PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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 past-time – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Did I say my last post might, in fact, be my last on the impeachment process?

Yes, I did.  But I was wrong.

Here is another one.

I simply cannot avoid posting again given the incredible significance of what’s poised to happen in the U.S. Senate this week – acquitting Donald Trump despite the grievous actions he took to benefit himself, including in the 2020 election.

Senate acquittal will do nothing but embolden Trump.

Beyond demanding that Ukraine interfere in the election – with national security money held out as a brige — he went one up on that by asking China to do the same.

If you think he won’t do it again, think again.

Senate Republicans, who bowed at the altar of Trump, have had guts to say that the best approach, for all of us as Americans, is to allow the presidential election to go forward.

Sure.

We all should vote in an election that already has been tainted and, inevitably, will be tainted again.

Not surprisingly, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post editorial writers came to different conclusions as impeachment nears its end.

From the Wall Street Journal:

“It is too low a constitutional bar for the House to claim, as it does, that Trump can be impeached because Democrats think his motives were corrupt. The acts themselves must qualify as ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ Trump’s acts don’t qualify—because asking aid recipients to investigate corruption isn’t illegal, and in any case the aid to Ukraine was delivered on time and no investigation of Joe Biden was started. T his does not condone Trump’s request, which was reckless and dumb, but it isn’t an impeachable offense.”

From the Washington Post:

“Republican senators who voted to suppress known but unexamined evidence of President Trump’s wrongdoing at his Senate trial must have calculated that the wrath of a vindictive president is more dangerous than the sensible judgment of the American people, who, polls showed overwhelmingly favored the summoning of witnesses. That’s almost the only way to understand how the Republicans could have chosen to deny themselves and the public the firsthand account of former national security adviser John Bolton, and perhaps others, on how Mr. Trump sought to extort political favors from Ukraine.

“So cowed are Republicans that they have echoed the president’s indefensible claims that there was nothing wrong with the pressure campaign. Their votes against witnesses have rendered the trial a farce and made conviction the only choice for senators who honor the Constitution.”

And this from the New York Times:

“Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to foresee the lesson of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. ‘When you strike at a king,’ Emerson famously said, ‘you must kill him.’

“Trump’s foes struck at him but did not take him down.

“With the end of impeachment, a triumphant Trump emerges from the biggest test of his presidency emboldened, ready to claim exoneration and take his case of grievance, persecution and resentment to the campaign trail.”

Apart from the impeachment result – acquittal – the most convulsing impression for me over the last few weeks resides with the attorney, Alan Dershowitz, who always is seeking the limelight.

A Washington Post editorial said this about Dershowitz:

“When a lawyer for President Trump suggested to senators that whatever a president does in pursuit of re-election is inherently in the public’s interest, the moment crystallized fears among some of Trump’s critics about creeping presidential autocracy.

“’If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,’ said the lawyer, Alan Dershowitz.”

In this way, Dershowitz parrots Trump.

If something is good for Trump – in this case a tainted election – that that something is good for America. Because, remember, Trump is a great president and, thus, anything is does to promote his re-election equates to the public good.

What has happened over the last week in the impeachment trial contains huge risks for America. The main one is that it has now been confirmed by Congress – or, at least the U.S. Senate – that Trump can do whatever he wants without fear of recrimination.
To him, that even means shooting someone in the middle of Times Square.

It also means rigging the next election.

Only time will tell what Trump does next in his dictatorship.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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 past-time – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Is this the last blog I’ll write about impeachment?

Probably not, though on this Friday morning, it appears we are all about to witness the acquittal of President Donald Trump from two charges that, truth be told, are exactly right – he tried to bludgeon a foreign country into helping him win the next election and he told Congress to take a hike when it tried to investigate his conduct.

I call this a pyric victory because, as the word is defined, it means “relating to, or resulting from burning” – and that’s clearly what is happening – our sense of ethics and comportment is being consumed by fire, just as is our equilibrium in the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Senate is deciding not to proceed and senators there may end up paying a price as more and more information emerges about the over-the-top actions of Trump.

If I allow myself to focus on the specifics of the impeachment process over the last couple weeks, I end up with a fear that our sense of democracy has turned to ashes. No conduct is beyond the pale.

Here’s the way Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank put it in his Impeachment Diary this morning:

“In the beginning, the president’s lawyers made a relatively benign argument: He didn’t do it. No quid pro quo.

“But House managers tried their case too well. Evidence piled up on the Senate floor over the past 10 days that the president withheld military aid to force Ukraine to announce probes of his political foes. And former national security adviser John Bolton’s firsthand account leaked about the quid pro quo.

“In response, Trump’s defenders shifted to a far more sweeping, and dangerous, defense. They stepped away from denying misconduct and instead declared that the president can do as he pleases — or, as Trump puts it, that the Constitution gives him “right to do whatever I want as president.”

And, this from one of Trump’s lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, who apparently will say anything someone pays him to say: “If a president did something which he believes will help him get elected — in the public interest — that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”

According to Dershowitz, because Trump believes he is the greatest of all presidents, then what he does to win-election is, by definition, in the national interest.

Again, Trump, with Dershowitz as his mouthpiece, says he is above all law.

Pick your word. Startling. Appalling. Ludicrous. Jaw dropping.

Or, pyric? Yes.

Who wins and who loses with Trump’s apparent acquittal?

• Trump wins. His contention that, as president, he can do what he wants whenever he wants, incredibly, has been endorsed by Congress – or at least by the U.S. Senate. Who knows what this worst of all U.S. presidents will do next to express his narcissism.
• The Senate loses because it has demonstrated, not its stance as supposedly the “world’s great deliberative body,” but, rather, its decision to bow at the altar of Trump, the Constitution be damned.
• The House loses because its decision to move ahead with impeachment, whatever the merits of the action in the first place, will only now accrue to the credit of Trump who will claim vindication as he heads toward the 2020 election.
• Americans lose because they now will be voting in an election later this year that already has been tainted by Trump and no doubt, with the no-strings-attached freedom Trump thinks he has and which the Senate is poised to convey upon him, will be tainted again.

With their apparent votes to acquit, senators are embracing a new concept: Right is whatever the president says it is.

And that’s one of the main reasons why I worry for the future of American democracy.

**********

And this unrelated footnote: Forgive me, but I almost laughed out load late yesterday when news emerged that part of Trump’s vaunted anti-immigrant wall between the U.S. and Mexico had fallen due to high winds. So, it appears there is something more powerful than Trump – Mother Nature.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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 past-time – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

The words in the headline to this blog are appropriate.

Attorney Alan Dershowitz, who appears to be able to argue strenuously for any side of any issue as long as someone will pay him, made a claim in the Senate impeachment hearings that sparked the words – jaw dropping, audacious, startling.

Even to my eye – someone out West who apparently has nothing better to do than watch impeachment television – the Dershowitz claim defied understanding.

He said:

• Presidents can do nearly anything so long as they believe their re-election is in the public interest.
• If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.
• I want to be elected. I think I’m a great president. I think I’m the greatest president there ever was.   If I’m not elected, the national interest will suffer greatly. That cannot be an impeachable offense.

Really?

Sounds a lot like Donald Trump himself.

So, in this case, it was absolutely acceptable for Trump to ask a foreign nation to intervene in what is supposed to be a fair and open election for the next president in this country. He wanted the foreign intervention to rig the election his way.

“Dershowitz’ argument was beyond absurd,” said New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand. “I thought he made absolutely no sense — because he essentially said that if President Trump believes his election is for the good of the American people that he could do whatever he wants. He is wrong, and I think he’s made a laughable argument that undermines the president’s case.”

Even late night comics entered the case.

The Washington Post reported this:

“Jaws dropped across the United States on Wednesday as comics, Democrat politicians, legal scholars and TV personalities came together in collective disbelief at the audacious claims of presidential immunity made by President Trump’s impeachment lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

“The most frequent analogies — drawing on Dershowitz’s argument that presidents could do almost anything as long as they believe their re-election is in the public interest — were to monarchs, dictators and former president Richard M. Nixon.

“Alan Dershowitz un-impeached Richard Nixon today,” tweeted John Dean, the former White House counsel under Nixon, whose testimony helped lead to the 37th president’s resignation.

“This is inane. The president could threaten people (including with our army) unless they voted for him? Could order a break-in of DNC headquarters?” tweeted Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal, former acting U.S. solicitor general during the Obama administration. “I’m not sure even kings had such powers.”

Comedy Central host Trevor Noah picked up on the monarchy theme as well: “This whole idea seems more like a monarchy or something.”

For me, it’s one thing for all the president’s men to advocate on his behalf. It’s quite another to throw out the U.S. Constitution and contend that the president should be given a pass on what is a clear and mind-boggling action – Trump tainted the 2020 election, which ought to give all of us, as voters, great pause.

Just wait, he’ll do it again and again until the election.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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 past-time – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

For three years now, I have been looking for a way to describe Donald Trump.

He stands, I posit, as the worst president in U.S. history because he functions in the Oval Office as a reality TV show host with no limits on what he says or does.

He even says he could shoot someone in Times Square and no one could touch him.  He adds that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives him authority to do what he wants without limits.

Does that mean that everything he does, happens to do, or occurs on his watch is wrong?  No.

It’s just that he is looking for credit, not the good result for ALL Americans.

Now, one more point.  This blob does not on focus either of two or three major issues currently roiling this country – impeachment, the near-war with Iran or the so-called peace deal for Israel and the Palestinians (which struck some observers as more of a PR stunt than a peace overture).

Rather, this blog focuses on the character of the person in the White House, for character still matters in politics.

The basic label that fits Trump is this:  He is a narcissist.

Everything he says or does can be explained by this basic fact:  It serves HIS interest.

According to Dan P. McAdams, psychology professor at Northwestern University, “Senator Ted Cruz once described Donald Trump as a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen.”

That characterization, McAdams continues, echoes what many psychological researchers and therapists have long concluded. Although the American Psychiatric Association strongly discourages mental-health professionals from assigning mental-illness labels to public figures, some clinicians have even suggested that President Trump has narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD.

McAdams goes on:

“But Trump is stranger than any diagnostic category can convey. Narcissism is a psychological construct with profound implications for an individual’s well-being and interpersonal relationships. Personality and social psychologists have done hundreds of studies examining narcissistic tendencies, revealing certain patterns of behavior and outcome.

“In some ways, Trump fits those patterns perfectly. But in at least one crucial respect, he deviates.”

Back in June 2016, McAdams in the Atlantic that “narcissists often wear out their welcome.”:

“Psychological research demonstrates that many narcissists come across as charming, witty, and charismatic upon initial acquaintance. They can attain high levels of popularity in the short term.  As long as they prove to be successful and brilliant, they may be able to weather criticism and retain their exalted status.

“But more often than not, narcissists wear out their welcome.  Over time, people become annoyed, if not infuriated, by their self-centeredness.  When narcissists begin to disappoint those they once dazzled, their descent can be especially precipitous.  There is still truth in the ancient proverb: Pride goeth before the fall.”

Nearly three years into Trump’s presidency, how does this generalization about narcissism hold up for him?  On the one hand, many of the people who have staffed Trump’s administration have learned that he is not the “stable genius” he claims to be.  Disappointed and beaten down, they have left in droves.

On the other hand, Trump has retained the loyal backing of many voters despite scandal, outrage, and chaos.  How is this possible? Why has Trump followed the predictable course for narcissism in one way, alienating many who have served in his administration, and defied expectations in another way, by continuing to attract an adoring core?

A real-life narcissist manages to take his eyes off himself just long enough to find out if others are looking at him.  And if the narcissist has admirers, this makes him feel good.  It temporarily boosts his self-esteem.

Use the following from McAdams to assess Trump.

“Research shows that people high in narcissism tend to show more anger and hostility when challenged or insulted, compared with people low in narcissism. They show sharper mood swings, oscillating between exuberance and negativity.

“As they rage against those who cross them, they make enemies. Many narcissists rise to positions of leadership in various kinds of groups because group members are initially impressed with their confidence and strength, but research shows that many of them turn out to be bad leaders, incompetent and unethical.”

That’s Trump.  Agree with him – in effect, bow before his genius – and then he will say you are great.

Disagree with him and you’ll be the subject of derogatory tweets as he justifies own greatness.

Unfortunately, in the impeachment process, it will not be possible to convict Trump of being a narcissist.

I wish it would be possible because there is a very real question about whether we can survive as a representative democracy led by a person who always equates his own interests with the country’s interests – and they are rarely the same.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

It would not be appropriate to mark the passing of the consummate journalist Jim Lehrer without emphasizing the solid “rules” – call them “advice” — he left behind.

Lehrer, the long-time host of the PBS News Hour, died last week at the age of 85.

As a former journalist – yes, I worked for newspapers back in the day when they were more alive and well than they are today in this social media age – Lehrer’s rules make eminent sense to me. Plus, following them would make for better journalism, which in age of wackos on the right and left has degenerated into name-calling and innuendo.

The Lehrer rules:

• Do nothing I cannot defend.
• Do not distort, lie, slant, or hype.
• Do not falsify facts or make up quotes.
• Cover, write, and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.
• Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.
• Assume the viewer is as smart and caring and good a person as I am.
• Assume the same about all people on whom I report.
• Assume everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
• Assume personal lives are a private matter until a legitimate turn in the story mandates otherwise.
• Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories and clearly label them as such.
• Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously.
• Do not broadcast profanity or the end result of violence unless it is an integral and necessary part of the story and/or crucial to understanding the story.
• Acknowledge that objectivity may be impossible but fairness never is.
• Journalists who are reckless with facts and reputations should be disciplined by their employers.
• My viewers have a right to know what principles guide my work and the process I use in their practice.
• I am not in the entertainment business.

Just imagine if journalism today were to abide by these solid rules.

For one thing, we would not have to listen to Sean Hannity – and that, alone, would be a godsend.

But, more generally, we would have a better news product, one on which we could rely as every-day Americans who don’t have seats of power or influence that would give us insider information.

So, to honor Lehrer, I wish for a return to the principles he enunciated as unlikely as that may be.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

Whatever you think about the Trump impeachment process in Washington, D.C., if you think about it at all, Trump’s lawyers have gone over-board in defending the president.

They are not just advocating for his interests. They are not dealing with the facts of the case.  They are manifestly lying to curry favor from and for their boss, even as they continue to work to fool the public.

The fact is that there is a code of conduct for lawyers and they should be held to account for their falsehoods.

I say this with a background as a registered lobbyist where I – and many others like me – lived within an ethical code, one key element of which was not to lie. If we did, we would pay a penalty, not to mention that our individual credibility would crater.

Here is a summary of what the Trump lawyers want you to believe:

Issue #1: Strip away the name-calling, lies, procedural complaints and conspiracy theories, and you are left with the core of President Trump’s impeachment defense: Everyone does it.

Answer: No they don’t.

As Washington Post columnist Max Boot put it last week, “This premise may be alluring to cynical Trump supporters who are convinced that all politicians are crooks. But it’s simply false. There is no evidence that any president in U.S. history has done what Trump is accused of doing.

“Trump is being impeached because there was no public purpose for his Ukraine policy. It was not in the interest of the United States to hold up military aid to force Ukraine to announce an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden. It was only in the interest of the Trump campaign.”

Issue #2: Lead Trump lawyer Pat Cippolone has maintained that Trump advocates were kept out of House Intelligence Committee hearings.

Answer: False. Many Republicans were in the hearing room, which was supposed to be held behind closed doors – and even those doors were abused by Republicans who entered inappropriately and disrupted the proceedings within eyesight of Republican colleagues inside the room.

Issue #3: Trump’s legal team began its defense last Saturday with a version of one of Trump’s favorite tweets: Read the transcript.

Answer: So, do it. Read the transcript – which is not actually a transcript, but, rather, a summary of the call — and you come to clear conclusion: Trump wanted to make Ukraine complicit in an effort to rig the 2020 election in his favor.

Issue #4: Trump’s lawyers said there was no quid pro quo in his call with the Ukraine president.

Answer: Again, read the transcript and consider the under-oath testimony of Executive Branch officials who listened in on the call. It’s patently obvious that Trump wanted something from Ukraine and would hold funds for Ukraine until he got results – results that benefitted his own election. That’s a quid pro quo.

Issue #5: Trump’s lawyers contended that President Zelensky and high-ranking Ukrainian officials did not know the security assistance was paused until the end of August.

Answer: No. Of course Ukraine was aware of the hold.  A now-former senior Ukrainian official, working in Zelensky’s administration at that point, indicated that she was aware of the hold by late July. Catherine Croft, a State Department official, testified that she was surprised at how quickly her Ukrainian colleagues learned about the hold soon after it was known in the administration.

Issue #6: Trump’s lawyers said there was no issue because, in the end, security assistance flowed without the Ukrainian government announcing any investigations.

Answer: Well, the fact is that the aid was only released after attention had been drawn publicly to the fact that it was being withheld. House Democrats had launched an investigation into the hold. The Washington Post editorial board had explicitly connected the hold to the desired investigations. Trump had already been briefed on a complaint from an anonymous whistleblower in which that connection was mentioned as part of a broad campaign to pressure Ukraine.

The aid was released only after Trump got caught.

Washington Post editor Fred Hiatt made a key point this morning when he wrote this:

“The White House lawyer told senators that, after hearing the facts of the case, you will find that the president did absolutely nothing wrong.

“In other words,” Hiatt added, “to side with the president and allow Americans their choice this November, senators must endorse the preposterous — and also threatening-to-democracy — notion that the president’s behavior is entirely acceptable.”

It’s not. And, what’s more, Trump’s lawyers want us to wait until the 2020 election to do anything about the deception. So, we wait until an election Trump already has tainted and no doubt will continue to taint because, in the end, all that matters is his own interests.

And, as a narcissist, he believes his own interests and country’s interests are identical. No.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

When it comes to politics, one of my favorite words is “civility.”

It’s often what’s missing in today’s definition of politics which, spurred by President Donald Trump, rests on dissension and innuendo, not civility and common ground.

That’s why one of my favorite quotes is from General Colin Powell when, several years ago, he declined to run for president because, he said, ”he bemoaned the loss of civility in politics.”

Imagine what Powell would say today.

So it was that, yesterday, I came across a thought-provoking column in the Washington Post by Steven Beschloss, author of “The Gunman and His Mother,” and a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

His posit: Given the huge issues at stake in today’s politics, civility may not be the highest goal.

“There is no question,” Beschloss wrote, “that the use of uncivil language by politicians, commentators and journalists has escalated. I count myself among those who have felt reluctantly obliged to choose increasingly vivid words to accurately capture and respond to a growing picture of criminality and corruption and an increasing awareness that the president of the United States acts with a level of anti-democratic malignancy and cruelty I fear puts our institutions, global alliances and vulnerable populations in increasing danger.”

Using a down-to-earth image, Beschloss continues: “But if you believe your house is on fire and your family faces death and destruction, is it appropriate to engage in pleasant and polite tones when speaking to the alleged arsonist and his accomplices? Is that not the time to speak and act with clarity to spur action and put out the fire?”

To illustrate his point, Beschloss points to the impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. There, he wondered if Supreme Court Justice John
Roberts did enough when he reminded advocates to avoid language “not conducive to civil discourse.”

He also reminded lawyers for both sides that they were speaking the well of the “world’s great deliberative body” (I ask if that title is really appropriate today), so they should watch their words and their conduct.

By his reminders, Beschloss asks whether Roberts “helped shift the focus from damning facts.”

“Of course, the answer is not to toss aside decorum or the basic process of governance, one in which elected officials treat each other with courtesy and decency as they hammer out their differences over issues of the day.

“There is a real danger that when each side further inflames the other, matters may slip out of control. Finding points of mutual understanding can seem increasingly impossible, accelerating the toxic division and making the very notion of moderation lose all relevance.

“But when civility means treating both sides as equal, when a mind-bending onslaught of lies (The Washington Post counts over 16,000 ;false or misleading claims’ by Trump in his first three years in office) is expected to be met with courtesy, a demand for civility risks becoming an instrument of power by the majority party to neutralize or even silence criticism and the critics.”

As provided by the Washington Post, here is additional background on Roberts’ comments from Senate rostrum:

“Well past midnight on the first day of President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial this week, after nearly 12 hours of increasingly acerbic comments by the House managers prosecuting the case and the White House lawyers defending the president, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. interjected.

“In his typically calm tone, the presiding Roberts reminded both sides that they were ‘addressing the world’s greatest deliberative body.’

“He said the Senate had ‘earned that title because its members avoid speaking in a manner and using language that is not conducive to civil discourse.’ He even offered a charming anecdote about a 1905 Senate impeachment trial in which one of the managers dared to use the word ‘pettifogging’ in that hallowed chamber. ‘I don’t think we need to aspire to that high of a standard,’ Roberts said, musing over the objection to a term that meant overemphasizing petty details, ‘but I do think those addressing the Senate should remember where they are.’”

On its face, Beschloss writes, the admonishment sounded like a good and healthy thing, an encouragement for respect, a reminder of Senate history — not only a call for civil discourse, but a gently delivered act of civility itself.

But Roberts’s words, however, “failed to take into account the backdrop: A deeply partisan and increasingly authoritarian political dynamic that has catapulted the country into a moment of crisis. In this context, the smooth veneer of civility, rather than being uplifting, might actually facilitate the downward spiral. In this context, civility is dangerous, a weapon that serves both as a shield, covering up malign acts, and a sword, parried at the opponent who dares to be ‘uncivil’ and so shifting the focus away from the true danger.”

Beschloss expects more of Roberts than most think Roberts will provide as he seeks to remain above the fray.

Still, with all that is at stake, I wish for civility. Courteous discourse is the only way our government will survive and find the center – the smart middle ground – on a host of issues that threaten to drive us apart, not bring us together.

In this way, just call me PolyAnna.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

A key plank in the platform of Democrats running for president is to have government do much more for all Americans. In fact, dispensing government largesse is almost the entire platform.

Socialism? Yes.

Can we afford it? No.

Are the proposals fair? No.

A fascinating aspect of this came to light over the weekend as Senator Elizabeth Warren, even while the impeachment process was grinding away in Congress, found time to attend an event in Grimes, Iowa, only a couple weeks before the Iowa Caucus vote.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “a man approached Warren and said, I just wanted to ask one question. My daughter’s getting out of school. I’ve saved all my money. She doesn’t have any student loans.

“Then the shoe drops. Am I going to get my money back? the man asks.”

As part of her “government can and should do anything platform,” Warren has proposed to cancel $640 billion in student loans, up to $50,000 a person.

She says this would help 42 million Americans. But, the Wall Street Journal avers, “there’s no provision to reimburse the millions of others who worked hard, saved money, and put themselves or their children through college.”

In response to Warren’s comment that he would not get his money back, the man retorted: “So you’re going to pay for people who didn’t save any money, and those of us who did the right thing get screwed. My buddy had fun, bought a car, went on vacations. I saved my money. He made more than I did, but I worked a double shift, worked extra. My daughter’s worked since she was 10.”

On the stump, the Journal reported that Warren had no answer to the man’s challenge.

Later, she rallied with this comment: “We build a future going forward by making it better. By that same logic what would we have done? Not started Social Security because we didn’t start it last week for you, or last month for you?”

I suppose that’s decent answer, but it doesn’t convince me of anything.

Most of the D proposals – health care, student debt, “green buildings” – all rest on government doing more. Little attention is paid to the cost of the proposals, nor more basically, to the benefit of individual enterprise and effort.

Plus, where individual enterprise and effort has occurred, there is no recognition or reward, just a penalty.

Makes me continue to want someone – I don’t care about party affiliation – who will campaign from the center, arguing for a balance between the role of government and role of the individual.

Too much to hope for you, you might say. Probably. But hope perseveres as we head toward the 2020 election.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

This, remember, is one of three departments I run as director with a free hand to do what I want.

The others are the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of Just Saying (the latter of which is not open very often, but allows me to cite incredibly stupid statements by a variety of public officials, regardless of political party or standing).

With the impeachment process as a backdrop in Congress – by the way, I wonder how many regular Americans are watching? – there are many opportunities for good quotes to cite.

FROM COLUMNIST MICHAEL GERSON IN THE WASHINGTON POST: “It is another of President Trump’s dubious achievements to turn the ultimate constitutional check on presidential abuses of power into an utter farce.

“Watching Republican senators complain that there is ‘nothing new’ in the case made by House impeachment managers, while they are actively opposing the introduction of new evidence and new testimony, is confirmation of barefaced bad faith.

“In this matter, elected Republicans are mainly serving, not the president, and certainly not the republic, but themselves. Having decided that no amount of evidence would be sufficient for conviction, they realize that the presentation of a full and compelling case would convict them of servility and institutional surrender. So a quick and dirty Senate trial is the best way to limit the exposure of their malpractice.”

Comment: As usual, Gerson is right on with his analysis and conclusion. Senate Republicans don’t want a real trial; they want to cover-up the president’s cover-up. I hope history judges them harshly – and, make no mistake, as another columnist, Peggy Noonan wrote this morning in the Wall Street Journal, HISTORY is watching the charade in Congress.

FROM COLUMNIST JENNIFER RUBIN IN THE WASHINGTON POST: “Trump’s techniques are spreading. Take as an example Pat Cipollone’s (he’s one of Trump’s lawyers) opening statement in the impeachment trial. It was remarkable for the number of times he used the words ‘ridiculous’ and ‘outrageous.’

“This was a revealing detail. It didn’t matter that, in between those words, he strung together a series of misleading statements. No one would follow it all, but what they would take away were two words: ‘Ridiculous’ and ‘outrageous.’

“Such is the rhetoric of the conspiracy theorist. The opportunity to speak is a vehicle for a message. The words in between the message don’t matter much. All that matters is the chance to repeat the basic message frequently. Obama — no birth certificate; Obama — no birth certificate. Hunter — corrupt; Hunter — corrupt. Impeachment — ridiculous; impeachment — ridiculous.”

Comment: Rubin is right to heap derision on Cipollone and other Trump lawyers. They, of course, are entitled to advocate for their client, but to utter outright falsehoods? No. As lawyers, they should be upbraided for their conduct.

The clearest example was when Cipollone alleged that Republicans were not allowed in House Intelligence Committee hearings during the impeachment process. Wrong. Republicans were there and Cipollone knows it.

But, like Trump, truth is no barometer for what he says.

MORE FROM RUBIN: “There is actually an obvious and possibly accurate defense that no Republican senator dare advance. It goes like this: The president has never understood that there is a difference between his political/personal interests and national security.

“Trump has a narcissistic personality so he cannot intentionally betray the country for his own benefit because he thinks they are one and the same. He is also highly ignorant and malleable, so he will believe any illogical conspiracy theory that Russian President Vladimir Putin advances and/or that serves his interests.

“No matter how many times he was told that Ukraine did not interfere with our election, or that aid to Ukraine was in the United States’ interest, or that he could not stop aid in violation of law, he could not mentally process such information.

“He believed that advisers who told him such things were weak or out to get him. In other words, Trump is so mentally and emotionally defective, he cannot understand the import of his actions or concepts such as right vs. wrong, true vs. false and personal vs. national interests.

“As for obstruction, his lawyer told him to refuse to give up anything, so he simply took that advice.”

COMMENT: True again. Trump is the epitome of the narcissist. It is only what he thinks and wants that matters. U.S. national interests be damned.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This 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 of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, 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.

There is a notion around that the impeachment process under way in Washington, D.C. will not claim a wide television audience because it is so, well, boring.

Perhaps and that may, in fact, be the intent for how Senate Republicans have designed the process to support “their” president, Donald Trump. Long hours. Late evenings. Limits on media access. Etc.

But, for me, a political junkie, the reality is this: I have made time to watch the impeachment process.

Not a strange admission for me because I spent more than 40 years in a career devoted to politics — from reporting on it, to helping to run it, to lobbying in and around it.

So, for me, the impeachment process is a study in one of the most serious political processes for this country, one the founders set out with specific intent, not to mention incredible foresight.

A few perceptions about the process so far:

1. TRUMP HAS BEEN IMPEACHED: That inescapable fact is that President Donald Trump has been impeached, an action taken against only three other presidents in the history of this country.

Impeachment is like an indictment in court – it is not a conviction. But, still, impeachment will be a stain on the presidency of Trump, one I say he richly deserves.

2. THE CLOWNS WHO REPRESENT THE WHITE HOUSE: White House lawyers have conducted themselves with a lack of class – not to mention a lack of accuracy – as they have stood in the well of the U.S. Senate chamber to defend their boss.

It should be no surprise that the lawyers representing a president who has made more than 16,000 false statements since taking office should resort to their own lies — and it won’t matter to the president’s die-hard supporters.

Here’s the way Washington Post columnist Max Boot put it in today’s edition:

“White House Counsel Pat Cipollone claimed on Tuesday that, ‘Not even Schiff’s Republican colleagues were allowed into the SCIF’ — referring to the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility in which the House Intelligence Committee conducted depositions of witnesses.

“False. The 48 Republican members of the three committees involved in impeachment proceedings had access to the basement SCIF.

“Cipollone also repeated the absurd claim that Schiff ‘manufactured a false version’ of the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky.

“False. Schiff did not deceive anyone about a partial transcript that had already been made public. Schiff said at the time, ‘Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates.’”

Making his own contribution to this blizzard of hokum, another White House lawyer, Jay Sekulow, claimed that “the president was denied the right to cross-examine witnesses … denied the right to access evidence … and denied the right to have counsel present at hearings.”

Again, Boot writes: “False. The president was offered a chance to have his lawyers participate in House proceedings and declined to take it.”

3. WHAT’S THE DEFINTION OF ”HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS?:   Much has been written about this, including a claim from some that the phrase must encompass an actual crime based on a statutory violation.

Not true.

According to Boot: “But these are relatively inconsequential whoppers (the previous ones uttered by Cippilone and Sekulow) compared with the biggest lie of all.

“This is the oft-repeated claim that a president can only be impeached for breaking the law — not for abuse of office. Not even Jonathan Turley, the star Republican witness during the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearing (and a law professor at Georgetown University), is buying it.

“He wrote in Wednesday’s edition of The Post: ‘It is a view that is at odds with history and the purpose of the Constitution. While framers did not want terms such as ‘maladministration’ in the standard as dangerously too broad, they often spoke of impeachable conduct in non-criminal terms.’”

4. AND THE WORLD’S GREATEST DELIBERATIVE BODY?: That’s what the Senate often has been called, but the title often struck me as an overstatement, if not an oxymoron.

Most of the time senators head to the chamber to speak on this bill or that bill, but almost no other senators are there to listen. Cameras are positioned so as to avoid showing the empty chamber. Of course, senators have to show up when the time comes to vote.

For impeachment, the rules require senators to be in the chamber, if not in their assigned seats, at all times. We’ll see if, in the end, it matters.

The Senate is not likely to convict Trump (though I say it should), but at least current processes require them to be in their seats and give the appearance of listening.