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.

When it comes to filling important federal government positions – including members of a president’s cabinet – most presidents look for experience and credentials.

Not Donald Trump.

He pines only for those who will look up to him as what he thinks he is, which is the most important man in the world – if not the Pope as he dressed up the other day for a photo shoot in garb of the papacy.

Another way to put this:  It’s amateur hour among top officials in Trump’s government, if not Trump himself.

Look no farther than Pete Hegseth, the director of the Department of Defense whose only “experience” for the job was that he served as a talk show host Trump admired.

Or, like columnist Dana Milbank in the Washington Post yesterday, look no farther than the Seretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs, Doug Collins. 

Milbank wrote a new column under this headline:  “Could incompetence save the Republic?”  That’s a question he asked after he watched Colins testify on Capitol Hill.

Put simply, Milbank said, “it didn’t go well.”

Here’s more from Milbank.

“Doug Collins, the man Trump put in charge of slashing the Department of Veterans Affairs, controls the fate of some 9 million veterans who receive health care from the VA A and 6 million who rely on VA for disability benefits.

“Yet ,when he came before the Senate to testify on Tuesday, it quickly became apparent that Collins, a former congressman from Georgia, lacks even a tenuous grasp on what he is doing.”

The back and forth with Members of Congress proved Collins is not qualified to do anything, including running the VA.

Here’s a summary of that back and forth, according to Milbank:

• How many clinical trials has the Trump administration stopped?  “I’d have to get that number back to you.”
• How much has been saved from staff reductions so far?  “I’d have to get back to you.”
• Senator John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, asked why Veterans Affairs cut a program shown to reduce the number of amputations among veterans.  “Could you repeat the question?” Collins asked.  Boozman did.  “I’ll have to get back with you on that one,” the secretary answered.

“Collins,” Milbank wrote “spoke in a drawl and with the rapid-fire cadence of an auctioneer, and often ended his thoughts mid-sentence and positioned his subjects in vehement disagreement with his verbs.  He gloated that wait times for VA appointments increased during the Biden Administration — but questioning revealed he was unaware that a 2022 change in the way wait-times are calculated that made the comparison meaningless.  

“At another point, Collins was asked about Medicaid, which is for the poor and near-poor, and he confused it with Medicare, which is for seniors.  “I’m not sure where we’re going with this,” Collins said when his error was pointed out.

“Clearly.”

The Trump administration (note the small “a” in the word administration, which connotes that I don’t think Trump is “administering” anything) has thrown VA into absolute chaos.  

Collins has announced a goal of eliminating 15 per cent of VA staff — some 83,000 jobs — without any word about how he intends to go about it.  This has spread fear among staff and veterans alike that health care will be curtailed along with the government’s sacred responsibility, as Abraham Lincoln put it, “to care for him who shall have borne the battle.”  Yet, for all the mayhem, the vaunted cost savings haven’t yet amounted to much, if anything.

More Milbank:

“What the Trump administration is doing to Veterans Affairs is, in short, a microcosm of what it has been doing to the overall federal government:  Sabotage without purpose.  Or perhaps sabotage is the purpose — a deliberate effort to incapacitate and discredit the government.  But Trump sabotages VA at his peril, for veterans have a political clout that, say, the kids affected by the White House’s dismantling of the Education Department don’t enjoy.

“Maybe that is why Trump tapped Collins to lead VA, which oversees 155 cemeteries:  His main qualification appears to be a talent for whistling past the graveyard.

So, with “performances” like Collins put on the other day – and that Trump puts on every day – Milbank hopes that incompetence will finally come home to roost.

I join him in that hope.