle that someone – anyone – is innocent until proven guilty – I hope Trump gets what is coming to him, given his over-the-top conduct.  That means time in prison.

Not to mention avoiding a second Trump term in the White House, though New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (yes, he tried to run for Oregon governor the last time around) wonders if it would be possible for Trump to serve as president from a prison cell.

Good question.