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.

At least the view in this blog headline is maintained by Republican analyst Karl Rove, who now writes a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal.

His latest effort appeared under this headline and sub-head:  “The Biden-Trump Foot-Shooting Contest; Unforced errors from an AWOL defense secretary to promises of January 6 pardons.”

Rove continues:

“Voters don’t like either party’s presidential front-runner, and it’s little wonder why.  But that leaves a larger question:  If there’s a Biden-Trump contest, who will have made himself more odious by November?

“Right now, the two men are in a dislikability dead heat:  The RealClearPolitics polling average says 55.6 per cent of Americans view President Biden unfavorably to 55.3 per cent for Donald Trump.

“It’s for reasons that are unlikely to change. An August 14 Associated Press/NORC poll found the most common words voters use to describe Biden are “old/outdated/aging/elderly” and Trump’s are “corrupt/criminal/crooked.”

Using an analogy from tennis, Rove contends that a Biden-Trump re-match “would likely be decided by who commits fewer unforced errors.”

So, events this past week, Rove avers, should unsettle both campaigns — “Trump’s because he keeps re-opening an old wound, Biden’s because of bloody gashes his friends created.”

Rove provides more information on both foot-shots:

“First Trump.  By the time he arrived at his rally in Clinton, Iowa, the venue was rocking.  ‘The polls are showing we’re going to win by a lot,’ he crowed, urging supporters to ‘get out and . . . vote, vote, vote.’  He did his greatest hits — attacking the media, listing his accomplishments, decrying Biden’s failed presidency, and knocking the stuffing out of Republican competitors and detractors.

“The crowd lapped it up.

“Then, about 33 minutes in, he shot himself in the foot by yet again bringing up January 6.  This time, he went to a new extreme:  Calling for the pardon of those now serving time for their part in the Capitol riot. ‘They ought to release the J-6 hostages, they’ve suffered enough,’ he said to cheers. ‘Some people call them prisoners,’ the ex-president said. ‘I call them hostages.’

“The more Trump hypes his January 6 catch-and-release program, the more he makes that violent day a key consideration for the independent and undecided voters he needs to beat Biden.”

Drawing on his political consultant pedigree, Roves goes on write as if he’s running a political campaign.

“Imagine the Democrat ads if Trump is the GOP nominee.  There will be scenes of Capitol police being beaten bloody, sprayed with chemical agents, and assaulted with their own shields and batons as a rioter screams, ‘Kill them all!’  Americans will be treated to the confessions of the roughly 730 January 6 convicts who pleaded guilty, and the media will spotlight the legal travails of the 330 or so yet to be tried.

“Law-enforcement veterans of the riot will shadow Trump on the campaign trail, sharing their experiences and asking why the former president would pardon people who committed violence in his name.

Trump’s only hope is that Biden manages somehow to look worse.

Speaking of Bide and judging by how the president’s friends damaged him recently, that level of “worse” could well happen, Rove said.

“The first round of friendly fire was Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s failure to alert the White House that he’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer in early December and then, after complications, put into intensive care this month, making him unable to fulfill his official responsibilities.

“To make an irresponsible decision look downright negligent, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks was vacationing in Puerto Rico when she assumed some of his operational duties on January 2 and didn’t learn for days that her boss was in the Walter Reed Medical Center ICU.

“While the onus for all this lies with Austin, the mess makes the Biden White House look disorganized and the Pentagon badly run during a dangerous period for the world.”

Further, another columnist recently drew on Austin’s military service to say that “he had risked the chain of command.”

This conclusion from Rove:

“Trump’s mistake is more serious because it’s more offensive and unlikely to be his last of this kind.  

“On the other hand, Biden and those around him can’t seem to stop making his Administration look incompetent.  He’ll need a lot of mistakes from the ultimate Republican nominee to win.  Trump is his opponent, so Biden will get an assist.  The only question is how big.”

For me, Biden’s mistakes pale in comparison to Trump’s.  Which is why, if the presidential re-match takes place later this year, I am with Biden. 

And, not with Trump who has no one’s interests at heart other than his own.  Not the country’s!