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.

Well, the answer to the question posed in this blog headline:  Perhaps.

And, if a crisis exists, it is exactly what Donald Trump wants.

You see, he views himself as king or dictator, so nothing else matters.  Not what others think.  Not Congress.  Not the courts.  Not public opinion.  And, not the U.S. Constitution.

Here is the way the New York Times put it:

“Trump is operating under the theory that the Executive Branch is unitary, in the sense that Article II of the Constitution places executive power in a single person, the president, who gets to control every high-level official who executes federal law (and plenty of lower-level ones, too).”

And, here’s a summary of the U.S. Constitution because, to know if it is in jeopardy, we all need to know what it is.

“Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the United States Constitution is the world’s longest surviving written charter of government.

“Its first three words – “We The People” – affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens.

“The supremacy of the people through their elected representatives is recognized in Article I, which creates a Congress consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives.  The positioning of Congress at the beginning of the Constitution affirms its status as the “First Branch” of the federal government.

“The Constitution assigned to Congress responsibility for organizing the executive and judicial branches, raising revenue, declaring war, and making all laws necessary for executing these powers.

“The president is permitted to veto specific legislative acts, but Congress has the authority to override presidential vetoes by two-thirds majorities of both houses.  The Constitution also provides that the Senate advise and consent on key executive and judicial appointments and on the approval for ratification of treaties.

“For over two centuries the Constitution has remained in force because its framers successfully separated and balanced governmental powers to safeguard the interests of majority rule and minority rights, of liberty and equality, and of the federal and state governments.

“More a concise statement of national principles than a detailed plan of governmental operation, the Constitution has evolved to meet the changing needs of a modern society profoundly different from the eighteenth-century world in which its creators lived.  To date, the Constitution has been amended 27 times, most recently in 1992.  The first ten amendments constitute the Bill of Rights.”

All this came up in my mind mostly because of an article in The Atlantic Magazine by David A. Graham.

He started his column this way:

:Grasping the scale of President Donald Trump’s assault on American governance is no small matter.  The administration is challenging laws, claiming the right to reinterpret the Constitution, questioning judges’ powers, and arrogating new powers to itself.  Seeking to convey the gravity of the situation, many commentators have labeled what’s happening a ‘constitutional crisis.’

“That’s a mistake — not because what’s happening is not serious, but because it is so serious.  This week, the Trump administration came the closest it has thus far to outright refusing to follow a judge’s order, after days of comments from Vice President J. D. Vance, Bureaucrat in Chief Elon Musk, and others questioning whether a president must follow court rulings.  That’s a threat to the very basic question of whether a president is subject to the law or not — especially when so many things that Trump has done appear plainly illegal.”

But, Graham believes what he calls “the abstraction of constitutional crisis obscures the immediate danger, making what’s happening seem like an issue more for legal experts and policy wonks than for the everyday Americans who stand to lose not only essential government services but also fundamental rights.

“A president refusing to abide by the law or the Constitution and ignoring court orders to stop his illegitimate actions would be a constitutional crisis like a bank robbery is a cash flow crisis,” says Joseph Ura, a political scientist at Clemson University.”

A recent New York Times article reported that many legal scholars believe the country is in a constitutional crisis, but it began by acknowledging, “There is no universally accepted definition of a constitutional crisis.”

The law, for all its careful parsing of language, has a weakness for this sort of I-know-it-when-I-see-it formulation, but if even the professors can’t define it, how can the general public?

More from The Atlantic writer, Graham:

“At one time, appeals to the sanctity of the Constitution might have swayed more people, but one reason Trump has been able to dominate U.S. politics for so long is that voters are not feeling protective of their institutions.

“About six in 10 people in a 2022 New York Times poll said the constitutional order needs major reforms.  In 2023, PEW found that just 4 per cent of Americans think the political system is working very well.  And in 2024, voters selected a guy who’d tried to overturn the previous election.  Regardless of what law professors think, the populace has already decided that the Constitution is in crisis.

“And insofar as people do think of this as a ‘crisis,’ that might only further empower Trump — who’s responsible for it in the first place.  That’s because, in times of crisis, Americans usually look to the president to act quickly and decisively.

“That can be good in a bona fide external crisis, like an attack by a foreign country or a pandemic, but that’s not what’s happening now.”

What’s happening now is Trump disregarding the rule of law – the rule of the U.S. Constitution – when it suits him.  He doesn’t care about the usual boundaries, but, as he preens for TV and on-line sources, I hope his contempt will catch up with him.

The future of American democracy depends on it.