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.

One word has made its way into today’s political lexicon:  Weird.

It was used by the new Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz to describe the Republican ticket – Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

And the word has caught on.

Probably for this reason:  It is simple and quick – one word — to describe the anti-America campaign Trump and Vance are running, which goes to depths of ugliness not seen in previous campaigns, even the past ones Trump has run.

Or, as Washington Post commentator Dana Milbank put it in his column yesterday:

“As Democrats play to massive, raucous crowds, the Republican ticket is busy courting angry young men.”

Milbank went on:

“One (Harris-Walz) is running a high-decibel campaign.  The other (Trump-Vance) is waging a high-incel campaign.

“The Harris-Walz ticket debuted this week as ‘joyful warriors’ before massive, raucous crowds.  The Trump-Vance ticket focused its outreach on angry young men.

“Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz were rallying newly optimistic Democrats in seven battleground states.  In Wisconsin, people abandoned their cars in cornfields and walked to the event rather than wait in a traffic jam.

“In Philadelphia on Tuesday, people began lining up 12 hours before Harris was expected to speak despite intermittent rain and temperatures that reached 90 degrees.

“From my seat in the press section on the arena floor, I measured the noise when Harris and Walz took the stage at 107 decibels.  That’s approaching rock-concert levels, but it wasn’t coming from the sound system; it was entirely from the lungs of 12,000 Democrats.

“A low-energy Trump, by contrast, scheduled only one rally, in Montana. Instead, he and his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, made a series of overtures to the ‘manosphere,’ an online community of right-wing — and frequently misogynistic — men.”

To specific, Milbank added this:

“At Mar-a-Lago, Trump sat down for an hour and a half with 23-year-old live-streamer Adin Ross, who has been banned from the streaming platform Twitch for ‘hateful conduct.’  For the benefit of Ross’s hyper-masculine young audience, the two men discussed their shared fondness for Ultimate Fighting and compared their ‘favorite fighters,’ and Trump praised the ‘good heart’ of antisemitic rapper Ye.

“The two also discussed their admiration for the Nelk Boys (“great people,” Trump said), other far-right influencers who, like Ross, have promoted self-described misogynist Andrew Tate, known for celebrating violence against women and who is facing rape and human trafficking charges in Romania.”

So, yes, that’s weird.

And, I hope the weird label will stick if only because it may prompt some people to avoid voting for Trump.

Further, Trump continues to exhibit an inability to deliver a coherent message about his campaign – and, as a supporter of the Harris-Walz ticket, I hope he continues to spew whatever comes across his unwell mind.

Aaron Blake, writing in the Washington Post, put it this way:

“ The superficial, oversimplified reason Democrats decided to turn the page on President Joe Biden in the 2024 election was that he was too old. The more specific reason may have been that this problem — manifested in his stilted, often incoherent speaking and a light schedule — rendered him largely incapable of driving a consistent message about Donald Trump.

“That fateful June 27 debate epitomized it.  Biden didn’t even mention Project 2025, for instance, despite its quickly emerging as a leading Democrat talking point.  And that was a big problem, especially with Trump suddenly more popular than he’d been in many years.

“That very liability has now landed firmly in Republicans’ laps.

“Amid some Republican consternation about Trump and his campaign’s slow build toward making a case against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump emerged Thursday from his relative obscurity to deliver a news conference at Mar-a-Lago.

“He spoke and took questions at length — for more than an hour.

“One thing he did not do:  Offer anything amounting to a coherent or detailed case against Harris and her running mate, Walz.

“Trump has for years been prone to tangents and riffs and generalities, but even by his standards this session was unfocused.  And that was despite the apparent reason for calling the news conference in the first place:  To take on an opponent who was rising in the polls.”

So I say to Trump-Vance, continue with the inability to mount a credible campaign.

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.

Here are the two stories I will describe:

• Questions about honesty and veracity dating back to my time as press secretary to Oregon Governor Atiyeh, now nearly 50 years ago.

• The total of lies Donald Tromp told when he was president.  And, now he just adds to the total.

What do these two issues have in common? 

Well, not much, except as they relate to an issue – honesty in politics and government, including in (a) the Executive Branch and (b) as candidates run for office.

Honesty in government tends to be these days an old term.  What matters more, it seems, is the ability to deliver a message, no matter whether it is true or not, via social media.

For my part, I rue the day when honesty in government retreated from the public conscience – and the fact is a tribute….no read, debit – to Trump.

Story #1:  When I served as Governor Atiyeh’s press secretary, I received a report from the Oregon Economic Development Department that described how many jobs the department had helped to create in the last year.

But could I trust the numbers?

I wondered, but I decided to develop a news release for the governor outlining the report as a way to underline an Atiyeh emphasis – helping to create jobs in Oregon.

Still, I remained concerned that I had produced information that would stand up under scrutiny, which I label, perhaps immodestly, with this phrase – honesty in government matters so those who depend on government – read, taxpayers – can trust what the government does.

And what the government says. 

In this story, it turned out that I was never asked about detail behind the numbers.  But, if I had been questioned, I was ready with information.

Further, it you happen to make a mistake in government, then correct the record, that corrections can augment your credibility.

Story #2:  With Trump, honesty went the way of the trash bin.

Sticking with facts and truth is not in his makeup.  If something comes into his mind, it makes its way to his mouth.  And, if he says it, then he believes it is true.

Consider what the Washington Post Fact Checker column found.

During his four years as president, Trump told an incredible number of lies – more than 30,500 during those four years.  Which meant about 20 per day.

The Fact Checker column labeled his conduct:  “A tsunami of untruths.”

To ask the question underlying this column:  Did Trump dishonesty matter?

The answer, at least in part, as that it did because Joe Biden beat him when he ran for re-election – and one reason, surely not the only one, was that Trump lied about everything.

And, I hope it matters today, too, as Trump, incredibly, tries to win back the Oval Office by a “tsunami of untruths.”

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 the headline on this blog, I add the word “but” because, in politics these days, nothing is sacred for more than a few hours, or perhaps minutes.

The influence of social media renders the old issue of “media deadlines” irrelevant – and deadlines were something I dealt with back in the day when I worked as a journalist.

No longer.

Still, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are off to fast start, at least in part because they have injected a sense of joy and optimism into the election campaign that otherwise involved pessimism.

Optimism is especially true of Democrats as they anticipate the tandem of Harris and Walz.  Many Democrats are re-energized.  But there are early signs that some Republicans in the middle have caught the pro-Harris/Walz, anti-Trump vibe.

The elevation of Walz to the vice president slot also appears to have caught Donald Trump and his campaign off guard.

Here is how Tom Nichols, writing in Atlantic Magazine, described the status:

“No one is handling the past few weeks more poorly than Trump himself, who, as The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger noted, seems to have retreated into an Aaron Sorkin–inspired fantasy.  Yesterday, the former president posted this on his Truth Social site:

“’What are the chances that Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST President in the history of the U.S., whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left, CRASHES the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination, beginning with challenging me to another DEBATE.

“’He feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!’”

I’ll leave the bad spelling and bad capitalization to Trump, but Nichols continues:

“Kamabla”?

“This might be too much even for a Sorkin script. Trump’s reactions lately are so unhinged, so hysterical, that they could pass for one of those scenes in a soap opera where a drunken dowager finds out that her May-December romance is a sham, and she begs him, as mascara flows down her cheeks, to fly off with her to Gstaad or Antibes to rekindle their love.

“In reality, of course, this is all a disturbing reminder that Trump is a deeply unwell person who is not fit to be the commander in chief, and that should he return to office, other Republican officials cannot be counted on to protect the nation — especially Vance, who reveals himself daily as every bit the intellectual lightweight and political fraud his critics believe he is.

“The Democrats are doing well, and Republicans are sitting in the middle of a tire fire.  But Trump is still in a commanding electoral position, and he could still win.  The pro-democracy coalition has every reason to enjoy some good news, but these past few weeks should not obscure the existential danger America faces in November.”

Nichols hits the nail on the head.

But, despite Republican overreaction and Democrat resurgence, the election is far from over.

Which means it is all the more important for rational-thinking humans to oppose any rise for Trump who wants to turn America into a dictatorship – with, of course, Trump as dictator.

And, this footnote.

The latest squabble over the military records of Walz and Vance strikes me as just that – a squabble that will play in some media commentaries, but probably won’t roil the campaign much.  It requires too much time and attention for most voters to parse all of the details.

And, even Harris, in commenting on the issue, gave credit to both Walz and Vance for the fact that they served.

So, on to more important issues in the presidential campaign.

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 politics today, the focus will be on whom Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris will name as her vice president to run against Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

Like many other political junkies, I am waiting for the announcement while hoping that the person whom Harris chooses will help her defeat Trump/Vance.

In America, we cannot tolerate another Trump win.

Still, this morning, I write about D.E.I.

The analogy in this blog headline is not meant to be positive. 

The opposite.

D.E.I., which stands for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” has become that football.

Originally conceived by left-wing Democrats, D.E.I. became a slogan, not a set of real commitments. 

Often, companies, trying to ingratiate themselves with the left, hired employees to be in charge of D.E.I. rather than, without a set of new hires, expressing fealty to the goals themselves.

Is that bad?  Not necessarily.  But hiring more staff may not always be the best way to support ethics such as diversity, equity, and inclusion.

So, when the left-wing spoke, the right-wing folks in the Republican responded back — let D.E.I. die.  And, across the country, new employees in charge of D.E.I. have lost their jobs.  Plus, in another Trumpism, he and some of his acolytes chose to depict Harris as a D.E.I. candidate.

But, consider now the definition of each of the three words, which often get lost in the to’ing and fro’ing of political football.

• Diversity:  The practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, and sexual orientations.

• Equity:   The quality of being fair or impartial; fairness; impartiality. 

• Inclusion:  The act of including some in a group when they often are left out.

If I was running and a corporation or a government agency, I would support all three – diversity, equity, and inclusion.

But, I just would draw the line at joining a political movement.

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 devote this blog to a reprint of an essay written by Eliza Griswold, author of “Circle of Hope:  A Reckoning With Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church.”  The essay appeared in the New York Times.

It makes an excellent case against Donald Trump, who practices Christianity as a form of political persuasion, not real Christianity.

Here is the reprint.

*********

In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, a video with images of Jesus crowned with thorns, blood running down his face, followed by photos of the former president circulated on social media.

Days later, at the Republican National Convention, the evangelist Franklin Graham endorsed Trump from the stage, saying that “God spared his life.”

But the idea of Trump as chosen by God has infuriated those evangelicals who believe that he stands in direct opposition to their faith.  Their existence highlights an often-overlooked fact about the American religious landscape:  Evangelicals are not a monolith.

The troubling ascendancy of white Christian nationalism has galvanized evangelicals for whom following Jesus demands speaking truth to power, as well as building the kingdom of heaven on earth in actionable ways.  In 2024, this includes mobilizing voters against the former president.

Although this broader evangelical movement is often referred to as the evangelical left, it adheres to no party.  “This isn’t about being a Democrat or a Republican,” Jim Wallis, an evangelical Christian pastor, author and justice activist, told me.  Instead, believers like him say they refuse worldly labels and division.

They also believe that they can sway enough of their fellow evangelicals, along with other people of faith, and low-income Americans, who historically have had much lower voting rates than other groups, to swing this presidential election against Trump.

“The so-called evangelicals who support Trump have a Jesus problem,” Bishop William Barber II told me.  Jesus advocated tirelessly for the poor and warned that nations would be judged “by how we treat the hungry, the sick, the incarcerated and the immigrant,” Bishop Barber said.

To fulfill Jesus’ mandate to minister to “the least of these,” he is leading a revival of the Poor People’s Campaign, which the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. founded in the late 1960s and Bishop Barber re-started in 2018:  A national multi-racial coalition of Americans working to address the challenges of those struggling to make ends meet.

Historically, poorer Americans have had much lower voting rates than other groups.  The Poor People’s Campaign is mobilizing an estimated 15 million voters to cast ballots for candidates who address issues they care about, which has less to do with who uses what bathroom and more to do with a living wage and universal health care.

“Poor people are the new swing voters,” Bishop Barber said.  “And every real evangelical knows that the first issue that Jesus talked about was poverty.”  Bishop Barber called out the failures of the federal government and politicians who write “oppressive decrees,” ignore the needy, and rob the poor.

To organize Christian voters against Trumpism, Doug Pagitt, an evangelical pastor, founded the non-profit Vote Common Good, which aims to engage Christian voters.  He’s driving across the country in a bus to swing states to rally these voters against Trump.

“We’re specifically targeting those who want to detach their voting habits from the MAGA movement,” Pagitt told me.  It seemed to work in 2020, he noted, citing heavily white evangelical West Michigan, where Trump’s support dropped to 62 per cent from 80 per cent in two critical counties, delivering Democrats their win.

Evangelicals like these hew more closely to the original identity of evangelicals in America, which emerged from the Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries, during which many Christians committed themselves to personal piety and a duty to address the ills of the world, as Jesus called his followers to do.

Among other things, they campaigned for the abolition of slavery, ministered to the poor and aided immigrants — all informed by their reading of Scripture.

This strain of Christianity is closer to the mainline Protestant tradition that I grew up in, which saw the Bible as poetry, metaphor, and history.  I was not brought up to read Scripture literally, as many evangelicals do.  As an adult, I am not a regular churchgoer.  Yet, I find that the convictions of these ardent evangelicals who stand against Trump — even as a vast majority of white evangelicals have rallied to him — cast a rare and hopeful vision of America’s moral heart.

“We refuse to cede Scripture to the right,” Jonah Overton, a 37-year-old pastor from Milwaukee, told me.

Instead of casting Trump as a holy martyr, these Christians offer an alternative vision of him as an Antichrist, who abuses his power and, in many ways, resembles the emperors of Rome.  (The Antichrist is sometimes likened to Nero, who persecuted Christians and sometimes crucified them.)

These other evangelicals also commit to following word for word Jesus’ moral teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he commands people to “give to the needy,” as well as “love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” among other practical but difficult tasks.  

This provides a blueprint for the Christian ethic.  “There is no following Jesus without following his teachings on helping the poor and oppressed,” Lisa Sharon Harper, an evangelical theologian, told me.

Some American evangelicals justify Trump’s decidedly un-christian acts like cheating on his wife with a porn star, in service of advancing abortion restrictions.  But adherents’ beliefs about how to follow Jesus’ teachings vary.  And evangelicals who have found the weaponization of Scripture distasteful are showing us that their vote is very much up for grabs.

These evangelicals, who’ve long stood at the edge of their tradition, are eager to show fellow believers an authentically biblical way to oppose Trump.  It remains to be seen whether the Democrat Party is willing to take these believers, who are also persuadable voters, seriously.

*********

And this footnote from me:  Ever wonder how words mean one thing at one time, then often mean something entirely different later?

I hate it when that happens.

One of the best examples:  The word “gay.”  It used to mean happy.  Now, it means homosexual.

There is another word that has been usurped, this time by Trump and his minions.  The word is “evangelical.”

To me, it means this:  Living according to the principles laid down in Scripture, the Bible.

To Trump, it is just another political group to be carved out.

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.

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan has underlined some of the qualities Kamala Harris has going for her as she takes on Donald Trump for the right to be the next president.

Noonan wrote under this headline and subhead:  “The Fight of Trump’s Political Life; Harris has the wind at her back; her strengths became clearer in the past two weeks.”

Here how she started her column:

“Those who think about politics and history as a profession can’t resist comparing presidential years.  ‘This is 1968 all over again.’  ‘We’re back to the dynamics of ’72.’  We do this because we know political history and love it, and because there are always parallels and lessons to be learned.

“But it should be said as a reminder:  This year isn’t like any previous time.

“This is the year of the sudden, historically disastrous debate, the near-assassination of one of the nominees, the sudden removal of the president from his ticket, the sudden elevation of a vice president her own party had judged a liability, and her suddenly pulling even in a suddenly truncated campaign.”

Noonan cited what she called “major pluses” for Harris:

• She is new.  She seems a turning of the page away from Old Biden and Old Trump.  She looks new, like a new era.  She displays vigor and the joy of the battle.  The mainstream media is on her side.  Coverage hasn’t been tough or demanding.

• On policy she is bold to the point of shameless.  This week she essentially said:  You know those policies I stood for that you don’t like?  I changed my mind!  Her campaign began blithely disavowing previous stands, with no explanation.  From the New York Times’s Reid Epstein:  “The Harris campaign announced on Friday that the vice president no longer wanted to ban fracking, a significant shift from where she stood four years ago.”

Campaign officials said she also now supports “increased funding for border enforcement; no longer supported a single-payer health insurance program; and echoed Biden’s call for banning assault weapons but not a requirement to sell them to the federal government.”

• She is a born performer.  She knows what she’s doing when she’s campaigning.  She is less sure of what she’s doing when she’s governing.  But she gets a race.  Running for the 2020 Democratic nomination, she wasn’t good at strategy or policy, but the part involving performing and being a public person and speaking with merry conviction — she gets that and is good at it.

• She is beautiful.  You can’t take a bad picture of her.  Her beauty, plus the social warmth that all who have known her over the years speak of, combines to produce:  Radiance.  It is foolish to make believe this doesn’t matter.  Politicians themselves are certain it matters, which is why so many in that male-dominated profession have taken to Botox, fillers, dermabrasion, face lifts, all the cosmetic things.  Because they’re in a cosmetic profession.

• She has a wave of pent-up support behind her.  By November, we’ll know if something big happened.  Barack Obama deliberately, painstakingly put new constituencies together.  He created a movement.  It had fervor and energy.  What we may see this year is something different — that a movement created Kamala Harris.  That is, the old constituencies held, maintained fervor and rose again when Biden stepped aside and Harris was put on top.  I’m not sure we’ve seen that before.

To this, I add a question:  Will Harris’ strengths be enough to beat Trump?  The old, hackneyed phrase is appropriate – “only time will tell.”

But, Harris’ start has energized many Democrats and, I hope, will entice independents to join the ranks of her supporters.

Meanwhile, according to another columnist, Dana Milbank, who writes for the Washington Post, “The out of control Trump — suppressed in recent months with varying degrees of success — is back.

Milbank continues:

“For the last year, we’ve been hearing about the “disciplined,” “competent” and “professional” campaign Donald Trump is running.  After his chaotic 2016 and 2020 campaigns, he brought in longtime Republican operatives to lead a “low-drama” operation.

“Well, the cat lady is out of the bag.

“The trauma caused by the broadly panned choice of Senator J.D. Vance as a running mate, combined with President Biden’s withdrawal from the race and the massive outpouring of support for Vice President Harris, have had a terrible effect on Trump:  They have caused him to revert to being himself.

“Discipline has broken down, and the out-of-control Trump — suppressed in recent months with varying degrees of success — is back on full display.”

Including as he tore into Harris as not really being black, a stupid comment if there ever was one – but I hope it redounds to Trump’s discredit.

Combined with Harris’ strengths, Trump’s out-of-control self could be his undoing.

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.

Nobody who happens to read this blog would know the answer to the question in the headline.

I do…because it’s about me.  But forgive the lack of modesty.

So here goes.

In a column in the Wall Street Journal, Ben Zimmer, who writes about the derivation of words (Isn’t in laudable that a newspaper like the Wall Street Journal pays someone to write about words?), used his regular column to describe the derivation of the word “re-boot.”

His column appeared under this headline and sub-head:  “‘Reboot’:  A New Start, Whether for a Computer or a Presidential Campaign;  A now familiar term for starting fresh dates back to taking hold of bootstraps in the 19th century.”

Who knew that “re-boot” I were related?

Here is how it happened.

Story #1:  Zimmer wrote that, when President Biden announced he would not seek re-election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democrats’ new standard-bearer, commentators turned to a highly appropriate word to encapsulate the huge shake-up in the political landscape:  ‘Re-boot.’

“’Inside the Democrat Re-Boot:  Joy, Hope and Fear,’ read one headline in Politico Magazine.  ‘The Democrat Party is rebooting,’ announced the Washington Post.  The Wall Street Journal reported on how Democrats have been ‘racing to mount an uncertain re-boot of their campaign.’

Zimmer goes on to cite the derivation of the word re-boot:

“The computing world is, in fact, where the term ‘re-boot’ originated.  It goes back to ‘bootstrap’ as the name for the process that allows the operating system of a computer to be loaded into memory.  The process involves a series of stages, each of which requires a small program to load and execute a larger program for the next stage.  Metaphorically, then, the computer is pulling itself up by its own bootstraps.

“And where does that notion come from? My research into the ‘bootstraps” idiom takes it back to 1834, when a would-be inventor from Nashville named Nimrod Murphree announced in a local newspaper that he had ‘discovered perpetual motion.’

“His claim was ridiculed in other papers, including one that quipped, Probably Murphree has succeeded in handing himself over the Cumberland River, or a barnyard fence, by the straps of his boots.’

“Over time, this comical image of an impossible task was transformed into a call for self-improvement:  To ‘pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps’ came to be a feel-good expression for bettering oneself without assistance.”

Story #2:  To get back to this blog headline, I happened to use “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” a long time ago – but accurately.

The scene occurred about 40 years ago when I served as deputy director of the Oregon Department of Economic Development.

Our department was asked by French officials to travel to the Clermont-Ferrand region to speak to students in a French business graduate school.

When the department director could not go, he asked me to go in his place and I was happy to do so.

French school officials told us they wanted someone from Oregon to describe how the state had transitioned its economy from timber and fishing to high technology.  In France, those same officials wanted to know how to transition from Michelin tire factories — there were several major ones in the Clermont Ferrand region — to a broader, more diversified economy.

So it was that, with my wife, I traveled to France prepared with a speech about Oregon’s successful economic transition, one that, in fits and starts, is still under way today.

On the scene in France, I spoke to the graduate school glass with a translator for the first time in my life.  The French students wanted to hear the speech in English, the most used business language in the world, but they still needed translation from English into French.

All was well until the question-answer period.  Actually, hindsight says it went well, too.

To answer one student’s question, I used a metaphor to explain one part of transitioning an economy.  I said, “Oregonians had to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.”

My translator had trouble with that idiom, so, afterwards, he told me he simply said – “pull yourselves up by the seat of your pants” – and, as he said that, he grabbed the back of his pants.

Well, not quite accurate, I suppose, but point made.

To state the obvious years ago, I did not have the benefit of the kind of research typical of Ben Zimmer’s writing on the derivation of words.

Wouldn’t have mattered, though.  The idiom I used, according to Zimmer, was exactly on point — “a feel-good expression for bettering oneself without assistance.”

Oregonians had “pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps.”

We should all be doing the same today.

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 more news that you may want to read these days about whom Kamala Harris will choose as her vice president to go up against Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

But, if I was making the choice, here is what I would consider, in order of priority:

1. A person who has the experience and ability to serve as president, being only a heartbeat away from the top job.

• A person who has executive experience running government programs because that’s what the Executive Branch does – run programs with responsibility for results.

• A person who comes from a state that is up for grabs in the election… so that person would add to the ability of the D ticket to win.

• A person who has ability in going live with support for the D tickets programs, plus the presumed ability to debate Vance.,

There, but my bias is #2 above – executive experience.

Today, there about five still in the running for the VP slot, though that number changes nearly every day, depending who is writing about the decision.

The five:

• Arizona Senator Mark Kelly [For me, his experience as an astronaut, plus other credentials offset the lack of executive experience.]
• Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro
• Minnesota Governor Tim Walz
• Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear
• U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg

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.

If you needed evidence of the point in this blog headline – Donald Trump and J.D. Vance denigrate women — consider these words written by Jennifer Rubin, a columnist for the Washington Post.

“If you wanted to design a presidential ticket most likely to offend women voters, you would pick as the presidential nominee an adjudicated rapist, someone caught bragging about sexually assaulting women and who comes with a history of demeaning and insulting women.  You would make it someone who mused about punishing women for having an abortion and who boasts about taking away women’s bodily integrity.

“Then, for vice president, you would find someone who has implied women should stay in abusive relationships (he denies that’s what he meant but listen for yourself), wants to ban abortion even in cases of rape and incest, favors a ‘federal response’ to prevent women from traveling to states where abortion is legal, accuses single women (‘childless cat ladies’) of lacking a stake in America’s future, votes against protection for in vitro fertilization and wants higher taxes for childless people. (He later said he had not meant to offend cats.)”

So, think no more.

None of us – women and men – should cast votes for Trump/Vance.

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.

Kamala Harris, the new Democrat standard-bearer in the U.S. presidential race is facing a serious challenge:  Whom will she choose to run with her as a vice president nominee?

The choice will be one factor – not necessarily the most important – as she begins her run for president, which is not yet official because she is not the formal nominee. 

But she will be. 

She has accumulated enough votes to be the nominee, plus a large number of endorsements on top of that.  Along with a major uptick in enthusiasm for the presidential race that was lost when two old guys were running against each other.

Still, almost no one votes because a vice president is in the race.

Long-time political analyst Karl Rove wrote about this in his recent column, with this key paragraph, though he also added that almost no one votes because a specific VP candidate is on the ballot:

“Harris’s vice-presidential choice looms.  Will she try to broaden her appeal with an experienced governor or member of Congress who appears ready for the top job if something happens?”

That’s a good question.

But another one is whether a governor or a Member of Congress would be best suited for the VP job.

My bias:  A governor.

And here’s why based on my 40 years following government mostly in Oregon, but also in Washington, D.C.:

• Governors have run something.  They have had “executive responsibility.”  They have had to contend with the “buck stops here reality.”

• As for legislators, no.  They may talk a good game, but a member of the Legislative Branch does not carry responsibility for the result.

Now, let me emphasize that I am not bad-mouthing legislators.  If they do their job well, if they write good law, if they strike bad law, if they work to find middle-ground compromise, then that works in a democracy.

But, if they resort to yelling and screaming, as some do these days, then they are not doing their job.

So, I hope Harris picks a governor to help her win the presidency.

Here is a summary of the short list of the assumed leaders for the nod:

Governors Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Roy Cooper of North Carolina, and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona.  The latter, obviously, is not a governor, but his record of accomplishment in both public and private life is worthy of consideration – and those accomplishments, including his experience as an astronaut, give him credentials.

In recent national stories, Kelly has emerged as a potential front-runner, which is fine with me, despite his lack of executive experience.

Otherwise, to indicate one man’s bias, mine, I hope Harris picks a governor, then wins the election.