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.

A solid political writer, Chris Whipple, managed to interview White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles 11 times in the last year.

The account he wrote was one of most surprising developments in Washington, D.C. over the last few months.

Why?

Well, Wiles was quoted time and again as she made on-the-record comments describing Donald Trump as, for example, has having an “alcoholic’s personality.” 

Yet, for that and other comments against Trump and his vice president, J.D. Vance, Wiles survived and she even got compliments from Trump.

This came to light this when Whipple wrote an essay for the New York Times that appeared under this headline:  “This Is the Real Reason Susie Wiles Talked to Me 11 Times.”  [Whipple is the author of “The Gatekeepers:  How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency.”  I read the book, a great one for those of us who are political junkies.]

Here is how Whipple started his essay in the Times:

“I don’t think it’s immodest of me to say that the interviews I did with Susie Wiles that appeared in articles in Vanity Fair — in which President Trump’s White House chief of staff described him as having an ‘alcoholic’s personality’ and called Vice President J.D. Vance ‘a conspiracy theorist for a decade’ — set off a political tempest.

“Trump’s top advisers leaped to Wiles’s defense, and she called the story a “disingenuously framed hit piece.” But after she initially denied having made certain remarks about Elon Musk (only to be told they were on tape), neither Wiles nor anyone else in the White House challenged the article’s accuracy.”

So, why did Wiles submit to the 11 interviews?

Whipple doesn’t know sure, but proffered a few reasons:

• It could have been that Wiles thought that Trump, who had been vilified by the media during his first term, deserved a fair hearing in his second term, so she submitted to interviews.

Comment:  That could make sense, I guess, but, in what could have been a big for a fair hearing, why did Wiles go far to describe Trump and his ilk as idiots?

• I could have been, Whipple says, that Wiles was unaware she would be quoted directly.

Comment:  That makes no sense because Wiles, a veteran operative, knows what it means to get agreement from a reporter to go off-the- record.  Otherwise, comments are on-the-record.

• Perhaps Wiles was trying to buff her legacy by distancing herself from some of the worst Trump actions.

Comment:  Perhaps is all I can say, but, if so, this was a strange way to boost herself.

• Perhaps she was taking a page from Machiavelli to undermine her rivals by, for example, putting her thumb on the scale of the 2028 G.O.P. presidential contest in favor of Marco Rubio and against Vance. 

Comment:  Again, possible, given how Wiles pilloried Vance, an easy task for someone in the know like Wiles.

For his part, Whittle says his theory is simple:  “People want to tell their stories.  Every good biographer knows that most people, if you treat them with fairness and respect, will open up to you.

“And no one is without ego.  Wiles may be famously self-effacing, but as the first female White House chief of staff, she’s acutely aware of her place in history.”

Whipple’s conclusion:

“Wiles and her team are so like-minded in their devotion to the president that they’ve in many ways lost touch with the outside world.  On what planet would a White House official say out loud, of prosecuting the president’s political enemies, that ‘when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it’?  Or that Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, is a “right-wing absolute zealot’?  Or that Vance’s 180-degree conversion to Trumpism was ‘sort of political’?

Despite her candor, Wiles’s job seems more secure than ever.  And, is she doing a good job?

For me, the question makes no sense because doing a good job for Trump only means more retaliation and obfuscation.