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.

The headline on this blog says it well.

No third term for Donald Trump.

At the rate he is going, we’ll be lucky to live through the current term, his second.

Back in the mid-1940 when Members of Congress were debating the effect of Theodore Roosevelt having served four straight terms as president, a Republican from Tennessee, stood on the House floor and said this:

“A 22nd Amendment (barring service beyond two terms) “was necessary to prevent a dictator from taking over the country.”

Point made.

Trump apparently wants to be a dictator, if not Pope (given the papacy garb he was wearing for a photo shortly after he attended Pope Francis’ funeral).

Don’t let him go more than two.

The New York Times weighed in on this issue yesterday in an editorial that appeared under this headline:  “Trump’s Third-Term Musings Are Part of a Pattern.”

Here is how the editorial started:

“When Republicans took control of Congress in 1947, they were still angry that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had won a fourth term in 1944, and they set out to pass a constitutional amendment to limit future presidents to two terms.  John Jennings, Republican of Tennessee, stood on the House floor and said a 22nd Amendment was necessary to prevent a dictator from taking over the country.

“Without such a limit on the number of terms a man may serve in the presidency, the time may come when a man of vaulting ambition becomes president.  Such a man, backed by a ‘subservient Congress’ and a compliant Supreme Court, could ‘sweep aside and overthrow the safeguards of the Constitution.  Without such a law, a president could use the office’s great powers to tilt the political system in his favor and win repeated re-election.  Eventually, that president could come to resemble a king, effectively unbound by the Constitution’s checks and balances.”

In the decades after the country ratified the 22nd Amendment in 1951, The Times says members of both parties occasionally chafed against its restrictions, but no sitting president openly talked about evading it — until recently by Trump.

“Jennings’s warning on the House floor now looks prophetic:  Trump is a man of vaulting ambition.  Congress is largely subservient to his agenda.  And he keeps mentioning the idea of a third term.”

As for what Trump actually thinks about a third term, well, who knows?  He says one thing one day and another the next.

This past weekend, he seemed to step back from the idea by saying “It’s something that, to the best of my knowledge, you’re not allowed to do.”

But then he once again claimed that the decision was his to make.

“Well, there are ways of doing it,” he said.  All the while, his website continues to sell ‘Trump 2028’ merchandise, including baseball caps for $50 apiece and $36 T-shirts that proclaim, ‘Rewrite the rules.’”

More from the Times:

“But Trump’s third-term fantasizing is dangerous and it deserves more forceful pushback.  He has a history, after all, of using seemingly outlandish speculation to push ideas he genuinely favors — such as overturning an election result — into mainstream discourse.  He tests boundaries to see which limits are actually enforced.  Even when he backs away from a provocation, he often succeeds in raising doubts about those limits.  His behavior is consistent with a president who indeed wants to serve a third term, if not more, and who keeps raising the idea in the hope of getting Americans comfortable with it.

“More broadly, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his disdain for constitutional checks on a president’s power.  He has ignored parts of judges’ rulings, deported immigrants without due process and tried to eliminate the 14th Amendment’s grant of birthright citizenship through an executive order.  All of this behavior suggests that he would prefer to wield power without limits.”

Plus, a couple days ago, when asked whether he was bound by the U.S. Constitution, he said he “wasn’t sure.”

The appropriate response from the political system?  Assert the clarity of the law:  Trump is barred from serving a third term, period.  And, also hold accountable to live within the rule of law and constitutional protections.