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 headline in this blog arises on the basis of comments in three newspaper columns after the debate, one Kamala Harris won and Donald Trump lost.

Tell Trump that he lost and he’ll fume again as he did when Harris laid various traps for him in the debate and he bit every time.

The consensus is that she won in a rout.

I’ll devote my blog today to reprinting a column from Frank Bruni, who was on staff at the New York Times for 25 years and now contributes columns on a frequent basis.  He is an excellent writer who pillories Trump, but also suggests where Harris needs to improve.

Quotes from the three columns appear below, one from Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post, one from Frank Bruni in the New York Times, and one from Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal.

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FROM FRANK BRUNI:  In Kamala Harris’s big general-election debate four years ago, she faced off against an opponent with a fly on his head.

In her immeasurably bigger debate on Tuesday night, she confronted an opponent with bats inside his.

And out they came, flapping and screeching, when he brought up cats and dogs.

He was talking about what he couldn’t stop talking about — the millions of migrants who, he insisted, were depraved criminals being dumped on us by cackling foreign leaders — and in his indiscriminate zest to describe an American hellscape, he repeated debunked stories that in Springfield, Ohio, these desperate newcomers were noshing on Fido and Whiskers.

“They’re eating the dogs. The people that came in — they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he sputtered, red-faced. Harris didn’t even have to correct him, because David Muir, one of the two ABC News anchors moderating the debate, got there first and did it for her.

Some dark fantasies need immediate dispelling.  And some deranged fantasists need to be tugged back into reality before they wander so far from it that there’s no returning.

Trump made a raving, rambling fool of himself on Tuesday night, and while Harris by no means did everything right, she had the good sense to alternately call him out on that and simply watch him unravel.  She had the discipline to shake her head sadly and smile dismissively when he made laughably false accusations against her.  She had the skill — here, on full display, was the prosecutor in her — to needle him into maximal seething.

FROM JENNIFER RUBIN:  Vice President Kamala Harris demonstrated in Tuesday night’s presidential debate, in case any rational person had doubts, that she is the only decent, prepared and fit candidate in the presidential race.  In both her answers and demeanor, she demonstrated the unmistakable contrast between a mature, responsible adult and someone who resembles the mean, crazy relative no one wants to sit next to at the holiday table.

When ABC News’s debate moderators, Linsey Davis and David Muir, opened the proceedings, she came out swinging, rattling off a list of her domestic proposals.  She plainly had her ducks in a row, attacking Donald Trump for the largest trade deficit in history, for selling microchips to China and even for praising Chinese President Xi Jinping for his handling of the coronavirus.

Trump was clearly rattled, resorting to lies about everything from his economic record to abortion.

Throughout, Harris remained calm and collected, not bothering to rebut every lie, and instead hitting Trump on the main issues — his favoritism toward the rich, his contempt for democracy and his weakness on national security.

FROM KARL ROVE:  Tuesday’s debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was a train wreck for him, far worse than anything Team Trump could have imagined.

Harris was often on offense, leaving Trump visibly rattled as she launched rocket after rocket at him.  A New York Times analysis found she spent 46 per dent of her time on the attack while Trump devoted 29 per cent of his time to going after her. Debates aren’t won on defense.

Harris pressed Trump on the economy, the Ukraine war, foreign policy, healthcare, the January 6 attack and especially abortion, leaving him flustered and often incoherent.  In return, he criticized her on border security, climate change and the Israel-Hamas war.

Trump had to know the vice president would try to get him to lose his cool.  She did.  She went after him on his multiple indictments.  She called him “weak” and belittled him as a six-time bankrupt, spoiled inheritor of wealth.  She said his former national security adviser thought him, in her words, “dangerous and unfit” for the Oval Office.

As is frequently the case with Trump, he let his emotions get the better of him.  He took the bait almost every time she put it on the hook, offering a pained smile as she did.  Rather than dismissing her attacks and launching his strongest counterarguments against her, Trump got furious.

MY CONCLUSION:  These commentators have a point.  Harris won the debate.

But the prevailing question is whether, even if true, will it matter?

It is hard to tell whether the debate win will motivate undecided voters to Harris’ way.  Perhaps yes, as indicated by various letters to the editor published since the debate.

But, Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris could mean much more than any debate result. 

For one thing, it was reported that, after Swift’s endorsement, “likes”on her feed rose by around two millions.  Plus, news of the endorsement drove almost 340,000 visitors to Vote.gov, a government website that directs users to state-specific voting information. 

That came on top of Swift’s please-register-to-vote missive on her website in 2023 that produced 1,226 per cent traffic boost in the hour after the post ran.

Any political figure, Harris included, would relish such results.  No doubt she is today.