Perspective from the 19th 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.
As we head toward the mid-term elections, I urge all of us to pay attention to the damage Donald Trump has done, is doing, and will do to this country.
That demands that we vote for all those who oppose Trump’s effort to represent himself and not the American people.
No organization has said this better than the New York Times whose editorial writers stroked this a telling headline, one I borrowed for this blog.
I choose to reprint the editorial word-for-word today, so read on.
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President Trump has encouraged voters to pretend he is on the ballot for the November 3 mid-term elections, and this time we can agree with his political advice. Americans should be thinking of the Trump administration as they vote for members of Congress and state officials.
Voters should keep in mind Trump’s failure to keep his campaign promises, his attempts to undermine American democracy, and his flagrant corruption. They should be thinking of the Republican Party’s acquiescence to this abuse of power, and they should hold Republicans accountable.
Today’s Democrat Party has plenty of flaws, including a disappointing failure to present a coherent agenda of its own. Nonetheless, Democrats offer the only alternative this year to the damage that Trump and his party have inflicted on the nation. A vote for a Democrat candidate is the best way for Americans to repudiate the Trump administration’s performance over the past two years.
If Democrats retake both houses of Congress, and more state governments than they now control, it will tell the world that Trump does not represent most Americans. It will demonstrate that a country that starts to slide toward autocracy can move back to normalcy, as happened in Hungary this spring. Most important, it will create a desperately needed check on Trump during his final two years in office.
Take a moment to imagine how Washington could change if Democrats win control of the House of Representatives. Trump’s legislative ambitions will be largely ended; he will not be able to pass more tax cuts that worsen the national debt.
Democrats can instead use must-pass spending bills to restore money that was improperly cut from Medicaid, schools, scientific research, and disease prevention. And Congress will finally have committee chairs who seek to exercise their constitutional duty to hold the president and his appointees responsible for their actions, through the use of hearings, subpoenas and more.
Even if Trump and his aides illegally defy subpoenas, the House can summon corporate executives and others who have enabled him.
If Democrats take the Senate, they will be able to do more. As the body that confirms nominees for top administration jobs and the judiciary, the Senate can stop Trump from appointing unqualified cabinet members like Todd Blanche, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and ideologues like Russ Vought.
Senators can insist on federal judges who, while surely conservative, will uphold the law. Many judges appointed by previous Republican presidents have honorably done so in recent years, but some Trump appointees have failed to meet this basic standard. The Senate’s confirmation role will be particularly important if any Supreme Court vacancies arise in the next two years.
Regardless, Trump will almost certainly continue to do damage in office. He will issue executive orders and conduct foreign policy, and he may defy congressional authority in ways that violate tradition or the law. Yet, the difference between a government completely run by a political party in thrall to him and a government with an empowered opposition is profound. Americans now have an opportunity to register their displeasure with his conduct, and they should seize it.
It is worth taking a moment to review the records of both Trump and congressional Republicans since he returned to office in January 2025.
In a 21-month span, he has done more harm to democracy and the rule of law than any other president in the modern era and perhaps longer than that. He has broken his oath to defend the Constitution by trying to rewrite it on his own. He has refused to honor Congress’s power of the purse and misused national security laws for political ends. He has defied federal court orders on Medicaid funding, deportation orders and more.
He has dismantled the Justice Department’s legacy as an impartial enforcer of federal law, turning it into an instrument of retribution against his adversaries while canceling investigations into his allies. He has appointed inept sycophants to oversee crucial government functions, including law enforcement, national defense, and public health. He has sought to disenfranchise large numbers of voters, claiming fraud that cannot be found, and championed an extreme new approach to partisan gerrymandering. He has physically besmirched the White House by demolishing the East Wing and financing a garish renovation with donations from wealthy allies.
In foreign affairs, Trump has wasted lives and military resources on a miscalculated and illegal war with Iran, a strategic blunder that has forced a global retreat of American power. He has left the United States less prepared for future conflicts. He has left the United States isolated and vulnerable, by alienating longtime allies. He has weakened Ukraine in its heroic fight against Russia and cozied up to President Vladimir Putin.
On the economy, his policies have raised the cost of living, contributing to a decline in real wages. Interest rates are up. Economic growth and job growth are down. He has handed out billions to the wealthy and large corporations, leaving the rest of us with the tab, through a national debt that now exceeds $40 trillion.
He has created a culture of corruption and avarice with no precedent. He has pardoned political cronies, violent felons among them. He has used the levers of power, including regulatory oversight and diplomacy, to bring in billions of dollars of profit for his family business and his closest supporters. In 2025 alone, the president’s business empire earned $2.24 billion, nearly two-thirds of it from cryptocurrency, which Mr. Trump’s executive branch is supposed to be regulating.
What has the Republican-controlled Congress done to rein in these abuses? Virtually nothing. With only a few exceptions, the Senate has approved inept cabinet members and agency heads and then stood by as they rounded up legal immigrants, brought ludicrous criminal charges against political opponents, depleted the military of top talent, and spurned the scientific consensus on the need for vaccines.
No congressional committee has demanded an accounting for the destruction of the United States Agency for International Development, which is leading to needless misery and death in other countries. Nor has Congress fought back against the shrinking of other federal agencies that it created and that the Trump White House unilaterally defunded. No committee has investigated the Trump family’s enrichment and self-dealing, though it is vastly worse than Hunter Biden’s schemes of familial exploitation, which Republicans rightly denounced.
A determined Congress could have tried to prevent the two presidential decisions most responsible for the inflation that has imperiled Republican political prospects: Starting a war against Iran and imposing tariffs on global imports.
Republican leaders didn’t even try. A handful of Republican legislators joined Democrats in passing resolutions against the war, but party leaders opposed the efforts and made sure they remained toothless.
The Republican majorities in the House and Senate do not even seem to care when Trump casts aside laws that they passed themselves. In September, Congress passed a bill enabling tighter sanctions on Russia’s energy exports, and the president signed it. When he later changed his position and said he would not enforce the sanctions, only a small number of Republicans objected, none of them in leadership.
The current Congress is the second least productive on record, passing fewer bills than any other save its immediate predecessor, the 118th Congress, in 2023 and 2024, when Republicans also controlled the House.
The most significant piece of legislation that the 119th Congress passed is the law that Trump insisted be called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In truth, it is mostly a handout to the wealthy, which worsens both the national debt and economic inequality.
The Republican congressional candidates on the ballot this year deserve to pay a price for both the damage their party has done and the damage it has failed to stop. In the face of a power-grabbing president, they have mostly shown cowardice. The Constitution envisions the legislative branch as the first among equals in the government’s power-sharing system; James Madison said that it “necessarily predominates.”
This Congress has enthusiastically ceded its power. It is Congress that has the power of the purse, the power to declare war, the power to determine who enters the country, the power to levy duties and tariffs. Its current leaders have instead become bystanders to Trump’s assertions of executive supremacy. Having signed on to Trump’s cult of personality, a vast majority of congressional Republicans are now loath to break with it, fearing the president will destroy their political careers and subject them to harassment, as he has done to others in the party.
Only voters can provide a counterweight. They have a chance to demonstrate next Tuesday that dereliction of constitutional duty can likewise end a politician’s career.
If any Republican officials on your ballot have consistently stood up to Mr. Trump on these matters, you should consider rewarding their political courage. In most state and local races, though, constraining his overreach will require voting Democratic. There are now 23 states where Republicans control both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s seat; several of those “trifectas” are at risk, including those in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and New Hampshire.
When a democracy begins to slide toward autocracy, legislative elections offer the most significant potential turning point. If voters endorse the new regime — or the party in power manages to subvert the popular will — the slide can accelerate. If voters successfully reject the regime, democracy can begin to recover. The United States will be stronger if the 2026 midterms are such a turning point.
Trump has dominated American politics for more than a decade, and the Republican Party has been his eager accomplice in degrading the nation’s ideals. The American people have a chance over the next week to speak in a clear voice.
If they do, they can allow the nation to glimpse the end of the Trump era and the start of something brighter.
