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.

To repeat one of my pet phrases, I like words better than numbers, charts, graphs or, even, photos.

That’s just the way I am built and, as the introduction to my blog notes, I dealt with words in all my professional positions.  Now, I do so, as well, in retirement.

So it was that I came across two great paragraphs by two acknowledged  excellent writers whose work appears in the New York Times, as well as elsewhere – Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman.

Without further ado, here is what they wrote:

Maureen Dowd:  “Sucking up to Donald Trump, self-crowned sun king, is a Sisyphean task. Trying to keep up with his whims, his revenge plots, his insatiable need for slobbering praise, his disdain for the law, will always be a losing battle.”

She wrote these words as she commented on the firing of two officials seeking accolades from Trump – Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem.

Thomas Friedman:  “In short, we are watching what happens when you put into the Oval Office an impulsive, unstable man who ran for president largely to get revenge on his political foes. Then he surrounded himself with a cabinet chosen for its handsome looks and its willingness to put loyalty to Trump over loyalty to the Constitution.  Add to that Republican majorities in the House and Senate willing to write him blank checks, and it all eventually leads to sloppy, undisciplined decision-making, including starting a huge war in the Middle East with no plan for the morning after.”

Friedman wrote these words as he worried that Trump has no way out of a war he created on a whim.