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 now open one of five departments I run with a free hand to manage as I see fit.

This time, I open the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering.  Three national columnists caught by attention as they asked:

• Where has the idea of classy behavior gone?
• How did the White House develop a bubble where loyalty, not ability, defines success?
• How did Donald Trump rise from political ruin in 2021 to seize the commanding heights of government and the world economy?

Good questions all.  So here are answers from the columnists.

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL/  Executive Editor of the Journal’s  editorial page, Matthew Hennessey, asks:  “Where Did All the Classy Americans Go?  From politics and podcasts to sports and TV, everybody’s taking the low road.”

Here is how he started his column:

“I’ll bet it’s been a while since you heard someone in public life described as ‘classy.’  The word, and what it represents, has gone AWOL.  The culture has time only for outrageous characters — F-bombers, exhibitionists, interrupters, slobs.  The sublime has given way to the garish, the sacred to the profane.

“Personal qualities once synonymous with good character have fallen so far out of fashion as to seem like rumors from an ancient age.  Did athletes really once accept defeat with dignity?  Did people really restrain themselves from saying everything that popped into their heads?  Did known philanderers refrain from trying to mount political comebacks?  Did ex-presidents stay out of the limelight as a courtesy to their successors?”

Hennessey says , blame Donald Trump if you like.  Then adds:  “That’s the easy answer.  He’s coarse and wears baseball hats.  He eats steak with ketchup and says things that people in high office shouldn’t say.  There’s no excusing Trump’s crudest behavior other than to point out that it’s worked for him.  

“He’s insulted, lied, bluffed, manipulated, moaned and wisecracked his way into history. Like it or not, Trump is the dominant political figure of our age.  Mitt Romney chose the classy route.  What exactly did it get him?”

This general notion – the lack of class – crossed my mind, as well – in this regard.  There is not class in politics these days and that owes its lineage to Trump.

Class – including middle ground on major public policy issues — is nowhere to be found as everyone argues for their view, while maintaining that anyone with another view is an enemy.

Sad!

FROM THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE, in a column written by the top editor there, Jeffrey Goldberg who ascended to a bit of fame recently when he was added to a supposedly secret group-chat – call it “Chat-Gate” — about war in the Yemen/

Here is how Goldberg started his column:

“This month’s cover story is written by two of our newest reporters, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer. Both came to The Atlantic from The Washington Post, where they covered the White House and national politics.  As one might expect, they have developed complicated and intriguing ideas about the brain of Donald Trump and the nature of Trumpism.

“A simple question animates their story: How did Trump rise from political ruin in 2021 to seize the commanding heights of government and the world economy?  One is not required to admire Trump to acknowledge that he has become the most consequential American political figure of the 21st century, and that we all live inside a reality he has made — and makes anew each day.

“…Trump himself has a capacious understanding of his power.  ‘The first time, I had two things to do — run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys,’ Trump said.  He was referring, it seems, to anyone who’d investigated him.  ‘And the second time,’ he added, ‘I run the country and the world.’”

I add that real Americans can only hope Trump doesn’t succeed in his quest to “run the world.”

For, as The Atlantic adds:

“Denial and attack have worked exceedingly well for Trump.  His decision to foment the January 6 insurrection would normally have ended his political career, but it didn’t.  Trump called the insurrection a ‘day of love,’ and his decision, at the outset of his second term, to pardon or commute the sentences of the insurrectionists — ­transforming even those who assaulted police officers into victims of malignant prosecutors — only made him more powerful.”

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST/  Writing by columnist Philip Bump appeared under this headline:  “The bubble that created Trump is the reason he’s stumbling; the White House is now a bubble where loyalty, not ability, defines success.”

Bump goes on:

“Consider Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“No one should be surprised that Hegseth is flailing in his new role, one of the most arduous and complicated in the U.S. government, if not the world.  When  Trump proposed that Hegseth run the agency, the response was broadly unified:  Hegseth lacked the experience needed to do the job effectively.  You could debate the other controversies surrounding his bid for the role ad nauseam, but there was no way to reasonably argue that the Fox News talk-show host was prepared to run the Pentagon.

“Hegseth was confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate anyway because Trump and a universe of voices who support him insisted Hegseth was the best choice for the job — because he was Trump’s choice for the job.

“It’s the same bet that prominent Republicans have been making on Trump himself since 2015.  Now, as Trump too is flailing — polling and the data make clear that he is — it’s trivial to identify that insular chorus of cheerleaders and cynics as a root cause.

“The president owes his political career to that same bubble.  Over the past few decades, the fringe right and then Republicans more broadly embraced discussions of the world that were mostly devoid of nuance:  Left bad, right good.

“Part of the reason that Trump’s second administration is filled with loyalists and unqualified nominees is that he disliked the accountability and disagreement he saw during his first four years at the White House, when his administration was staffed with a far larger number of qualified officials.”

So, at least for this morning, enough about Trump.  Just, with me, hope that class somehow returns to the forefront – in politics and in life.