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.

By Dave Fiskum

As we transition from 2025 to 2026, there are a host of stories in national news outlets reporting what happened in 2025. 

At the same time, various analysts suggest what could happen in 2026.

I add that, as I write this, it is 2026.  To be candid, I did not stay up to watch 2026 happen – I never can stay up that late – so I rose this morning to a new year.

Now, I choose, first, in the “look back/look forward” process, to focus on Donald Trump, the worst president in U.S. history who is trying to make the United States into his own image.  An autocracy.

Also, his administration (note that I did not capitalize the word “administration” because what Trump does is not administration) has made a host of incredible mistakes.

It is almost impossible to top the one described below.

Atlantic Magazine cited this case.  Editor Jeffrey Goldberg was included by Trump officials on a supposedly private on-line meeting describing supposedly private U.S. military plans for the war in Yemen.  The call laid out specific plans for the war which, if nothing else, put members of the military in even more danger as word of the specific plans leaked – or, not leaked, but reported by Goldberg.

How could this have happened, especially because Goldberg was on a list, perhaps at the top, of journalists despised by Trump? 

As I reflect back on this case, I cannot believe it happened, plus that no Trump sycophants were punished for their bad work.

Enough of Trump.

I’ll turn to more positive stuff.

For the rest of this “looking back/looking forward” blog, I rely on the New York Times to list a few of the 25 positive things it said happened in 2025.

• The Catholic Church elected Robert Prevost to become the first American pope.  The Chicago native took the name Leo XIV.
• Despite Trump-imposed tariffs, the U.S. economy kept growing throughout 2025, thanks largely to a boom in AI innovation.  The S&P 500 soared to new heights, up more than 15 per cent for the year.
• Overdose deaths continued their steady decline, with the most recent provisional data from April showing a roughly 25 per cent drop compared to the previous year.
• The U.S. maintained its role as the center of global medical innovation. The Food and Drug Administration approved a twice-a-year HIV shot, the closest thing to an AIDS vaccine.  Scientists have also achieved multiple breakthroughs in genetic therapies, including the first-ever treatment for Huntington’s disease.  [This despite Trump’s distaste for medical breakthroughs promulgated by his Health and Human Services secretary, Robert Kennedy, who has made light of anything health-related.]
• The commercial space industry pulled off impressive engineering feats.  Firefly Aerospace became the first company successfully to land a probe on the Moon.  Blue Origin launched its first NASA mission and managed to land the rocket’s booster.  Meanwhile, SpaceX launched more than 100 Starlink missions this year, often using the same booster dozens of times.
• No hurricanes made landfall in the United States for the first time in a decade.
• In a sign that U.S. energy markets are becoming increasingly diverse and competitive, March was the first month the country recorded making more than half its electricity from non-carbon-based sources.
• Targeted conservation efforts managed to notch some wins for wildlife.  Green sea turtles are no longer endangered, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.  A study out of India, home to 75 per cent of the world’s wild tigers, found that the country’s population of the big cat doubled in the last decade. And after the removal of four dams in Oregon and California’s Klamath River, salmon returned after having disappeared for more than a century.  [A point I cite as a person who lives most of the year in Oregon.]
• Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado came out of hiding to collect the Nobel Peace Prize for her work promoting freedom under the nose of dictator Nicolás Maduro.  [Of course, I add that Trump thought he deserved the award, so competed for it fortunately without success.]
• The last surviving Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023, regained their freedom after more than two years in captivity as part of a peace deal to stop hostilities in Gaza, though that deal still has not produced lasting results.
• Eight million people escaped extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $3 a day.
• Sports fans witnessed extraordinary accomplishments:  Shohei Ohtani delivered the greatest single-game performance in baseball history.  Rory McIlroy won the Masters Tournament, completing his career Grand Slam.  U.S. track star Melissa Jefferson-Wooden smashed a world championship record at the 100-meter world finals.

So, while there can be a tendency these days to focus on bad stuff – goodness knows there is a lot of that stuff — the Times deserves credit for pointing us in a positive direction.

Let’s hope for more good news in 2026.