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.

Whenever Donald Trump talks, you have to believe one of two things:

• Either he is exaggerating.

• Or, he is telling outright lies.

Consider his claims about winning wars and producing peace.

None is true.

He was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year, though he campaigned openly for it.  Instead, Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, took home the award.

Of course, that made Trump mad.

So, the international soccer association – yes, soccer – which is called FIFA, awarded the inaugural “FIFA Peace Prize” to Trump.

I say, let soccer be soccer without attaching it so directly to politics.

Where are Trump’s peacemaker claims coming from?

The Washington Post provides the answer.

“Trump claims he has ‘solved’ eight conflicts since taking office in January.

• A peace agreement between Congo and Rwanda.

• The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

• The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.

• Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo.

• Tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia.

• A military confrontation between India and Pakistan.

• A border skirmish between Thailand and Cambodia.

• Fighting between Israel and Iran.”

The trouble with this list is that “solutions” claimed by Trump are not true.  Fighting continues in all cases.

So, don’t give Trump any peace prizes.

He doesn’t deserve them, either overseas or at home.

To conclude, I recite a column in the New York Times by Frank Bruni where he excoriates Trump for giving himself nothing by passing grades as he exalts – no surprise here – himself.

Consider this case.

In an interview last week with Dasha Burns from Politico, Trump was asked to grade his stewardship of the economy on his watch.

“’A-plus,’ he said.

“’A-plus?’ she said back to him, as if maybe she hadn’t heard him right, as if such flamboyant boasting were still a shock, as if she were clinging idealistically to the idea that a president of the United States could not travel quite this many light-years away from reality, as if the past decade of American history hadn’t happened.

“’Yeah,’ Trump responded.

“But then, upon further consideration, he realized that he’d been unduly self-effacing.  So, he re-wrote his report card.

“’A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,’ Trump said.  

Bruni adds:  “That’s five pluses, for those of you too non-plussed to pause and count.  I assume he stopped there only because he was winded.   He’s not the cyclone of energy he used to be.  He’s more an erratic breeze.

“And he has decided to answer to one kind of inflation with another. You think 4.0 grade point averages are too common at the elite universities that he supposedly deplores?  They wouldn’t even land you on the dean’s list in the Trump administration, where the windbags in the West Wing, the showboats in the cabinet and the blowhard in chief are constantly gilding their self-determined A’s with self-indulgent pluses atop pluses.”

That last paragraph from Bruni says it all – so I’ll let him have the last word on Trump, the blowhard…in peacekeeping (no) and in the economy (also, no).