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.

One word has made its way into today’s political lexicon:  Weird.

It was used by the new Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz to describe the Republican ticket – Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

And the word has caught on.

Probably for this reason:  It is simple and quick – one word — to describe the anti-America campaign Trump and Vance are running, which goes to depths of ugliness not seen in previous campaigns, even the past ones Trump has run.

Or, as Washington Post commentator Dana Milbank put it in his column yesterday:

“As Democrats play to massive, raucous crowds, the Republican ticket is busy courting angry young men.”

Milbank went on:

“One (Harris-Walz) is running a high-decibel campaign.  The other (Trump-Vance) is waging a high-incel campaign.

“The Harris-Walz ticket debuted this week as ‘joyful warriors’ before massive, raucous crowds.  The Trump-Vance ticket focused its outreach on angry young men.

“Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz were rallying newly optimistic Democrats in seven battleground states.  In Wisconsin, people abandoned their cars in cornfields and walked to the event rather than wait in a traffic jam.

“In Philadelphia on Tuesday, people began lining up 12 hours before Harris was expected to speak despite intermittent rain and temperatures that reached 90 degrees.

“From my seat in the press section on the arena floor, I measured the noise when Harris and Walz took the stage at 107 decibels.  That’s approaching rock-concert levels, but it wasn’t coming from the sound system; it was entirely from the lungs of 12,000 Democrats.

“A low-energy Trump, by contrast, scheduled only one rally, in Montana. Instead, he and his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, made a series of overtures to the ‘manosphere,’ an online community of right-wing — and frequently misogynistic — men.”

To specific, Milbank added this:

“At Mar-a-Lago, Trump sat down for an hour and a half with 23-year-old live-streamer Adin Ross, who has been banned from the streaming platform Twitch for ‘hateful conduct.’  For the benefit of Ross’s hyper-masculine young audience, the two men discussed their shared fondness for Ultimate Fighting and compared their ‘favorite fighters,’ and Trump praised the ‘good heart’ of antisemitic rapper Ye.

“The two also discussed their admiration for the Nelk Boys (“great people,” Trump said), other far-right influencers who, like Ross, have promoted self-described misogynist Andrew Tate, known for celebrating violence against women and who is facing rape and human trafficking charges in Romania.”

So, yes, that’s weird.

And, I hope the weird label will stick if only because it may prompt some people to avoid voting for Trump.

Further, Trump continues to exhibit an inability to deliver a coherent message about his campaign – and, as a supporter of the Harris-Walz ticket, I hope he continues to spew whatever comes across his unwell mind.

Aaron Blake, writing in the Washington Post, put it this way:

“ The superficial, oversimplified reason Democrats decided to turn the page on President Joe Biden in the 2024 election was that he was too old. The more specific reason may have been that this problem — manifested in his stilted, often incoherent speaking and a light schedule — rendered him largely incapable of driving a consistent message about Donald Trump.

“That fateful June 27 debate epitomized it.  Biden didn’t even mention Project 2025, for instance, despite its quickly emerging as a leading Democrat talking point.  And that was a big problem, especially with Trump suddenly more popular than he’d been in many years.

“That very liability has now landed firmly in Republicans’ laps.

“Amid some Republican consternation about Trump and his campaign’s slow build toward making a case against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump emerged Thursday from his relative obscurity to deliver a news conference at Mar-a-Lago.

“He spoke and took questions at length — for more than an hour.

“One thing he did not do:  Offer anything amounting to a coherent or detailed case against Harris and her running mate, Walz.

“Trump has for years been prone to tangents and riffs and generalities, but even by his standards this session was unfocused.  And that was despite the apparent reason for calling the news conference in the first place:  To take on an opponent who was rising in the polls.”

So I say to Trump-Vance, continue with the inability to mount a credible campaign.