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.

As a political junkie, I admit to reading every day about Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York.

And as an avid never-Trump person, I hope he pays a price for his efforts to win election by faulty means.  To a degree he has.  The judge fined him $9,000 yesterday for nine cases of defying a gag order.

Not much money for a guy like Trump, but at least it’s a fine for bad behavior.

The other day a friend of mine made a solid point.

A retired attorney, he said lawyers representing Trump in New York, rather than defending Trump directly, may be setting the stage for an appeal, if Trump loses, which is a growing possibility.

Yes, setting up an appeal.

An appeal always is possible in any civil or criminal trial, but could it be the main objective here? 

The grounds might be that the New York judge, Juan M. Merchan, hasn’t “been fair” to Trump, a possibility, if you think about it, that could undergird many of Trump attorney Todd Blanche’s interchanges with Merchan.

All of this came to my mind as I read a “political memo” in the New York Times that (a) included a summary of Trump’s propensity to utter thousands and thousands of words, most of them false, with many misspellings, and (b) a summary of Blanche’s interchanges with the judge.

Here are excerpts from the Times story:

“The question of what is true — or at least what can be proven — is at the heart of any trial.  But this particular defendant, accused by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office of falsifying business records to conceal a sex scandal, has spent five decades spewing thousands and thousands of words, sometimes contradicting himself within minutes, sometimes within the same breath, with little concern for the consequences of what he said.

“Trump has treated his own words as disposable commodities, intended for single use, and not necessarily indicative of any deeply held beliefs. And his tendency to pile phrases on top of one another has often worked to his benefit, amusing or engaging his supporters — sometimes spurring threats and even violence — while distracting, enraging or just plain disorienting his critics and adversaries.”

Now for the excerpts of what Trump or his legal counsel have said that could relate to an appeal:

• Trump attorneys have tried to use political arguments to justify Trump’s actions in the (hush money) case.  During the gag-order hearing last week, one of the attorneys, Todd Blanche, sought to excuse a collection of Trump’s verbal assaults on  Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels (Both whom will be witnesses in the proceedings against Trump.]  He  (Blanche) argued that, in attacking them, the former president had been responding to political attacks by his adversaries.
• The judge wasn’t buying it.  He told Blanche that he was planning to ask, in every example, ‘What precisely is it that your client is responding to?’  When Blanche did not have the requested information at hand, Merchan reminded him of the purpose of the hearing.
• “I am going to decide whether your client is in contempt or not,” he said, adding, “I keep asking you over and over again for a specific example, and I am not getting an answer.’”

Was Blanche baiting the judge?  Perhaps.

And, if he was, my friend in La Quinta will have been prescient in saying the purpose was to support an appeal.

For my part, as a non-attorney who follows politics carefully in this country, I hope both Blanche and Trump fail.