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.

George Will writes for the Washington Post and appears other places in a role where he analyzes politics.

He is one of the best going for three reasons:  First, he uses words very well and often I find myself having to look up one of them to make sure I know the definition (and Will is always right); second, he has a knack for going behind-the-scenes to find cases of alleged government wrong-doing; and, third, he often skewers the worst former president and wannabe future president in history,  Donald Trump.

In his current column, however, Will goes too far writing under this headline:  “A Constitution-flouting ‘authoritarian’ is already in the White House.”

In what he writes, Will compares Trump’s clear-cut sedition on January 6 to President Joe Biden’s decision to go around Congress in a particular federal appointment.

Conflating the two is beyond the pale.

Here is how Will started his most recent column.

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“Overcaffeinated Cassandras continue to forecast an ‘authoritarian’ and anti-constitutional Donald Trump dictatorship.  They are mistaken about the near future because, among other reasons, they misread the recent past.  Also, they are oblivious to, or at least reticent about, the behavior of Trump’s successor:  Joe Biden is, like Trump, an authoritarian recidivist mostly stymied by courts.

“When Trump wielded presidential power, he could not even build his border wall.  But next time, the fevered forecasters warn, the entire federal apparatus, which mostly loathes him, will suddenly be submissive.  Such alarmism, which evidently gives some people pleasurable frissons, distracts attention from the similarity of Trump’s and Biden’s disdain for legality.”

Will admits that “instances of Trump’s anti-constitutional behavior have been amply reported and deplored.”

But, then, he compares Trump to Biden this way:

“Biden’s, less so — although they (e.g., the eviction moratorium, the vaccine mandate, the cancellation of student debt), and judicial reprimands of them, have been frequent.  Now, consider the lack of attention to his contempt for the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, and the Senate majority’s supine complicity.”

The president, Will says, “has plenary power to nominate principal officers of the federal government without seeking prior advice from the Senate.  The Senate has plenary power to confirm — or reject — nominees, and it can somewhat condition the president’s power by stipulating certain qualifications for particular offices.”

Will goes on to recount a current event.

“Biden nominated Ann Carlson last March to be administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  Two months later, when it was clear that the Senate would not confirm her, Biden withdrew the nomination.

“But less than five weeks after that, he named Carlson acting administrator.  His impertinence would perhaps be limited, by the Vacancies Act, to 210 days, which would expire December 26.  Furthermore, the Supreme Court has held that the act prohibits ‘any person who has been nominated to fill any vacant office from performing that office’s duties in an acting capacity.’”

After he uncovered this behind-the-scenes, situation, Will says Biden’s “indifference to these legalities is Trumpian.”

I say “no.”

Biden may try to find a way around certain laws and procedures as he did in the case Will reports.  Part of the reason he does is intransigence in Congress as Republicans, often for fun and spite, try to make life difficult for a president they don’t like.

For his part, Trump, if he rises again to the highest political office in the land, wants to overturn the country’s democracy.  He wants to be an autocrat, pardoning all those who have convicted of crimes in the January 6 insurrection, as well, if at all possible, himself.

Then, he wants all of the federal government to do his direct bidding, no matter the consequences.

I wish we had a better choice for president this time around in the presidential election, a point I have made before.

But, given the probable choice facing all of us as voters this year, I go with Biden.

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And this footnote:  Biden went on the attack against Trump yesterday in a clear indication that it will be Biden v. Trump in the presidential election.

Here, from the Washington Post, is an excerpt of what Biden said:

“He said other world leaders have approached him with concerns about the impact of another Trump term, and he recounted in detail Trump’s encouragement of the January 6 rioters, calling it ‘among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history.’  He added, ‘He still doesn’t understand a basic truth, and that is you can’t love your country only when you win.”

Good words from Biden.  I agree with him and I hope other Americans will find a way to do the same.