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.

“The only path to a subversion of the republican system of the country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion.  When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper…is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity, he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

So said Alexander Hamilton in 1790.

He could have been talking about Donald Trump.

The headline I used for this blog was written over a Wall Street Journal essay that appeared over the weekend.  It was written by Jeffrey Rosen, and it was a great piece of investigatory journalism.

The subhead was this:

“This week’s indictment of the former president outlines the sort of demagogic challenge to the rule of law that the Constitution’s architects most feared.”

Talk about being prescient!

More from Rosen:

“The founders designed a constitutional system to prevent demagogues from sowing confusion and mob violence in precisely this way (the way Trump is doing).  The vast extent of the country, James Madison said, would make it hard for local factions to coordinate any kind of mass mobilization.  The horizontal separation of powers among the three branches of government would ensure that the House impeached, and the Senate convicted corrupt presidents.  The vertical division of powers between the states and the federal government would ensure that local officials ensured election integrity.

“And norms about the peaceful transfer of power, strengthened by George Washington’s towering example of voluntarily stepping down from office after two terms, would ensure that no elected president could convert himself, like Caesar, into an unelected dictator.  ‘The idea of introducing a monarchy or aristocracy into this country,’ Hamilton wrote, ‘is one of those visionary things, that none but madmen could meditate,’ as long as the American people resisted ‘convulsions and disorders in consequence of the acts of popular demagogues.’”

The quotes from more than 200 years ago illustrate the woes of exactly Trump.

According to the federal indictment issued this week, Trump attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election by conspiring to spread drivel or worse — discounting legitimate votes and subverting election results,  perpetuating three separate criminal conspiracies:  To impede the collection and counting of the ballots, Congress’s certification of the results on January 6, 2021, and the right to vote itself.

Rosen reports that J. Michael Luttig, former U.S. Court of Appeals judge, has said that “I do not believe there is anything that approaches this in American history.”

I am nowhere near the student of history that Luttig is, but I agree. 

The question facing all of us:

• Whether the actions by Trump – “subverting the republican system of government and flattering the prejudices of the people, exciting their jealousies and apprehensions “– will tear this country to shreds, which, I submit, is exactly what he wants.

• Or, that the country and its institutions will remain intact despite the intentional turmoil of Trump.

I vote for the latter.