Perspective from the 19^th Hole 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.

The U.S. Supreme Court made headlines yesterday when it ruled on a key issue facing all Americans – presidential immunity.

What to make of the ruling?

Well, there are at least two views and, of course, many others between those two.

• The decision allows a president – one like Donald Trump – to do anything he wants as “king.”
• The decision enables a president to act as he or she should be able to act without fear of every presidential decision to be questioned legally.

Which?

So, to get more information the two views, I went again to two editorials – one from the Wall Street Journal and one from the Washington Post.  As always, these two views help me understand what may be at stake in this momentous decision – one from the near right, the Wall Street Journal, and one from the near the left, the Washington Posst.

Before the detail, the ruling was written by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts who said:  “A president inclined to take one course of action based on the public interest may instead opt for another, apprehensive that criminal penalties may befall him upon his departure from office.”

On another hand, Justice Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes:  “The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably.  In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law,” even she added, in what I hope is an overstatement, a president could assassinate one of his rivals.

Enough from me.  Here are excerpts of the two editorials.

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  The headline — The Supreme Court Protects the Presidency in Trump v. U.S.

A 6-3 majority rules that presidents have ‘presumptive immunity’ from criminal prosecution for their official acts.

Partisans on the left and right are reacting to Monday’s Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity based on how it affects the fate of  Donald Trump. That’s a blinkered view that ignores the long-run implications for the American republic.  The 6-3 Court majority rightly focuses on the institution of the Presidency, and the ability of all Presidents—not merely the last one—to act in the national interest free from prosecution for official acts.

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:  The headline — The Trump immunity decision isn’t the end of democracy — but it is bad.

The Supreme Court’s opinion is much bigger than Trump.

The Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more, Justice Sonia Sotomayor declared in her dissent from Monday’s Trump v. United States ruling.  The decision virtually guarantees that special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 case against the former president won’t move to trial before the election. Yet the implications are much bigger than Trump. More important — and more alarming — are the potential long-term consequences that could persist well after Trump is gone.

All six of the court’s conservatives ruled on Monday that the president is entitled to absolute immunity for official acts involving his core responsibilities — pardons, say, or recognizing foreign nations or removing appointed officers.  Moreover, he’s entitled to what’s known as presumptive immunity for official acts that aren’t related to those core responsibilities.

This presumption can be overcome only if a prosecutor can show that holding him accountable won’t intrude on the executive branch’s ability to function — as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. put it, writing for the court, that it wouldn’t prevent the president from taking the “bold and unhesitating action” essential to his job.  Liability isn’t spared for unofficial, or private, conduct. But that’s not terribly comforting.  

While the commander in chief embezzling money or even falsifying business records to cover up an affair is unseemly, these are hardly threats to democracy.

As a non-lawyer, I read the decision and believe that Donald Trump wins. ..again.  He can tell his vice president, Mike Pence, to break the law and he, Trump, is free from any penalty.

He can do almost whatever he wants – perish the thought – while his lawyers stand by to contend he is within his right, and as Justice Sotomayor put it, “he king above all laws.”

If it weren’t for Trump, it would be easier for me to understand the Court’s ruling.  With Trump, it simply makes legal all this illegal behavior.

I’ll give the last word to Kate Shaw writing this morning in the New York Times:

“The Supreme Court’s radical decision handing the president broad immunity from criminal prosecution on Monday will rightly be understood as enormously increasing the power and enormously reducing the accountability of the president.”