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 Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering, one of five departments I run as director, is open again.

Which enables me to reprint recent comments from three columnists who write for the New York Times.  And they write well.

Together, writing separately, they skewer Donald Trump who deserves to be skewered for his lack of any redeeming value, even as he runs for president again.

Here’s a summary of the three:

FROM FRANK BRUNI IN THE NEW YORK TIMES:  The size of the crowd at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in Atlanta last month rivaled the turnout for Donald Trump days later only “because she had entertainers,” Trump told the audience at his event, referring to the rappers Quavo and Megan Thee Stallion.  “I don’t need entertainers.”

Translation:  Harris cheated.  Even so, she didn’t get the better of him.

She isn’t really Black but “happened to turn Black” over the course of her political career.  That’s what Trump said at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, insinuating that Harris had performed a melanin metamorphosis and was falsely improvising identities to contrive some perk unavailable to him.

Poor Trump.  Always forced to compete on an uneven playing field.

FROM EZRA KLEIN IN THE NY TIMES:  Kamala Harris has a very different theory of this election than Joe Biden did.

In 2020, and then again in 2024, Biden ceded the battle for attention to Donald Trump. Whether as a matter of strategy or, as a result of Biden’s own limitations, Biden adopted a low-key campaigning style, letting Trump dominate news cycle after news cycle.  Trump wanted the election to be about Donald Trump, and Joe Biden wanted the election to be about Donald Trump.  On that much, they agreed.

In 2020, when Trump was the unpopular incumbent, that strategy worked for Biden.  In 2024, when Biden was the unpopular incumbent, it was failing him.  It was failing in part because Biden no longer had the communication skills to foreground Trump’s sins and malignancies.

It was failing in part because some voters had grown nostalgic for the Trump-era economy.  It was failing in part because Biden’s age and stumbles kept turning attention back to Biden and his fitness for office, rather than keeping it on Trump and Trump’s fitness for office.

Then came the debate, and Biden’s decision to step aside, and Harris’s ascent as the Democratic nominee.  

Harris has been able to do what Biden could or would not: fight — and win — the battle for attention.  She had help, to be sure.  On-line meme-makers who found viral gold in an anecdote about coconuts.  Charli XCX’s “kamala IS brat.”

But much of it is strategy and talent.  Harris holds the camera like no politician since Barack Obama.

FROM MAUREEN DOWD IN THE NY TIMES:  From the first time I went on an exploratory political trip with Trump in 1999, he has measured his worth in numbers.  His is not an examined life but a quantified life.

When I asked him why he thought he could run for president, he cited his ratings on “Larry King Live.”  He was at his most animated reeling off his ratings, like Faye Dunaway in “Network,” reciting how well her shows were doing.

He pronounced himself better than other candidates because of numbers:  The number of men who desired his then-girlfriend, Melania Knauss; the number of zoning changes he had maneuvered to get; the number of stories he stacked on his building near the U.N.; the number of times he was mentioned in a Palm Beach newspaper.

By his mode of valuation, if his numbers aren’t better than his rivals, he’s worthless.

That’s why Trump is always obsessing on his crowd numbers and accusing the press of lowballing head counts.

And that’s why he couldn’t admit he lost the election.  If Joe Biden put more numbers on the board, Trump was worthless.  The master huckster’s whole identity revolves around having higher numbers, even if they’re fake.  (He always pretended his skyscrapers had more stories than they did.)

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There.  Three columnists rate Trump and, by my measure, give him failing grades. 

Of course, as the epitome of the narcissist, he hates being rated or coming in second. 

But that’s where he belongs and, I hope, will stay there in the coming election.