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.

I often myself the question in this blog headline.

How does Donald Trump escape to much in his law-breaking?

It has bugged me for years and will do so until Trump leaves office, whenever that is.

Well, New Times columnist Maureen Dowd supplied some answers in recent writing in the Times.  Here are excerpts, which I include verbatim because they strike me as so accurate:

• It’s crazy to think about Donald Trump outrunning anything.  But in legal terms, the president is an Olympic-class sprinter.  He breaks the law so fast that the law is left in his orange dust.
• Trump is an outlaw. And our system was not built for an outlaw in the Oval.
• He zeros in on loopholes in the law and the system that are based on trust and the assumption that our leaders — and their families — will not be voracious scam artists.
• “The Constitution was built on this idea that the president would have enough decency and morality that they just wouldn’t run around exploiting the gaps,” said the Trump biographer Tim O’Brien.

“And for Trump, it’s like red meat.  This idea that Trump’s mentor was Roy Cohn was profoundly wrong.  Donald Trump’s mentor was Fred from day one.  His father showed him how to exploit the government system, the legal system and business.  His whole worldview is built around the idea that you exploit systems for personal gain, and there’s nothing wrong with doing that because the world’s populated by sharks and you just have to be the biggest shark.”

• The White House is the People’s House.  Chief executives are transient tenants.  Its “stately simplicity,” President Teddy Roosevelt once said, “is an expression of the character of the period in which it was built and is in accord with the purposes it was designed to serve.”  Safeguarding it, he said, gave us continuity with our past.
• Trump was a builder, but he is such an egotist he can only view buildings — and reflecting pools — as reflections of himself.  When he built Trump Tower, he tore down the Art Deco friezes on Bonwit Teller despite promising them to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Just so, he bulldozed the East Wing and tore up both of Jackie Kennedy’s gardens before Congress or historic preservationists had a chance to weigh in.
• The Supreme Court protects the outlandish outlaw by palavering about whether the architectural historian who brought case against him has “standing” to do so.  Yet shouldn’t any American have standing to challenge Trump’s desecrations?  Trump ludicrously blasted the preservationists fighting to stop the ballroom as “TREASONISTS.”
• As he casually divides and undermines America, he obsesses on using Krazy Glue to affix gold crap to the walls of the Oval Office or plotting to plant 47 maple trees in Lafayette Park to honor himself.  
• He got us into a war he has no clue how to get out of, yet spends his time mulling redecorating projects, gold gewgaws, his new helipad, and his replacement of the asphalt driveway at the White House with granite.
• There are so many pathetic scenes of the Supreme Court and Republicans in Congress caving in to Trump — on his war in Iran that he calls “small potatoes” and that J.D. Vance risibly claims is not a war; on his attempts to disenfranchise voters; on trying to hijack the Postal Service to obstruct those voting by mail; on plotting to sell of a chunk of Yosemite to a private developer; on allowing the killing of endangered wolves and the secret slaughter of wild horses; on trying to slap his name back on the Kennedy Center; on his petty, vindictive renaming of Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” in the midst of the U.S.-Canadian trade war, even though it’s not even named for the Canadian province.
• Now Trump is breaking ground for his solipsistic, Napoleonic Triumphal Arch — never mind that it lacks federal approval and that the gold angel on top might endanger planes flying in and out of Reagan National Airport.
• “And that’s the lesson of everybody who doesn’t understand who Donald Trump is,” O’Brien said. “He’s simply there to pick your pocket.”

So, the conclusion?  Trump is picking my pocket and everyone else’s.  The problem, of course, is that it will be tough for America to survive Trump’s sophistry if, that is, we can survive the next two years.