FIVE MISUNDERSTOOD GOLF RULES

Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

As a golf rules afficionado, I love looking them.  Who knows who!

So it was that I read a Golf Digest article that appeared under the headline I used for this blog.

Here are Golf Digest’s “top five” misunderstood rules of golf.

1.  Does the player who is farthest from the hole always play first?

In match play, the answer is “yes” and, if a player closer to the hole ends of playing first, he or she may have to play the shot over again.  Plus, the status of being on or off the green doesn’t matter.  If you are away, you always play first.

In stroke play, it doesn’t matter who plays first, though the usual approach is that, if you are closer to the hole, you ask permission from the farthest-out player to go first.  But not required.

•  Do you get relief from boundary objects such as OB stakes or fences?

The answer is “no.”  You have to play the ball as it lies, even if that means you club encounters the obstruction or if you end up hitting the ball off the obstruction to get into better play.

•  Is there lateral relief for penalty areas marked yellow?

The answer is “no.”  Even if your ball carries the pond and rolls back in; you still have to drop the ball in order to go over the water again.  In some courses, there might be a designated drop zone to allow an improved result.

•  Is there always relief from the sprinkler head on your line?

Not always.  Under normal golf rules, you only get relief if your golf ball, your stance or swing are impeded by the sprinkler head.  Sometimes, those who run golf courses have the option of a local rule that provides more relief.

•  Do you have the option of playing a provisional ball if it is known or virtually certain that your golf ball is in a penalty area?

The answer is “no,” though many golfers think the answer is “yes.”  It’s not.

Now, aren’t you glad you know all this?

Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

This blog headline puts it as simply as it can be put:  LIV golf doesn’t appear to have much future.

Count me among those who don’t care.  If LIV comes crashing down, okay.

As it started a few years ago, using tainted Saudi money, LIV enticed players to leave the PGA Tour, which had produced a solid livelihood for those who left. The incentive was to get rich quick.

Many players who were defecting from the PGA Tour tried to say they were doing so for the good of the game and to grow it.  Hogwash!

One player, Harold Varner, said he was leaving to take the money for the good of his family and I saluted him then – and do so now – for his honesty.

Today, key players for LIV – Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, Juaquin Niemann – are trying to leave LIV as it floats just above the surface.

Here is how golf writer Eamon Lynch put it GolfWeek in a column that appeared under this headline:  “In the next 10 days, LIV’s free agents will realize how little freedom and agency they really have.”

“It’s a sobering sign of how upside down golf is that we’ve reached the improbable point where Sergio Garcia is a leader among those trying to leave LIV.

“He’s complaining, of course, but only in the legal realm.  On September 30, the Spaniard’s lawyers asked a New Jersey bankruptcy court to either terminate his contract with LIV Golf or give him the right to do so, arguing that a lack of clarity on the league’s future unfairly limits his ability to investigate alternative options.”

Lynch said it is ironic that Garcia is becoming a poster child for those who want to leave LIV.

“A cynic might add that advance planning should include stockpiling baby wipes on whatever tour is luckless enough to host Garcia, whether it’s the one he said he couldn’t wait to leave (PGA), the one he shouted was “f****d” because it didn’t take Saudi money (Europe), or the one he reportedly embarrassed with his club-smashing antics at the Masters (LIV).”

More from Lynch:

“Most of LIV’s existing player agreements are expected to be terminated in the bankruptcy restructuring, though players could agree new deals to remain for LIV 2.0.  Garcia hasn’t ruled out doing that, but wants the flexibility to investigate other avenues now.

“That can’t happen while the PGA Tour and DP World Tour refuse to entertain approaches by LIV players unless they can prove they’re free of all contractual obligations, a demand that has flummoxed agents accustomed to being taken at their worthless word.”

Per the terms of its proposed investment from BC Partners to reinvent the circuit, LIV has 35 days from filing bankruptcy to sign half of the players to whom it owes money, and those players must collectively represent two-thirds of all monies owed to its roster. The first threshold is reachable since most of its members are washed-ups or never-weres with limited options.

The second is trickier since LIV doesn’t have the buy-in of its biggest creditor, Rahm, who said he had decided to leave.  But, LIV might cobble together enough I.O.U.’s from others to satisfy the requirement.

Many of those wanting to leave LIV 2.0 are reaching out to the PGA Tour in America or the DP Tour in Europe.

So far, the doors appear to be closed.

From Lynch:

“In response to an inquiry, a DP World Tour spokesperson acknowledged a ‘high volume of inbound interest and enquiries in recent weeks,’ and said it’s exploring terms on which those players might be accommodated, ‘provided they are free from third-party contractual restrictions and are willing to abide by our membership regulations.’

“What that means, sources say, is that LIV refugees might get starts, but not in lucrative Rolex Series events, and that anyone who re-ups with LIV 2.0 risks being bum-rushed to the exit.”

For the PGA Tour, it is wary of exposing itself to tortious interference claims by talking to still-contracted LIV players.  Plus, it appears that the PGA tour is not open to players going the route of Brooks Koepka who was able to cut a deal to return with two at least two provisos — (a) not being as able to play in some high-profile events, and (b) making a $5 million donation to a charity.

My final view:  Let’s go PGA Tour.  Count on your best players to play.  Avoid LIV.  Play on.

Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

This blog headline puts it as simply as it can be put:  LIV golf doesn’t appear to have much future.

Count me among those who don’t care.  If LIV comes crashing down, okay.

As it started a few years ago, using tainted Saudi money, LIV enticed players to leave the PGA Tour, which had produced a solid livelihood for those who left. The incentive was to get rich quick.

Many players who were defecting from the PGA Tour tried to say they were doing so for the good of the game and to grow it.  Hogwash!

One player, Harold Varner, said he was leaving to take the money for the good of his family and I saluted him then – and do so now – for his honesty.

Today, key players for LIV – Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Cameron Smith, Juaquin Niemann – are trying to leave LIV as it floats just above the surface.

Here is how golf writer Eamon Lynch put it GolfWeek in a column that appeared under this headline:  “In the next 10 days, LIV’s free agents will realize how little freedom and agency they really have.”

“It’s a sobering sign of how upside down golf is that we’ve reached the improbable point where Sergio Garcia is a leader among those trying to leave LIV.

“He’s complaining, of course, but only in the legal realm.  On September 30, the Spaniard’s lawyers asked a New Jersey bankruptcy court to either terminate his contract with LIV Golf or give him the right to do so, arguing that a lack of clarity on the league’s future unfairly limits his ability to investigate alternative options.”

Lynch said it is ironic that Garcia is becoming a poster child for those who want to leave LIV.

“A cynic might add that advance planning should include stockpiling baby wipes on whatever tour is luckless enough to host Garcia, whether it’s the one he said he couldn’t wait to leave (PGA), the one he shouted was “f****d” because it didn’t take Saudi money (Europe), or the one he reportedly embarrassed with his club-smashing antics at the Masters (LIV).”

More from Lynch:

“Most of LIV’s existing player agreements are expected to be terminated in the bankruptcy restructuring, though players could agree new deals to remain for LIV 2.0.  Garcia hasn’t ruled out doing that, but wants the flexibility to investigate other avenues now.

“That can’t happen while the PGA Tour and DP World Tour refuse to entertain approaches by LIV players unless they can prove they’re free of all contractual obligations, a demand that has flummoxed agents accustomed to being taken at their worthless word.”

Per the terms of its proposed investment from BC Partners to reinvent the circuit, LIV has 35 days from filing bankruptcy to sign half of the players to whom it owes money, and those players must collectively represent two-thirds of all monies owed to its roster. The first threshold is reachable since most of its members are washed-ups or never-weres with limited options.

The second is trickier since LIV doesn’t have the buy-in of its biggest creditor, Rahm, who said he had decided to leave.  But, LIV might cobble together enough I.O.U.’s from others to satisfy the requirement.

Many of those wanting to leave LIV 2.0 are reaching out to the PGA Tour in America or the DP Tour in Europe.

So far, the doors appear to be closed.

From Lynch:

“In response to an inquiry, a DP World Tour spokesperson acknowledged a ‘high volume of inbound interest and enquiries in recent weeks,’ and said it’s exploring terms on which those players might be accommodated, ‘provided they are free from third-party contractual restrictions and are willing to abide by our membership regulations.’

“What that means, sources say, is that LIV refugees might get starts, but not in lucrative Rolex Series events, and that anyone who re-ups with LIV 2.0 risks being bum-rushed to the exit.”

For the PGA Tour, it is wary of exposing itself to tortious interference claims by talking to still-contracted LIV players.  Plus, it appears that the PGA tour is not open to players going the route of Brooks Koepka who was able to cut a deal to return with two at least two provisos — (a) not being as able to play in some high-profile events, and (b) making a $5 million donation to a charity.

My final view:  Let’s go PGA Tour.  Count on your best players to play.  Avoid LIV.  Play on.

Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Whatever you think of California Governor Gavin Newsom, he made a logical plea yesterday.

Regarding Donald Trump, Newsome said it’s time to enact the 25^th amendment, a constitutional provision that establishes procedures for declaring that a president is unable to perform the duties of the top political job.

Based on reporting from Time Magazine and other credible news outlets, Newsom issued his plea after Trump made remarks Monday suggesting an attack by Iran on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego would be “a small price to pay.” 

From Time:

“Newsom has referred to the 25th Amendment before, alongside other lawmakers and critics, who have suggested that, among other things, Trump’s struggle to find an off-ramp for the war he started with Iran in February — and his expressions of willingness to let civilians in Iran and the U.S. die en masse — suggest that he is unfit to hold office.” 

Is Newsom’s plea just more political grandstanding from a governor widely seen as a potential Democrat presidential candidate in the 2028 election?

Yes, at least in part.

But, given Trump’s record – not caring about lives he condemns to death in war or his fight against immigrants – it strikes me that Newsom has a good point.

More from Time:

“In separate posts across multiple social media accounts following Trump’s Monday remark, Newsom warned that the president’s comment was not only ‘madness’ but also ‘dangerous’ and ‘deranged.’  Speaking to journalist Jim Acosta, Newsom argued that the statement puts over 130,000 active-duty military personnel stationed in San Diego at risk:  ‘Don’t think for a second our adversaries aren’t listening to that.’

“Newsom also claimed that Trump’s remark could be ‘treasonous.’  He posted that the president’s statements make one of the U.S.’s largest naval hubs a potential target and that he directed California’s State Threat Assessment Center ‘to actively monitor the situation in the event that foreign actors interpret the President’s remarks as an invitation to target the state.’”

The White House responded by defending Trump.

Will action on the 25^th amendment come to pass?  The best answer is no, if only because Congress, at least the current one and perhaps the next one would not go along.

But it is worth reflecting on the actions and words of the president which strike many as indicating that he is mentally ill and thus unfit to hold the office he holds.  Which means that we will have to find a way to survive the next two years.

Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

In all aspects of my profession, I used words to deliver a result.

That’s one of the reasons why I like words better charts, graphs, or even photos.

So, as the director of the Department of Words Matter, I open the department, one of five I run, to consider the following.

Example #1:  The word eleemosynary

Yes, hard to pronounce, but it is a word.  It means supporting charity.  Such as in this sentence:  Her focus was to emphasize her eleemosynary work.

I had never heard the word until I worked at the Capitol in Salem, Oregon as a lobbyist.  I came into contact with it in relation to my work on major health care policy issues where, besides government funding, charity care was also a key ingredient then and remains so now.

At that time, the strange word prompted me to advise my associates that, if they managed to use the word in formal testimony to legislators, I would buy them dinner as a reward.

No one ever managed to take me up on it.

But it is still an open invitation.

Case #2:  Words Known By Dogs

Have you ever found yourself spelling out “w-a-l-k” or “t-r-e-a-t” to avoid sending your dog into a frenzy?  If so, you know that dogs can understand at least some of what we say, even in terms of spelling.

But how many words do dogs know?

Experts report that most dogs understand around 80 and100 words, but some highly trained dogs can learn hundreds.

Our dog at home – Callaway (yes, I named by golf clubs after him) – knows the words “walk” and “treat,” if not a number of others.  He never tells us which one he knows because he would rather surprise us.  I think he also knows how to spell certain words when we use that strategy to avoid alerting him to what’s coming.

Several studies have shown that dogs have an ability to understand words at a level similar to that of human infants.

Our experience show that is true.

Case #3:  “Back and forth?”

As my wife and I were walking early this morning, I found myself uttering the phrase “back and forth.”

Then, with nothing else important to do, I wondered why we say that.

Shouldn’t it be “forth and back.”

Because you never go back first.

See, in retirement, I have found time to ask questions about all sorts of words.

Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

On occasion, a writer produces a column for a newspaper that is worth repeating intact in my blog.

Such is the case today as I carry a column by Thomas Friedman that appeared in the New York Times under the headline I used for this blog.

The first phrase in the column caught my attention:  “President Trump is such an awful human being that just writing about him feels degrading.”

I share Friedman’s perception about the worst president in U.S. history – Donald Trump.  Writing about him feels degrading.

But I persist.  Here is the Friedman column.

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

What president would denigrate his predecessor in front of China’s leader the way Trump mocked Joe Biden, now suffering from cancer, by pointing out that a framed picture of an autopen was hanging in the White House instead of Biden’s portrait?

Alas, though, when someone as morally warped as Trump — whose first secretary of state called him a “moron” — assumes this much unchecked power at the dawn of the Age of Artificial Intelligence, he can’t be ignored. Because right now Trump is leaving America exposed to dangerous viruses: digital, biological and diplomatic. Something bad is going to happen to us as a result. We and our children are going to pay for this, and not only at the gas pump.

Let me start with the digital virus now on the loose. Recently, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google all disclosed incidents in which their artificial intelligence models escaped their controls and gallivanted about hacking other computer systems — including an Australian government website, the Hugging Face platform and websites of the U.S. Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Remember, these are infant A.I. systems; they’re still in diapers and yet to be supercharged by fully training themselves and leaving their human designers behind.

And remember, too, the stories above are about what the good guys are doing. Talk to any major cyberprotection expert at any major U.S. company, and you’ll be terrified by stories about what the bad guys are doing with smaller A.I. models that they have gotten their hands on, with the controls stripped out.

The CrowdStrike Global Threat Report said attacks by “A.I.-enabled adversaries” increased by 89 percent in 2025 compared with the previous year, Infosecurity Magazine reported in February — and the rate has soared since.

But fear not, because our president, who doesn’t even use email, told the United Nations last week that he knows that our fears about A.I. safety are fraudulent. He referred to “the very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming.” He added: “And nobody was dead. These are the same people that are now saying that A.I. is going to kill us all.” (Untold thousands have died in catastrophes worsened by climate change in the last decade, and only in Trump’s fetid imagination did anyone say, “Sir, we’ll all be dead in 12 years.”)

Trump and his party — and the A.I. tech bros who have effectively paid them to keep their hands off their industry — had better pray that the “October surprise” in this coming midterm election is not a major, destructive A.I. event. If it is, they’d better have their spaceships ready to whisk them off to another planet where they can live forever, because this one may make their existences a living hell.

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This A.I. threat is not a hoax (nor is the climate threat a hoax, as Trump would know if he ever looked at his own administration’s NASA website). The only hoax is that Trump, who once suggested injecting bleach might be a good way to rid yourself of Covid-19, thinks he knows anything about A.I. or climate change — or bleach.

“It’s not a hoax at all,” Bill Gates said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Gates said that the United States should restrain A.I. development until tougher safeguards are in place, and he argued that China would most likely do the same if Washington took the initiative to draft new rules to regulate the use of A.I.

A.I. without proper regulation is “completely irresponsible,” Gates said. “You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like.” He concluded: “A.I. is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths.”

Precisely because there has never been such a tool, despite its destructive potential, with so much promise to solve so many energy, climate and medical problems for humanity, I want to see A.I. thrive, as does Gates. Which is why we should all want to prevent now an A.I.-driven Sept. 11 that would completely delegitimize artificial intelligence in the public eye. That would be a double tragedy.

I wish that the only threat to us from Trump’s unrestrained ignorance were an A.I. virus. Sadly, last week, my Times colleague Apoorva Mandavilli reported that America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, long the “undisputed global leader in public health,” has been so systematically dismantled by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that it is now “a skeleton of the powerhouse it was.”

Not only has the C.D.C.’s staff been reduced by some 30 percent, but, Mandavilli reported, citing current and former employees, “the changes have hindered the C.D.C.’s ability to respond to outbreaks as measles spreads at home and Ebola abroad, and to issue timely guidance on vaccinations as cooling temperatures kick off the respiratory season. … Entire divisions have been shuttered, including teams that worked on smoking, sexual violence, child abuse and falls among older adults.”

The Guardian newspaper carried a story about the spreading outbreak of measles in Pennsylvania, which has now topped 900 cases. Dr. John Goldman, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said that between 1992 and 2026, he hadn’t seen a single case, The Guardian reported. Now, “We’re seeing at least one every day,” and he added, “Never in my life did I think I was ever going to see measles again.” This is an example of how Trump’s negligence is helping to spread actual, biological viruses.

But don’t forget the anti-diplomatic virus also sapping our strength. What is that? Check out this story in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, by its Middle East affairs expert Zvi Bar’el. It was about how the diplomatic incompetence of the Trump administration and the malevolence of the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have combined to grind the 20-point Trump peace plan for Gaza to a halt. So Gazan civilians, many living in war-broken buildings, one of which collapsed on Sept. 16, killing at least 21 people, including 11 children, remain in total squalor.

When Trump launched his vaunted Gaza Board of Peace and made himself chairman, participating countries pledged $17 billion for Gaza. But “as far as is known, less than $300 million has been transferred,” Bar’el reported.

Moreover, the peace plan’s international stabilization force has yet to be established. The Palestinian police force to replace Hamas, which is supposed to operate under a Palestinian technocratic government, was supposed to receive training in Egypt, “but Israel is preventing them from leaving Gaza,” according to Bar’el.

Then Bar’el peeled back the real story: “The stalemate in Gaza serves Israel. Hamas no longer poses a security threat, but as long as it holds territory, Israel retains a pretext for resuming the war. And as long as the Strip remains devastated and unlivable, the pressure on the people to leave only grows.” He added that Netanyahu’s defense minister, Israel Katz, after being criticized by a rival politician for not achieving a more decisive victory over Hamas, declared that the Israeli military was ready, if ordered, to eliminate Hamas “so that the emigration plan can be implemented.”

So that the emigration plan can be implemented.

Really? What is that? That is Orwellian speak for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza of Palestinians by the Netanyahu government. And what have Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said in response? Zilch.

I’ve learned over the years that diplomacy operates like a virus as well, beneficially or detrimentally: The more success you have, the more respect you get; the more respect you get, the more success you have. Conversely, the more failure you have, the less allies trust joining you, so the more failure you have.

Example: Between March and October 1991, Secretary of State James A. Baker III made eight diplomatic trips to the Middle East to put together the Madrid peace conference — the first among Israel, the Palestine Liberation Organization and several Arab states. I made all eight trips with him as The Times’s diplomatic correspondent. He failed on the first seven, but Baker would not quit and he got it done on the eighth.

Show me a single diplomatic initiative the Trump administration has built since the cease-fire in Gaza, which Trump has left to languish. It’s as if all he cared about was the headline from the signing, after which he amazingly declared last October 13: “Together, we’ve achieved what everybody said was impossible. At long last we have peace in the Middle East.”

Now that’s what I call a real hoax.

There is no energetic, focused follow-up because there are no clear lines of authority. You have Thomas Barrack, who is the special envoy for Syria and Iraq and the ambassador to Turkey, making his own policy statements. You have Massad Fares Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, serving as a senior adviser to the president of the United States on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. You have part-timers, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. You have various assistant secretaries of state and defense. And you have Trump on his social media feed. (Somebody is going to make this into a musical!)

What you don’t have is a secretary of state like Baker, relentlessly focusing and leveraging American power and making trip after trip after trip until he gets the job done.

The only thing Trump relentlessly follows up on is harassing the press. Last Saturday, after being forced by a judge to allow CNN reporters back in the White House after Trump illegally banned them because their coverage was not fawning enough, the president nevertheless blocked CNN from accompanying him on Air Force One to attend a football game in Tennessee.

When it comes to denouncing the press, Trump is laser-focused. But when dealing with the digital, biological and diplomatic viruses weakening our national immune system, not so much — to our great peril.

**********

A footnote:  I want to offer kudos to columnists like Friedman, Frank Bruni, and Karen Tumulty for their rigorous pursuit of Trump fables.  They represent what journalism ought to be about.

Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

There is no agreed-upon answer to the question in this blog headline, but at least one thing is clear:  Donald Trump is not done with his plan to change America.  Often, I argue, for the worse.

All of us in America will have to tolerate – a better word might be, survive – two more years of Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

All this came to mind last week as I read an article by Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner that appeared in the New York Times under this headline: “Trump Has Finally Lost the Plot.”

Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Wehner, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, always produce columns worth reading.  Especially Wehner, one of my favorite writers.

But, this time, I disagree, at least a little, with their contention, which was outlined in the first two paragraphs of their piece:

“The frantic pace of the Trump presidency makes days seem like weeks and weeks like months — if not years.  Finding rhyme or reason amid Trump’s erratic conduct is impossible.  Even so, while 2026 has not brought calm, it has brought more clarity.

“Twenty months into his second term, Trump has re-made the presidency and changed what Americans will tolerate from their government and from one another.  Yet that transformation, sweeping as it is, may prove less important than what Trump and his allies could not do.  They failed at the most ambitious project that they brought to his second term:  Using the state to re-make American society.  That failure is a central fact of the past 20 months, and it is why the country is in a less dangerous place than it was a year ago.”

My view:  While I hope Rauch and Wehner are right, all of us have two more years for Trump and cronies who will try to annihilate our future on their own terms, history and reality be damned.

Quotes from Rauch and Wehner appear below highlighted by bullet marks, followed by comments from me:

• “When Trump took office for the second time, he arrived with several overlapping but distinct agendas.  The one he cared most about would convert the executive branch to a form of government that scholars call patrimonialism, in which the state is run as the leader’s personal property and family concern.

“In a patrimonialist system, expert bureaucracies and neutral rules are replaced by — or subordinated to — the head of state’s will.  Where they can, patrimonialists personalize and weaponize law enforcement, pardons, programs and grants, appointments, promotions and all the other aspects of state power.”

COMMENT:  Trump meets this definition.  He has enriched himself and his family by several billion dollars — and, not to mention, his effort to extract almost $1.8 billion from taxpayers by means of a sham legal settlement.  

• He uses his Justice Department to wage personal vendettas and his pardons to indemnify his cronies.  He has staffed the department’s senior ranks with his own criminal defense attorneys, and the F.B.I. with a fierce political loyalist whose chief qualification was a career spent attacking the investigators who had scrutinized Trump. And he has purged the government’s internal checks on corruption, including by firing inspectors general, career prosecutors and F.B.I. agents whose offense was to follow the rules.

COMMENT:  Trump pushes Congress aside, believing he is all powerful, Congress be damned.  And Congress accents.

• The re-norming of political standards is another area in which Trump has made a lasting imprint.  By “re-norming,” we mean the deliberate degradation of what is considered acceptable in American public life.

Examples are far too many to list, but recall just a few:  Trump described his political opponents as “vermin” and said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” When Robert Mueller died in March, Trump posted that he was “glad he’s dead.” When Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered in their home, he blamed the killings on Reiner’s criticism of him.   He courted and excused political violence — winking at threats against officials who crossed him, joking about the near-fatal attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, and praising and then pardoning January 6 rioters.  He revels in bullying, cruelty and hate as no president ever has.

COMMENT:  If you were to list crimes for which Trump has been found to be guilty or would be found to be guilty, the list would be long.  By any normal standard, he should be in prison.

• “Many Americans are sick of wading through the sludge and understandably want to look away.  That is what Trump is counting on.  He wins not by persuading us that the conduct is acceptable, but by wearing us out until we no longer object.  Each violation makes the next easier; each unpunished transgression resets the baseline.

COMMENT:  Agreed.

• Every administration tries to shape the culture.  What sets this one apart is not the ambition, but the means and the scale — not persuasion but coercion, and not on one front but everywhere all at once, in ways that were unprecedented and found by courts to be unlawful.  Trump and his administration sought to bully and commandeer private institutions, to redirect the culture, and to remake society from above by force and fear.

History may one day judge that the tide turned in Minneapolis.  In January of this year, Operation Metro Surge made mass arrests, invaded homes, fired pepper balls and shot dead two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, without plausible cause — and then, after their deaths, defamed them.

The architect of the operation, Stephen Miller, one of the most powerful presidential aides in modern history, was explicit about the method. He ran Operation Metro Surge through daily calls with the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security, wielding the authority of the president — reportedly directing agents to “force confrontations” with protesters to win the “P.R. battle” and saying that if Minnesotans came to believe “their protesting is successful,” the administration’s interior operations would fail nationwide. Protesters, he reportedly said, “need to be vanquished by any force necessary.”

COMMENT:  Rauch and Wehner report that the people of Minneapolis answered with disciplined, peaceful resistance: tens of thousands marching in Arctic cold, luminaria spelling “ICE Out 4 Good,” a statewide “economic blackout,” a state lawsuit in federal court, citizen networks that tracked ICE and documented its activities, and a population that refused every provocation.

They contend that opposition in Minneapolis was the start of Trump’s downfall.  They contend very well for their perspective.

“Trump, with just under two-and-a-half years left in his second term, might emotionally and psychologically blow apart.  But things are different than they were.  The 80-year-old president is losing his grip on power and even his own base.  The MAGA movement is fracturing.  And the president no longer inspires the fear he once did.  We know something today that wasn’t altogether clear a year ago:  America’s civil society is harder to intimidate and rewire than MAGA’s cultural revolutionaries hoped.”

FINAL COMMENT:  Here’s hoping that Rauch and Wehner are right.  But I have my doubts, if only because Trump and sycophants always fight back because they want to win at any cost, even human costs.

Literally, our survival is at stake as we wonder what the next two years of Trump evil will hold.

THE DEPARTMENT OF PET PEEVES IS OPEN AGAIN

Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Two things bugged me so much over last weekend that I felt compelled to write about them on the theory that such writing allows me to limit anger.

CASE #1:  I was glued to the television to watch the Presidents’ Cup golf event.

And it was great to see the Americans rally on the last day – the single play day – to defeat the International Team.  It will stand as one of the great rallies in the history of the event.

Then, U.S. captain Brandt Snedecar committed what I count as a cardinal sin.  Here is what he said:

“Donald Trump told me he was going to bring some energy for the Americans.  You guys need it.  And I told him if we did this, he gets all the credit.  So, thank you, President Trump.”

So, Snedecar credits Trump for the win.  Not the players.  Not the fans.  Not anyone else.

Just Trump!  Incredible.  I used to like Snedecar as a once excellent young golfer and now a journeyman.  Now he is off my list.

CASE #2:  In the football game where the University of Oregon eventually beat the University of Southern California, a scary scene occurred early in the second quarter of the game. 

U of O quarterback Dante Moore, one of the best in the country, was knocked silly by a cornerback USC, one Desman Stephens.

Moore, who had tried to slide to avoid a collision, lay on the ground for minutes, apparently knocked out if not worse.  It turned out that he was taken to a hospital by ambulance where doctors indicated he had suffered a concussion and, fortunately, not more.

Now for my pet peeve.

After the play, Stephens was shown high-fiving everyone on the USC bench, smiling from ear-to-ear.  He was gloating.

Two pieces of good news are, first, USC penalized Stephens by ruling that he would be out for the next game, and, second, Stephens issued what sounded to me like a genuine apology.

Here it is:

“I want to sincerely apologize for my actions during yesterday’s game. Seeing a player injured like that is incredibly serious, and my reaction in the moments afterward was completely inappropriate and inexcusable.  Regardless of what was going through my mind at the time, there is no justification for smiling or celebrating while another player receives medical attention.  I take full responsibility for my actions.  That is not the person or teammate I want to be, and I will learn from this.  I am deeply sorry to Dante, his family and everyone who saw my reaction. It is not representative of USC or our program.  I hope he makes a full and speedy recovery.”

So, I repeal at least part of my last pet peeve, given the university’s actions and Stephens’ apology.

That’s enough.

HOW ABOUT THIS?  MY RECORD AS A TECHNOLOGY LEADER!

Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

This blog headline is wrong.

I am not a technology leader.  At best, I am a follower.

I usually have to contact my grandchildren when I have a technology question or problem.

But I was part of technology leadership on two occasions in the past.

WANG WORD PROCESSING SYSTEM:  Back when I worked in Congress for a representative from Oregon, our office was the first to use this system.

It was created by Wang Laboratories and it changed how all of us wrote and edited documents in the 1970s and 1980s.

It did that for me in Congress.  To this day, I remember how easy it was to change a mistake in a letter.  Just hit a couple correction keys.  No longer did we have to use “white out” to remove a faulty letter.

Hardly anyone remembers Wang these days.  I do.  It was revolutionary.

BLACKBERRY OPERATING SYSTEM:  Many years later, a lobbying firm of which I was a partner in Oregon bought a Blackberry system.  We were the first lobbying firm to acquire the technology.  It, too, was revolutionary.

BlackBerry is a software company that transitioned from manufacturing physical-keyboard mobile phones into a leading provider of automotive operating systems and enterprise cybersecurity.  It was founded in 1984 as Research in Motion, shortly before my firm bought the system.

For us, it enabled individual users like me to obtain e-mail transmissions no matter where I was in the State of Oregon’s Capitol in Salem, Oregon.  Or, of course, outside the Capitol, too.

That mattered to me because I could now be on a golf course with a state legislator and I could check e-mails as I played 18-holes. And, not just on the golf course.  Anywhere.

As we know now, Blackberrys were a preview of what was to come in the form of mobile phones.

See, this shows that I am a leader in technology.  Just don’t ask me any questions about it!

A STARK CONTRAST:  SUPPORT FOR AND HATING REFUGEES/IMMIGRANTS

Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I have written in the past about immigrants, if only because all of us either are immigrants or have immigrants in our lineage.

Mine:  On the maternal side, by grandparents emigrated to the United States from Norway.  Paternal?  Probably the same, though not as clear.

On this subject – immigrants – a stark contrast struck me this week.

• On Tuesday, my wife and I ventured to a park in downtown Salem to drop in on a Salem for Refugees picnic.  It was great to be there and to show our support for this local organization in the town where we live, Salem Oregon.  We saw families who came for the event under sunny skies, often dressed in their native garb.

• On Thursday, I read a column by David French in the New York Times as he characterized actions by those who hate persons other than themselves – in other words, they hate immigrants.  Look no farther than Donald Trump to see someone who hates others.  And, remember, like the rest of us, Trump himself comes from immigrant stock.
  
  

Here is more detail on the contrast I saw.

Salem for Refugees (SFR) is a local organization that exists to help those in Salem who meet the definition of “rufugee,” but who also could be called “immigrants:”  The organization started in concert with a refugee support group in our church in Salem, Salem Alliance, then branched out on its own.

 What does it mean to be a refugee or an immigrant?

“According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the official definition of a refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence.

“A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.  Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so.  War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries.”

SFR’s record of service is impressive:  2,000 refugees served; 250 volunteers; 12 Languages represented on staff; 10,000 volunteer hours donated.

Some may be surprised that there are refugee communities in Salem, Oregon.

Exact total counts of the refugee population currently living in Salem, Oregon, are not tracked, but local organizations like Salem for Refugees have helped settle hundreds of individuals from diverse global crises.

Refugees resettling in the Salem area come from regions impacted by war, violence, and persecution — from countries including Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Congo Eritrea, Venezuela and El Salvador

On to the contrast.  It emerged in a column in the New York Times written by David French.

Here is how his column started:

“I woke up (from a day of watching football on TV) to find that the internet was on fire over a tweet posted by Bo French (no relation that I know of, thank God), the Republican nominee to be Texas railroad commissioner.  In Texas, the railroad commissioner exercises extraordinary power over oil and gas industry.”

Bo French posted on the internet that he did not believe what he saw when he attended a University of Texas graduation.

He attached a picture to the tweet that showed a group of young Texas fans in the crowd who appeared to be South Asian. They were wearing Texas gear, some sported cowboy hats, and some were throwing up the “hook ’em horns” sign.

Bo French’s “problem:”  What he saw were not White Americans.

Then, this from David French:

“Before I go any further, you need to know that this is nothing unusual from Bo French.  He’s one of a seemingly endless number of vicious bigots lurking within the modern right, but he stands out from the rest, even so.

“As Robert Downen wrote in Texas Monthly, French has ‘called for the rounding up of all Muslims.’  He also posted, ‘OK boys, it’s time to go round up all the Chinese and send them packing.’  And he has called for America to be like Rhodesia, an African nation every bit as gross, violent and racially repressive as apartheid South Africa.”

Put simply, Bo French is a bigot.

David French says he had two responses to French’s tweet.  “First, the picture itself helps refute one of the most common arguments from the populist right — that immigrants from Asia and the global south can’t assimilate into American culture, that there’s just something about them that’s different from, say, the Irish or, in the president’s famous formulation, Norwegians, that prevents them from becoming truly American.

“I’m sorry, but when you’re wearing a cowboy hat, losing your mind at a college-football game and throwing up the hook ‘em horns sign, you’re doing a lot of things and one of them is assimilating.

“In fact, anyone who spends five minutes with immigrants knows and sees the power of American culture.  It’s a prime reason people come here in the first place.  They don’t want to replace Americans; they want to be Americans.”

Whites want to be White and for everyone else to be that color, too.

Count Trump among this number.

Technically, he is not an immigrant, but like the rest of us, he comes from immigrant stock.  His grandparents emigrated from Germany and his mother from Scotland.

So, to Bo French and Donald Trump, I say this:  Value all people as people worthy of respect and honor.

Hear the words of Ronald Reagan in his last speech as president.

 “I think it’s fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love.  It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago. A man wrote me and said:  ‘You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman.  You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese.  But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

Plus, the Bible speaks frequently about immigrants and refugees, often using terms like “stranger,” “sojourner,” or “foreigner” to describe displaced people, travelers, and outsiders.  Across both the Old and New Testaments, scripture consistently commands believers to show them fairness, hospitality, and active compassion.

May we, as individuals, do the same.