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.

This blog headline is meant to indicate that many fears about Donald Trump as president are coming true – and that there is nothing that rational people can do about it.

I, of course, am a rational person.

Two examples:

From columnist George Will in the Washington Post:  Before Peter Hegseth was confirmed as the director of the Defense Department (it took Vice President J.D. Vance to cast the deciding vote for Hegseth in a divided U.S. Senate), Will wrote this:

“A thought experiment:  Suppose you assembled 100 intelligent, public-spirited people experienced with the complexities of managing enormous bureaucracies, deeply familiar with today’s geopolitical challenges, alert to the importance and sensitivities of allied nations, and acquainted with large private-sector manufacturing and the precarious condition of the U.S. defense industrial base.

“Suppose you asked each of these 100 to list 100 people qualified to be defense secretary.  There could be, cumulatively, 10,000 different names.  

“What is the probability that even one of those would be Pete Hegseth?  Approximately zero.”

Will is absolutely right.  Hegseth would not make the list.  But with Trump?  Hegseth makes the list and it took Vance to drive him over the finish line.

Now, the trouble is that Hegseth will command all American troops.

Oh well!

• From writer Peter Baker in the New York Times who is covering his sixth president and, with his wife, wrote about Trump’s first term:  This headline led Baker’s most recent column:  “People Will Be Shocked:  Trump Tests the Boundaries of the Presidency.”

Baker went on:

“Even more than in his first term, President Trump has mounted a fundamental challenge to the norms and expectations of what a president can and should do.

“On his first full day back in the White House, President Trump reveled in his return to power and vowed to do what no president had ever done before.  ‘We’re going to do things that people will be shocked at,’ he declared.

“Of all the thousands of words that Trump uttered during his fact-challenged, talkathon-style opening days as the nation’s 47th president, those may have been the truest.  No matter that much of what he was doing he had promised on the campaign trail.  He succeeded in shocking nonetheless.

“Not so much by the ferocity of the policy shifts or ideological swings that invariably come with a party change in the White House, but through norm-shattering, democracy-testing assertions of personal power that defy the courts, the Congress, and the ethical lines that constrained past presidents.

“He freed even the most violent of the rioters who assaulted the Capitol in his name four years ago.  Out of pique over questions of loyalty, he stripped former advisers facing credible death threats of their security details.  Disregarding a law passed with bi-partisan support and upheld by the Supreme Court, he allowed the Chinese-owned TikTok app to remain in use in the United States despite serious national security concerns.

“Not satisfied to simply eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, he ordered government workers to snitch on anyone suspected of not going along or,’ a practice familiar to anyone of a certain age who lived in Russia.  He fired at least a dozen inspectors general who monitor departments for corruption and abuse in a late-night purge on Friday, ignoring a law requiring him to give Congress 30 days’ notice and provide specific reasons.”

Baker says that Trump, in effect, “declared that he was willing and even eager to push the boundaries of his authority, the resilience of American institutions, the strength of the nearly two-and-a-half-century-old system, and the tolerance of some of his own allies.”

No one knows what’s next in Trump world.  He doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions, believing, as always, that he is the smartest person in every room, so no consequence matters.

So, I continue to fear for the future of America under Trump.