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.

I pledged to myself that I would not write about Donald Trump during the week of the Masters Golf Tournament, my favorite tournament of any year.

I made good on that pledge.

But, now the Masters is over with an incredible win by my favorite, Scottie Scheffler, back to Trump, at least for today.

In the Washington Post, writers say that Trump’s hush money trial, which is scheduled to start today in New York, comes down to this Trump strategy — deny, delay, and denigrate.  Yes, three “d’s.”

More from the Post:

“The opening of Donald Trump’s first criminal trial on Monday will put to the test a defense strategy his lawyers have been honing for a year — a confrontational gambit that has angered the judge and could cost the presidential candidate dearly when it comes to a verdict.

“Fight for every scrap of evidence.  Push for every possible delay.  The approach has succeeded so far in Trump’s three other pending criminal cases, potentially pushing all of them into or past November’s presidential election.

“Surprisingly it is in Manhattan, at a courthouse notorious for lengthy delays before many criminal trials, that the former president and presumptive Republican nominee will face his first judgment day.

“Trump’s defense strategy in New York is unique from the other three cases in one respect — he aims to deny involvement in the key conversations about hush money payments made through his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen.”

Also in the Post, opinion writer E. J. Dionne commented on the overall Trump strategy to contend that any president, current or former, has an absolute right to break the law.

From Dionne:

“Trump is saying something no other presidential candidate has ever said: That the only way to be an effective president is to be willing to break the law.  ‘A denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future president with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents,’ his lawyers wrote in their brief.  “That would be the end of the presidency as we know it and would irreparably damage our Republic.”

“Well,” Dionne opines, “let’s leave it to psychiatrists to determine what ‘post-office trauma’ might be. The breathless subtext echoing throughout their brief is that it takes a criminal to be a good president.  This has implications voters should take very seriously, including for national security.”

And, it’s the way Trump would act if he becomes president again.  He believes he is above the law.

So, the solution?

Continue to make him an ex-president and require him to continue to be subject to laws all the rest of us must observe.