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.
If you want to boil down the mid-term election into two words, try these.
TRUMP LOST.
Blue wave. Tsunami for the Ds. Repudiation for Trump.
Not much more needs to be said, but here is the way a story in the New York Times described the loss:
“Tuesday’s steep losses point to more than the usual political pendulum swings. The president drove down his own popularity, squandered his trust with voters on the economy, and created an impossible environment for many incumbents.
“He started a war that spiked fuel prices, failed to focus on affordability while seeming preoccupied with White House renovations, and backed candidates whose liabilities required expensive interventions.”
And, then in his final act before the election, incredibly, Trump chose to appear before the reflecting pool in Washington, D.C. to tout his strength. Just like him to stand by a disaster and describe his success.
Let me give NY Times columnist Frank Bruni the last word:
“…that’s the main source of my elation, which is not too strong a word. Am I happy Democrats have a significant congressional majority? Absolutely, given President Trump’s incompetence, incoherence, lawlessness and autocratic pretensions — and Republicans’ indulgence of all of that.
“But I’m ecstatic that despite the pollution of our information ecosystem, despite Trump’s attempts to corrupt the voting process, despite epically shameless gerrymanders, and despite all this crazy money sloshing through the mid-terms, Americans were able to identify correctly the agents of their economic distress and to oust them.”
Now, we’ll see what the lame duck Trump does with his last two years in office.
