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.

I draw this blog headline from a book review in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago that also included this subhead:

“In ‘Lucky Loser,’ the title of the new book, two investigative reporters illuminate the financial chicanery and media excesses that gave us the 45th president of the United States.”

The authors are Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig.

The story and the book say a lot about the man, Donald Trump, who thinks he should be president again.

The review was by Alexander Nazaryan, author of “The Best People: Trump’s Cabinet and the Siege on Washington.”  So, he knows what he is writing about as he reviews “Lucky Loser.”

At first, I toyed with reading the book, but then, upon reflection, decided I did not want to devote so much time to the scofflaw Trump.  Better just to read the review.

Here are a few excerpts from what the reviewer wrote, all of which redound to the debit of Trump.

• …I understood Donald Trump exactly as he demanded to be understood.  Erected on the ruins of the Art Deco Bonwit Teller department store, Trump Tower was as much a symbol as it was a building, a show of authority and strength as evident to a Soviet refugee as to a Staten Island native.

• Though it arrives on a crowded shelf, “Lucky Loser” is one of those rare Trump books that deserve, even demand, to be read.  In good part, that’s because it applies the proper lens through which to view Trump’s career.  In this telling, his story lies at the intersection of business and media, with politics arriving only as a secondary concern.

• By the early ’70s, Fred (Donald Trump’s father) had settled into tending the fortune he had created, while Donald, as the favorite son, played with his father’s money.  Bolstered by millions of dollars from Fred, Donald bought the decrepit Commodore Hotel on East 42nd Street in 1976, replacing it with the boxy, unimaginative Grand Hyatt.  It was his first building in Manhattan.

• Trump likes to rail against the lazy falsehoods of the “fake news media,” and he should know:  Reporters have been repeating his lies for decades.  In 1985, with little evidence, “60 Minutes” called him a billionaire.  Two years later, following the “Black Monday” stock market collapse, The Wall Street Journal’s Randall Smith, rushing toward a deadline, took Trump at his word when he claimed that he had liquidated his stock portfolio ahead of the crash.

• Trump may have turned out to be nothing more than another cautionary tale of 1980s hubris, had it not been for the television producer Mark Burnett, who in 2003 decided to make Trump the star of“The Apprentice,” his heavily scripted reality show.  The production team labored to disguise their star’s eternal confusion and incompetence.

“Our job then was to reverse-engineer the show and to make him not look like a complete moron,” one member of the production team told the  “Lucky Loser” authors.

• By the time “The Apprentice” had become a cash cow, the headlines about Trump’s failed marriages and casinos had long faded.  A new generation of Americans saw a ruthless executive, a steely-eyed (and alleged) billionaire who knew what it took to make it because he had supposedly made it himself.  Finally, under the glare of the presidency, the facade became too difficult to maintain.

• It’s almost quaint now to remember that Trump’s first months as a Republican primary contender in 2015 were so carnivalesque that his run seemed more like a marketing ruse than an earnest try for office.   At some point, though, as his poll numbers surged, it became clear that the image he had forged over the decades was not shattering despite contact with reality.

• Even as the mask of Trump the competent businessman fell, the same buck-passing and truth-evading that had inoculated him and the rest of his family from ever facing consequences continued to come in handy.

The author concludes:

“Washington was a mess in the wake of his presidency, but the Democrats were at fault, or maybe the Chinese.  Antifa.  Immigrants.  Ukraine.

Donald’s cannonball may have soaked us, but we must ask ourselves:  Why did we keep inviting him back to the pool?”

I concur.  Why? 

Trump’s financial shenanigans – as well as other crimes — should land him in prison, not the Oval Office.