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.

In some ways, for those of us who value the notion of American democracy, President Joe Biden is a tragic figure.

He misread politics in this country.  He misread whatever he thought his mandate was.  His misread voters.  He misread the current way of doing business in Washington, D.C.

And, he underestimated the thousands of Americans who thought that Donald Trump, despite his bombast, his lying, and his status as a felon, deserved another term in the Oval Office.

In this way, Biden is, as I wrote above, a tragic figure.

Here is the bottom-line summary from The Atlantic Magazine in a piece written by Charles Sykes:

“As the passing of Jimmy Carter reminds us, presidential legacies are complicated matters, and it is difficult to predict the verdict of history.  But as Biden leaves office, he is less a transformational figure than a historical parenthesis.  He failed to grasp both the political moment and the essential mission of his presidency.”

And, that means the rest of us will have to suffer under a second Trump term.

Here is more from the well-written Atlantic article:

“President Joe Biden still imagines that he could have won.  Asked byUSA Today’s Susan Page whether he could have beaten Donald Trump if he had stayed in the race, Biden responded:   ‘It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes.’

“Reality thinks not.

“Of course, we’ll never know for sure, but the evidence (including polling) suggests that he would have been crushed by an even larger margin than Kamala Harris was.  

“Biden’s answer is a reminder that his legacy will be tarnished by his fundamental misreading of the moment and his own role in it.

“To be sure, Biden can point to some impressive successes.  He leaves behind a healthy and growing economy, a record of legislative accomplishment, and more than 230 judicial appointments, including a Supreme Court justice.  

“And then there were the failures: the chaotic exit from Afghanistan; a massive surge of migrants at the border in 2023.”

Now, as Biden leaves the highest political office in America in only a few days, he can take solace from this fact released over the weekend:

U.S. adds whopping 256K jobs in December

The U.S. added 256,000 jobs and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1 per cent in December, according to data released Friday by the Labor Department.

The December jobs report showed the U.S. economy blowing past expectations to end the year.  Economists projected the U.S. to gain 155,000 jobs and hold the jobless rate at 4.2 per cent, according to consensus estimates.

The new jobs data caps off another year of sturdy job gains since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

So, Biden will be able to leave office in more than whimper.