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 noted one anniversary the other day – 50 years since the Vietnam War ended.

Today, I note another one – the anniversary of Trump’s first 100 days in office as president.

Different as the two are, they have one thing in common:  Both commemorate something very disturbing – an unjust war and an unjust president.

Vietnam was a war that no one understood and that cost thousands of American lives.  Trump is a buffoon – or a want-to-be dictator – who costs American values, if not lives.

Here is the way the Washington Post put it:

“…choreographed claims of success belie the evidence that Trump is in the midst of what could be the most damaging week so far of his second term.

“Trump on Thursday ousted national security adviser Michael Waltz, who was at the center of an embarrassing Signal chat scandal.  A federal judge ruled that Trump had exceeded his authority in using an 18th-century law to deport migrants quickly.  Trump has failed to secure peace in the Middle East or Ukraine, despite promises that he would do so quickly.

“Many of his efforts to dramatically reduce the size of the federal government have been blocked in court.  And the U.S. economy has shrunk for the first time in three years, fueling fears of a recession sparked by Trump’s tariffs on foreign imports.

So, believe the facts.  Don’t believe Trump and his minions.

Here’s more on Trump’s first 100 days from three national columnists, which, for me, is easier than writing about those days myself.

From Phillip Bump in the Washington Post:  “What the spate of recent polls shows is that any post-election honeymoon Trump enjoyed is gone, dried up and shattered and swept into the wind.”

From Dana Milbank, also in the Post:  “After 100 days on the job, Trump has found the hard work of governing to be less pleasant.  His tariffs have destabilized markets and brought historic levels of pessimism to American businesses and consumers.  His policies have alienated allies and emboldened Russia and China.  He has the lowest approval rating that any president in generations has experienced at this stage of his presidency.”

From the NY Times:  Columnist David French writes this:  “It’s hard to find anything distinctively Christian about Trump’s first 100 days.  In fact, there’s been far more cruelty than Christianity on view over his first three months back in office.  But white evangelicals still stand with him.”

Which, I add, means that it is not real Christians who support Trump.  It is people who have joined a Trump movement and their motives do not keep faith with Christianity.

From the Atlantic Magazine:  “People are very happy with this presidency,” Trump said in an interview with The Atlantic last week. “I’ve had great polls.”

“That wasn’t true then, and it’s even less true now.  As Trump hits his 100th day in office today, pollsters have been releasing new surveys, and the results are ugly.  NBC News finds that 55 per cent of Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of the job, but that’s rosy compared with the 59 per cent in a CNN poll.

“An ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that just 39 per cent of Americans approve of Trump’s performance — the lowest ever recorded, going back to 1945, and smashing through the previous record of 42 per cent, set by one Donald Trump in 2017.

“More than half of Americans say that Trump is a “dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy,” according to the Public Religion Research Institute.  Asked by NPR to give Trump a letter grade for his first 100 days, a full 45 per cent of Americans gave the president an F, including 49 per cent of independents. Sixty percent believe that the country is on the wrong track, per NBC.”

Does Trump believe these results?

Of course not.

If polls do not commemorate him, he ignores them.  Or says they are fake.

That’s how a narcissist does business.