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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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 I was a few days ago sitting with my wife in the middle of the Garonne River in Bordeaux, France listening to an excellent singer helping all of us celebrate a great evening under the stars.

He sang two Simon & Garfunkel tunes, including these words:

• From The Boxer: “I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises. All lies and jests. Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

• From Mrs. Robinson: “…going to the candidates’ debate. Laugh about it. Shout about it. When you’ve got to choose, every way you look at it you lose.”

And what did these words convey?

Not necessarily what they were meant to convey when they were written many years ago.

For me, they jerked me back to the mind-numbing reality of the U.S. presidential campaign as the two candidates – Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton – prepare for the first presidential debate, which promises to draw the largest television audience in history.

One reason is that both candidates exemplify the words from the Mrs. Robinson tune – “when you’ve got to choose, every way you look at it you lose.”

There have not been two presidential candidates in history who engender so much opposition and distrust.

On one hand sits Trump who doesn’t even have the basic qualifications to serve in the nation’s highest office, yet that very fact may be what prompts some citizens to say they will vote for him. As the song says, illustrating the apparent views of many voters “still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

On the other hand, you have Clinton who inspires almost nothing but distrust, given her checkered record over more than 25 years in the public arena, including her stint as Secretary of State when she allegedly practiced a “pay to play” approach to her job. Meeting with her appeared to require a lot of money for the Clinton Foundation, which mostly feathered her own nest.

So, while in France for about 10 days, I was not able to escape reminders of a presidential race worth forgetting, even while listening to the good words of Simon & Garfunkel.

Therefore, as a voter, I am preparing to lose.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

One of the worst ways to set tax policy in Oregon is to let biased individuals propose it from their kitchen table or from the backrooms of advocates’ offices out of the glare of public scrutiny.

But that’s what is happening in Oregon these days as public employee unions propose a huge tax increase and are prepared to spend $15 million to pass it.

It will be decided at the ballot box in November, not where it should be hashed out in the push and pull of the legislative process in Salem.

What’s on the ballot is called Measure 97. It would impose a 2.5% tax on sales of goods and services in Oregon. It’s a tax on sales – not profits – and it would be passed on to Oregon consumers and small businesses through higher prices on everything from food, gas and electricity to insurance, medicine and health care.

In other words, what public employee unions want is for someone else to pay the tax, which illustrates the age-old prescription for good tax policy – someone else pays it.

This is one of the worst tax grabs in memory.

Consider this quote from a recent opinion piece in The Oregonian written by two owners of local Oregon business Umpqua Dairy:

“We can all agree that Oregon’s budget is in bad shape. It is clear that we need the legislative and executive branches of our government to come together with ideas that will work for all Oregonians. But we can’t fix it with a poorly designed law enacted through the ballot box.

“This is a problem that requires thoughtful solutions. Measure 97 will destroy many Oregon-based companies and hurt hardworking families. Studies estimate a loss of over 38,000 private sector jobs — almost twice the number of people in Roseburg!  Prices for goods and services will increase dramatically throughout Oregon.

“Please don’t believe that this is just a tax on big out-of-state corporations. It is not. The corporations that will be hurt the most are those that call Oregon their home.”

Kudos to the Umpqua owners for going public with their position.

Further, it might sound strange for me to endorse the public policy-making process in the Legislature. The easiest thing to do is to be cynical about a process that sometimes, to use an old example, resembles making sausage.

But, as someone who has been involved in that process for more than 40 years, 25 of them as a private sector lobbyist, I am more than willing to endorse the process.

When it comes to forming tax policy, there is no substitute for the interplay of the legislative process, which carries these virtues:

• Developing public policy, especially on such a controversial area as tax policy, occurs in the sunlight. That is, all meetings of committees such as the House or Senate Revenue Committees, are public and advertised as being so; interested parties, as well as members of the general public, are allowed to observe and/or participate in the process.

• Both sides – Democrats and Republicans – are part of the process. One party may be in charge, but the minority party is recognized.

• All actions are conducted by a public vote. In other words, legislators, either in committees or on the House or Senate floors, must register their votes for all to see.

• Finally, the draft of a piece of legislation, one that sets tax policy, is written by attorneys for the Legislative Counsel Office. Thus, the language is written by expert drafters rather than by someone with an ax to grind at their kitchen table, or in the case of Measure 97, in the backrooms of public employee unions strategists.

On tax policy – or anything else for that matter – we need new laws that are crafted in the cauldron of legislative policy-making. The result, however imperfect it may be, will be better than one written by biased individuals.

The owners of Umpqua Dairy have good reasons to oppose Measure 97. Beyond their views, which I support, my reason is that Measure 97 is the product of left-wing, public employee union activists who believe the best tax is one someone else pays

In this case, we’ll all pay it! So, vote 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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

The Washington Post carried a lead editorial the other day under this headline, “Donald Trump’s bet: We are all chumps.”

Well said, or rather, well written.

Every day, Donald Trump verifies that he has none of the qualities we look for in a President. None!

He believes he can be elected without sharing basic information about himself, including his tax and health records.

He shuns any discussion of public policy issues that would confront anyone in the Nation’s highest office.

Consider this quote from a column by Daniel Henninger from the Wall Street Journal:

“I would build a great wall. And nobody builds walls better than me, believe me. And I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall. Get ’em out of here. That’s right. Get ’em out of here. Nobody in politics talks like that. It violates what we now call ‘the political discourse.’”

He resorts, instead, to blowhard words about how important and competent he is – he knows more about ISIS, for example, than all of this nation’s military generals. His comments in the recent Commander-in-Chief forum put on by NBC News indicated that might fire a number a number of those military leaders if he gained the top office.

As Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote in early September, “It’s difficult to think of a major political figure who has so belittled the U.S. military. Sunday is the 15^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which ushered in a ‘support out troop’ spirit that has endured regardless of party or opinion of wars that followed. But Trump goes beyond the standard criticism of the president and civilian leaders to condemn the military itself.”

Plus, early in the Republican campaign, Trump, incredibly, slammed U.S. Senator and former Vietnam prisoner-of-war John McCain because “I like people who weren’t captured.”

Incredible!

Yet, despite all this bluster, many citizens in this country apparently believe Trump can do the job.  At least, current polling has him close to Clinton.

What we need in a Commander-in-Chief is a person of sound mind and reasoned judgment, someone who doesn’t pop off at the least provocation. At the same time, we need someone who will seek to bolster U.S. standing the world, which has suffered markedly in President Obama’s tenure, witness the recent cold shoulder he received at the G-20 Summit. And, we need someone who will support America’s existing allies and solicit new ones in an increasingly complex world.

This is a lot to ask of a President, but it is exactly what should be asked, in fact demanded, of leaders.

We could have an argument about whether Hillary Clinton is able to meet these substantial challenges, including with recent concerns about her health. But that would, at least, be an argument.

In the case of Trump, there is no argument. He is not up to the task.

So, let’s all avoid calling into the “chump” category and look intently and honestly at the record.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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 was struck by this quote from a Washington Post editorial the other day:

“Trump’s core problem has always been Trump — his intellect, his temperament and his character. No teleprompter or change of campaign staff will change that. The only reason he remains remotely competitive is that his opponent has her own character issues.”

Trump conducts himself like a buffoon without any of the qualifications to take the Nation’s highest political office. The only reason that he is halfway competitive these days is that he is running against a candidate, Hillary Clinton, whose record indicates that she has been of the most allegedly corrupt holders of a high political office, Secretary of State, which comes on top of other questionable dealings in her long public life.

Except that in the area of corruption, she has a strong competitor in Donald Trump.

Consider this list of Trump corruptions compiled by Paul Waldman for the Washington Post, which have not, for whatever reason, Waldman says, captured the attention of the nation’s media:

• Trump’s casino bankruptcies, which left investors holding the bag while he skedaddled with their money
• Trump’s habit of refusing to pay contractors who had done work for him, many of whom are struggling small businesses
• Trump University, which includes not only the people who got scammed and the Florida investigation, but also a similar story from Texas where the investigation into Trump U was quashed.
• The Trump Institute, another get-rich-quick scheme in which Trump allowed a couple of grifters to use his name to bilk people out of their money
• The Trump Network, a multi-level marketing venture (a.k.a. pyramid scheme) that involved customers mailing in a urine sample which would be analyzed to produce for them a specially formulated package of multivitamins
• Trump Model Management, which reportedly had foreign models lie to customs officials and work in the U.S. illegally, and kept them in squalid conditions while they earned almost nothing for the work they did
• Trump’s employment of foreign guest workers at his resorts, which involves a claim that he can’t find Americans to do the work
• Trump’s use of hundreds of undocumented workers from Poland in the 1980s, who were paid a pittance for their illegal work
• Trump’s history of being charged with housing discrimination
• Trump’s connections to mafia figures involved in New York construction
• The time Trump paid the Federal Trade Commission $750,000 over charges that he violated anti-trust laws when trying to take over a rival casino company
• The fact that Trump is now being advised by Roger Ailes, who was forced out as Fox News chief when dozens of women came forward to charge him with sexual harassment. According to the allegations, Ailes’s behavior was positively monstrous; as just one indicator, his abusive and predatory actions toward women were so well-known and so loathsome that in 1968 the morally upstanding folks in the Nixon administration refused to allow him to work there despite his key role in getting Nixon elected.

For anyone else, this list, alone, would be enough to disqualify an aspirant from seeking the Presidency. For Trump, though, he glories in these mis-deeds, apparently believing they, not only qualify him to be President, but should be “Trump-eted.”

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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 presidential election cycle is one of the most unusual – not to mention troubling – in this nation’s history.

As voters, we have a terrible choice.

On one hand, with Donald Trump, we have a buffoon who is not qualified to hold the nation’s highest political office. One of his claims to fame – and he has many in his own words – is that he has demonstrated substantial business acumen, but those who have been left holding the bag after his numerous bankruptcies would question his credentials.

On the other hand, with Hillary Clinton, we have a corrupt public official who has demonstrated, over her time in and out of office, a blind eye toward ethics and honesty. Every day produces another list of, at least, indiscretions.

When I told a friend the other day that I might not be able to cast my ballot for either Trump or Clinton, he/she said that failing to vote for Trump would be a vote for Clinton.

My response? Not necessarily.

I understand that rationale, though, and others might say that a vote for neither would be a vote for Trump.

All things considered, I am still pondering my options.

There are essentially two.

One is to vote my conscience and cast a ballot for NEITHER, which means finding someone else to vote for, a third party candidate or a name with Presidential credentials such as, say Colin Powell or Paul Ryan.

The other option is to vote for Clinton because Trump’s buffoonery inspires nothing but fear. Who knows what he would do in the Oval Office with his finger on the nuclear trigger.

And, if that phrase sounds like a Clinton political ad, so be it. She may be the best of the two bad options.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

Let me state this clear fact: Golf rules are hard.

Often too complicated. Often not logical. Often almost impossible to interpret.

Defenders cite several factors when they talk about the rules. For one thing, golf happens outside in thousands of venues worldwide, so the rules have to be complicated to deal with – well, that complexity of multiple venues. Golf is not played on, to put a point on it, a basketball floor or a football field.

Second, golf rules are designed, to use the sometimes-trite phrase, “to protect the field.” They make it fair for players of all abilities and experience to compete against each other.

And, then, defenders say the rules often end up helping a player rather than penalizing the player.

Well, all fine and good.

But, as for the complexity, the Wall Street Journal carried these headlines in a sports story last week:

*************

Golf’s Lofty Ambition: Rules That Make Sense

The sport’s governing bodies are working together to overhaul the rule book to make it more accessible—without fundamentally changing the game.

**************

One goal of the process, which itself will complicated given that two international golf ruling bodies are involved – the United States Golf Association (USGA) and the Royal and Ancient (R & A) overseas – is to encourage golf popularity.

Often, complicated rules produce the opposite.

So, here’s a salute to the USGA and the R & A. Work hard. Work well. Produce a set of rules that are, (a) easier to interpret, and (b) easier to use for golfers of all stripes and all abilities.

One further piece of good news is that Oregon Golf Association Executive Director Barb Trammel is a member of a joint committee re-working the rules. Her expertise, not to mention her down-to-earth manner, will help the process.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

If athletes from around the country can compete together in the Olympics, why is it so difficult for the countries they represent to get along.

I was struck by this impression as I watched countries like Iraq, South Korea, North Korea, Russia, China, Iran and, yes, the United States, compete on the same venues, even against each other.

In other than athletic events, representatives of those same countries might be shooting at each other, or at least tempted to do so.

So a quick and probably simplistic idea is for countries to use the Olympics as a pattern for improved international relations. Compete hard, but get along.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

Perhaps not all of the following qualify as pet peeves, but, as department director, it is up to me and me alone about what to include. [The me and me alone phrase – sounds like Donald Trump, doesn’t it?]

So, here is a new list.

A PRESCRIPTION FOR POLITICAL PROGRESS: It is easy these days to “bemoan the loss of civility in politics,” a phrase uttered a few years ago by none other than Colin Powell who would have made a great candidate for President this time around.

Put another way, the ability to find middle ground – call it compromise – is a lost art.

One way to allow for such middle ground would be to ban two hard-wired political action committees from being involved. They are NRA and NARAL.

On gun control issues, the NRA refuses to compromise, even when the issue comes to making it more difficult for criminals to get guns or to ban assault rifles. No one is advocating doing away with the Second Amendment. The issue is doing something about access to guns used to commit crimes.

Or, consider NARAL. For this organization, on the abortion issue, there is no room for compromise, even when it comes to banning late-stage abortions or putting any limits on elective abortions.

If the NRA and NARAL were banned from acting, we’d see middle ground compromises on both guns and abortion.

A USEFUL AMENDMENT FOR HOMEOWNER INSURANCE: I encountered a problem the other day that has come close to prompting me to request introduction of a “bill for an act” in the next legislative session.

It is this. With new predictions of the likelihood of an earthquake hitting the Northwest, my wife arranged for a bid to install earthquake retrofitting on our 30-year-old house. When the company looked through the crawl space, it discovered something: An underground spring had compromised part of our house’s foundation.

So, at substantial cost, we had no choice but to approve a fix. What happened next defies description.

We contacted our homeowners’ insurance company and were told, no, the work is not covered because homeowner insurance policies do not cover “preventive maintenance.” Why not, I asked, because, if the house foundation caved in, insurance would come into play and the cost would be far greater.

Still no, I was told because the cost of general preventive coverage around the Northwest – or in the country – would be too large.

Makes no sense to me and I say this having represented health insurers for almost 25 years as a lobbyist at the Capitol in Oregon. Health insurers cover preventive procedures as a matter of routine, especially faced with the specter of far larger costs down the road.

So, a “bill for an act” is in the offing.

SPEAKING OF EARTHQUAKE PROSPECTS: Heightened awareness of earthquakes in the Northwest raises a clear – and unfortunate – irony. In the 2015 and 2016 legislative sessions, when two Democrats – House Speaker Tina Kotek and Senate President Peter Courtney – couldn’t get their act together, long-standing plans to retrofit Oregon’s Capitol Building came tumbling down.

An earthquake, of course, would do the same thing.

Experts had spent more than five years studying what to do about Oregon’s “public building,” the Capitol, which almost came down in the last earthquake.   Courtney stood as the major advocate for taking action, along with another priority – retrofitting Oregon’s K-12 school buildings.

Legislators did nothing, which now strikes the ironic chord as those who live in the Northwest have been alerted to greater prospects of a major quake.

For legislators to have turned their backs on finding middle ground is tragic and we’ll pay a price if there is another earthquake.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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 is not hard to come up with a Top 10 list of problems with Donald Trump. The hard part is to limit the list only to 10.

Normally, in politics, any one of the problems listed below would disqualify a candidate for election, especially for the nation’s highest office. But, on many occasions, Trump appears to get what amounts to a pass.

At least, that has been true until recently when a list such as that below is raising new worries and causing a bevy of Republicans to distance themselves from Trump, declaring him to be unfit for office. Beyond Trump, their concern is that he may take other Republicans down with him, thus ceding control of the U.S. House or the U.S. Senate to Democrats.

Several weeks is an eternity in politics, so anything could happen, including a Trump pivot toward recovery. Plus, Hillary Clinton is not the most attractive candidate as she contends with a number of negatives, including questions about her honesty (which she even underlined recently as she failed again to apologize for using a private e-mail system to risk national security resort to a word – “short-circuiting” – which defies definition) and indications of conflict-of-interest between Clinton as Secretary of State and the Clinton Foundation.

All of that said, here is the Top 10 list re: Trump:

1. He ridicules a disabled individual

2. He ridicules Senator John McCain’s war-time service and POW status

3. He ridicules reporter Megyn Kelly

4. He ridicules parents of U.S. Muslim war hero who died defending this country

5. He aligns himself with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin

6. He compliments Korean dictator Jim Jung-on for his prowess

7. He claims a successful business record that actually was marked by bankruptcies and past-due bills that left others holding the bag

8. The treats women as if they are objects

9. He fails to understand anything about the checks-and-balances system of the U.S. government

10. He disavows any interest in public policy, only contending that he and he alone can solve all problems

As I write this list, I find myself wishing that the campaign for President could be about ideas rather than skewering the other side. For one, how about a debate over the proper role of government in our lives?

To listen to Clinton, she is promising bigger government handouts for almost every imaginable interest group. In a way, Trump did the same in his Republican convention speech in Cleveland.

Perhaps it wouldn’t attract much political attention from the masses, but I’d like to see a candidate advocate, not just for more taxes and higher spending, but, instead for more effective spending of current tax dollars. This would not just be a typical debate over wasteful spending; it would be a debate about getting more bang for our buck.

Naïve, you say. Yes. But a bit of naivete in this current campaign could go a long way to give smart voters something to be for, not just something to be against.

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 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 a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

If nothing else, Donald Trump’s run for President – especially in the last couple of weeks or so – conjures up two emotions.

On one hand, I wish he would get control of himself so he doesn’t say what is on his mind at the moment and end up violating every political rule in the book by going after people – the parents of the slain U.S. soldier, albeit a Muslim – or refusing to endorse (at least initially) three important Republicans, Senator John McCain, Senator Kelly Ayotte and House Speaker Paul Ryan.

On the other hand, given how bad Trump would be for the United States and the world if he were to gain the Presidency, I wish he would keep saying what he thinks, thus illustrating that he is THE most egotistical person who has run for the nation’s highest office. That way, he keeps alienating the very folks he needs to vote for him.

Most current polls show that Hillary Clinton has pulled ahead of Trump by as many as nine points in the last two weeks. Perhaps this is because of Trump’s ability to turn off voters as much as it is that Clinton is an attractive. But, whatever it is, I say so be it.

Of the two choices – two bad choices, in my view – Clinton is the lesser of two evils.

Will I vote for her? In the past, I have said a pox on both houses. But I am re-thinking that position. If voting for Clinton is the only way to help defeat Trump, a Clinton vote may be the best option.