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.

What happened a night or so ago – a so-called debate among eight Republican candidates for president – wasn’t a debate.

Rather, it was a performance by Fox News that, when it comes to deciding who will be the next president, will be irrelevant.

So will the candidates on the stage.

The one who wasn’t there was Donald Trump who, instead, was “mugging” for a still photo as he was arraigned in Georgia on the fourth criminal indictment he has faced.

I used the word “mugging” intentionally because, of course, Trump sycophants produced a “mug shot” that showed him snarling for the camera so it could be used immediately in another campaign fundraising appeal.

Which is working.

For me, the good news was that I didn’t watch the debate.  I had better things to do.

While not being on the debate stage, Trump worked with one of his main allies, Tucker Carlson, to produce an interview that was aired on the new Twitter, now called “X.”  [This represented the occasion when Trump was allowed back on Twitter airwaves for the first time in months.]

In the Washington Post, media critic Erik Wemple got it just right when he wrote this about the “debate” hosted by Fox News:

“The Post reported that the debate might have given the network an opportunity to ‘burnish’ its image after the Dominion fiasco.  Nah.  Stage-managing a ho-hum bicker-fest among GOP hopefuls months before the 2024 primary schedule doesn’t confer credibility.

“That comes from facing your viewers and telling them inconvenient truths when it counts the most — precisely the test that Fox News failed in 2020, when some of its hosts indulged the lie that the presidential election was stolen and even implicated Dominion’s voting technology in the alleged fraud.”

So much for truth and honesty in politics.

Neither word belongs in the same sentence with Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, or Fox News.

Another way to look at the “debate” was to consider part of the inauguration to run on the Trump ticket as vice president. 

On that score, I suppose it could be contended that Vivek Ramaswamy burnished his credentials.  When Fox News moderators asked candidates to raise their hands if they support Trump. Ramaswamy’s hand went up first and he left it up for awhile.