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.

A friend of mine from Salem writes about rules every month for the Oregon Golf Association (OGA) on-line newsletter.  Usually, he makes rules come alive.

This time, he wrote about slow play in golf.

And this friend, Terry McEvily, outlined excellent steps to speed up the game we love.  Nothing magic.  Just intention to the pace-of-play.

At the same time, of course, many of have been used to watching many pro golfers slow the game, sometimes to a crawl.

I have often said that a key to moving the game along would to be to apply the existing official golf rule – once you reach your golf ball and pull a club, you have 40 seconds to execute the shot.  If you don’t, you should get a warning the first time.  Then, if slowness persists, you should receive penalties, which could involve fines, extra shots, and, eventually, disqualification.

On the pro side, if this was done, slow play would no longer be an issue.

Back to McEvily.  Here is a summary of what he wrote:

A round of golf is meant to be played at a prompt pace, so:

• Each player should recognize that his or her pace of play is likely to affect how long it will take other players to play their rounds, including both those in the player’s own group and those in following groups.
• The player should play at a prompt pace throughout the round, including the time taken to:

+  Prepare for and make each stroke,

+  Move from one place to another between strokes, and

+  Move to the next teeing area after completing a hole.

• A player should prepare in advance for the next stroke and be ready to play when it is their turn.
• When it is the player’s turn to play:

+  It is recommended that the player make the stroke in no more than 40 seconds after he or she is able to play without interference or distraction, and

+The player should usually be able to play more quickly than that and is encouraged to do so.

• Depending on the form of play, there are times when players may play out of turn to help the pace of play.
• In stroke play, players may play “ready golf” in a safe and responsible way (see officials golf rule 6.4b(2)).”

Good suggestions from McEvily.

If all of us followed them, we’d be able to play faster – not running.  Just playing with intent and focus.

And we’d all have more fun on the golf course.

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 a thought around that language and punctuation is – or at least should be – marked by hard-and-fast rules.

While I understand that notion, I tend to favor my own rules, which could be called idiosyncrasies.

Here are a few:

• Make the word Democratic into Democrat

Why?  Well, too often political figures who called themselves Democrats weren’t interested in being democratic.  They wanted their way or the highway.  So, now we have Donald Trump getting even.

• Always spell out, not abbreviate, such words as the month of the year, titles representative and senator, and the names of states.

Would only take as few more keystrokes to install this clarity.

• Never split infinitives, such as in:

From The Washington Post…”Trump is using a little-known law to criminally charge migrants who fail to register presence with the government.”

Should have been “to charge criminally…”

Or, from The Atlantic Magazine…”For the second in less than a month, Trump has used law enforcement to directly target Congress.”

Should have been “to target directly Congress.”

And, from the Oregonian newspaper…”In both cases, the initial extradition denial turned political, prompting the governor to personally intervene.”

Should have been “to intervene personally.”

Avoiding splitting infinitives makes language stronger.

• Use the singular modifier, no matter how bad it sounds on occasion.

As in Atlantic Magazine which recently ran this sentence:  But none of the structural contradictions in the bill have gone away.”  The verb should have been “has,” not “have,” though, I admit, the accurate word does sound bad.

Or, this quote from another national newspaper as it wrote about clients of a health plan:  “Many of their clients are on the Oregon Medicaid plan.”  It should have read “many of its clients…”

And, this quote from the Salem Statesman newspaper:  “The Oregon Government Ethics Commission based their own investigation and fine on the evidence it had from an interview with Marks where he admitted to diverting and purchasing a single $329.99-bottle of rare Pappy Van Winkle 23 bourbon.

The sentence should have read “based its investigation….”

• Avoid phrases that don’t make sense.

From Salem Reporter:  “The protest officially began at noon and ended at 3 p.m. Saturday, but hundreds were already gathered along Center Street and clustered around a number of informational booths and resource tents before 12 p.m.”

Think about it for just a second – it’s impossible “to center around” something. 

The same problem exists with a televised ad for a financial management company, Corian.  The language says Corian “centers around” its clients.  Impossible.

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.

The title of this blog crossed my mind this week as I contemplated the fact that a company where I was a partner for 25 years is now celebrating its 35^th anniversary.  Without me, of course, because I am retired.

Still, it was good to look back at reflections about the start of a company that bore the partners’ names – Gary Conkling, Pat McCormick, and mine – Dave Fiskum, as in Conkling, Fiskum and McCormick, or CFM Strategic Communications.

We came to be known simply as CFM.  And, today, those who have followed us as partners have kept the initials, now CFM Advocates.  They have expanded substantially on our initial start, which is a credit to them, not us.

But, back to the headline on this blog.

When we spun out from our employer, Tektronix, then Oregon’s largest private employer, we got great help from the vice president for whom we worked there as Tek lobbyists, Chuck Frost.

His commitment to ethical behavior and his ability to lead us toward it set a high bar for us.  Without ego, I say we met the challenge over my 25 years due in some substantial part to Chuck’s tutelage.

After we had spun out, we kept Chuck involved as the “conscience” of our new company and he helped us in ways too numerous to count.  Unfortunately, our mentor died in 2016.

All of this came to mind, too, as I read a book about Oregon’s last Republican governor, Victor Atiyeh, who also valued high ethics.

It was my privilege to work for Atiyeh in Salem, Oregon, before I ventured over to the private sector.

One section of the book — it was written by retired Pacific University professor, Jim Moore — highlighted the operating principles enunciated by Atiyeh when he was governor.  They are worth noting today, even as people like me wish they would be as true today as they were with Atiyeh more than 40 years ago here in Oregon.

The principles:

• The best government is one that is less involved in people’s lives

• The government that is closest to the people is best

• Democracy is not efficient, and that is a good thing

• People may want a public life and a private life

• “We the people” means that we get the kind of government to which we are entitled

• There should be objective government policies for dealing with taxes and funding

• Government should create incentives to change people’s behavior, not solely punishments

• Never trade votes for something that violates closely held principles

• Is a policy proposal good for Oregon (partisanship should be irrelevant)

• Always govern without regard to re-election

In addition to these principles, one other fact about Atiyeh stood out for me as I worked for him.  I noticed it repeatedly. 

If something good happened in Oregon when he was governor, Atiyeh did not set out to take credit for himself as many politicians would.  He dispensed credit to others.

Again, it is a principle I wish was the case today.

So, for me, two models of ethical behavior.  Chuck Frost.  Victor Atiyeh.

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.

Washington Post columnist George Will, a wordsmith himself, wrote recently about words he hates.

His work appeared under this headline:  “FIVE WORDS THAT TODAY ARE GRATINGLY MISAPPLIED OR WORN OUT.”

Here is how Will started his column:

“’When we Americans are done with the English language,’ wrote Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936), ‘it will look as if it had been run over by a musical comedy.’”

Going on, Will cites five words he hates, as follows:

• The fifth-most misused word in what remains of the tattered language is “massive.” It is an adjective applied to anything big, even if the thing has no mass.  There cannot be a massive increase in consumer confidence.  Similarly, it would be wrong to say there is massive illiteracy in many uses of “massive.”
• The fourth-most shopworn word is “unique.” It is applied to any development that has happened since the person misusing “unique” was in high school. As in, “There is unique polarization in America today,” a judgment that cannot survive even a cursory reading about the 1850s.
• The third-most gratingly misapplied word is “only,” but only in the phrase “one of the only.” As in, Mickey Mantle is one of the only switch hitters in the Hall of Fame.  One of the only is a wordy way of avoiding “few.”
• The second-most worn-out word in contemporary discourse is “iconic.” This adjective is, it seems, applicable to anything or anyone well-known in a way different from the way anything or anyone else has become well-known.
• Today’s most promiscuously used word is “vibe.” It probably is used so often by so many because trying to decipher its meaning is like trying to nail applesauce to smoke.  Having no fixed meaning, “vibe” cannot be used incorrectly. So, it resembles the phrase “social justice,” which includes a noun and a modifier that does not intelligibly modify the noun.

I agree with what Will wrote.  But, to his list, I add this, one of my many language biases:  I hate words that end with the letters, “ize” or letters that carry similar sounds, such as “yz.”

Such as prioritize.  Why not just say such words as “what’s most important?”

Or, incentivize.  Why not just “incent?”

Or, then this word one my business partners used that grated on my ears for years, with all due respect to my friend and business colleague – “catalyze.” 

What does that mean?  I suppose it could be conveying something like – “those advocating for passage should be getting their act together soon.”

More words?  Yes.  But they get across the point better than “catalyze.”

And, I add this:  I hate nouns that are used as verbs.  Consider “helm.”  It is a noun, but is often used, including in top media outlets, as a verb, as “he helmed that organization.”  No.  He led it.

Or, consider one of my favorite words “golf.”  You do not “golf” your ball.  You hit your ball.  I know this because golf is my favorite sport.

Some readers of this blog could say, “who cares?”

Yes, but, to me, purity of language is a solid quest.

I am still on it.  I fall short from time to time, but the quest prevails.

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 had forgotten about this, but one of my former partners reminded me and others of this the other day:

It has been 35 years since, with two partners, we started in business in a firm that became special because of its performance in the lobbying and strategic communications space.

Since 1990, as they say, the rest is history.

Rather than recount the history from my point of view, I choose to reprint my partner’s blog, which he entitles “Life Notes.”  It conveys information about three individuals – me, Gary Conkling and Pat McCormick — who weren’t sure they were entrepreneurs but became the same.

So, read on.

*********

CFM’s 35-Year-Old Origin Story

How Improbable Entrepreneurs Stumbled Into Success

More than 35 years ago, a college classmate, a co-worker and I decided to go out on a limb and start a public affairs company.  Friends thought we were nuts.  Our families were understandingly nervous.  The rest is history.

We were improbable entrepreneurs.  We had worked in the media, held government jobs and represented a large company.  None of us dreamed of launching a business venture or becoming a tycoon.  Then circumstances conspired to plant the seed of an extraordinary idea.

We didn’t have to search each other’s backgrounds.  We knew our collective strengths and quirks. Like many other people who have started a business, we just dove into deep water.

The CFM Backstory
Dave Fiskum and I worked on the same college newspaper in Seattle.  A few years after we graduated and found newspaper jobs, Dave recommended me for news editor at The Daily Astorian where he covered city government.

While working together in Astoria, we met Pat who was the top lieutenant in Oregon for newly-elected Congressman Les AuCoin.  Eventually, all three of us worked for AuCoin – Dave and I in Washington, D.C. and Pat heading his Portland congressional office.

Before our public affairs adventure, Dave logged 15 years in Oregon state government, including as press secretary for Governor Vic Atiyeh and in management positions in the Human Resources, Economic Development, and Executive departments.  Pat served as staff director for House Speaker Hardy Myers and later represented the Oregon electronics industry in Salem.

After helping newly elected Congressman Ron Wyden get established in his first term, I (Gary Conkling) came back to Oregon as public affairs director for Tektronix.

When Tektronix fell on hard times, the idea of starting a public affairs firm popped into my head as a last-ditch alternative to being laid off.  While skeptical, Dave was interested.  Pat, who by this time had gone to work for Oregon’s most prominent PR and advertising firm, egged us on and promised to join us if we took the plunge.

The Business Plan
Step one, we were repeatedly told, was writing a business plan.  One of my lawyer friends privately advised that I may know communications, but I didn’t know squat about business plans.  He was right. 

I did as much research as time allowed, drafted a plan, then shared it with Pat, Dave and a few trusted colleagues and potential clients.  It turned out to be an unnecessary and stressful exercise.

When word spread the three of us were hitching our wagons to form a public affairs team, we got recruited, mostly by law firms.  Nobody asked us for a business plan.  Instead, we were courted with stories of how we would fit into existing organizations.  It felt good to be wanted after fearing we would be fired. 

We chose to align with Stoel Rives.  Its pitch was simple:  The law firm didn’t want former Tektronix employees like us siphoning off work from one of their biggest clients.  They offered us downtown office space, reserved parking, computer support, an office manager, and access to corporate billing and human resource systems.  They also offered a generous credit line, which we never needed to access.

A friend needled me that public affairs professionals were talking heads not brainy businessmen.  Maybe so.  But we were fast learners and had top-notch mentors at Stoel Rives.  Most important, we had good clients who respected our skills and paid our invoices on time.

We outgrew our relationship with the law firm and set up shop on our own.  We took Donna McClelland, our original Stoel Rives office manager, with us and she stayed until her retirement.

Surprise and Relief
When I broke the news of our spinoff plan to our boss and good friend Chuck Frost, he was taken aback.  I assured him we weren’t leaving mad; we were leaving for a good reason.  I said we viewed our departure as a friendly Tektronix spinoff.  Interestingly, maps depicting the evolution of the Silicon Forest include CFM as a Tek spinoff.

Chuck sold our spinoff to top management by stressing the company would retain our services at less cost and no personnel overhead.  For a desperately downsizing company, that was a no-brainer.  The embattled CEO even made a point of shaking my hand, albeit in the men’s restroom at corporate headquarters.

After he retired from Tektronix, we invited Chuck to be our in-house conscience and offer advice on sticky client work.  He was a huge influence on me and how I conducted myself as a lobbyist and community leader for what was then Oregon’s largest employer.  Until his death in 2016, his advice was solid gold.

Choosing Our Company Name
My ideas for a colorful company name were shot down by Pat and Dave.  Pat argued, it turned out correctly, that our own names were the best way to gain market recognition for the new firm.

Thus, our tongue-twister name became Conkling, Fiskum and McCormick.  We used a tagline to identify what we did.  As Pat predicted, we quickly became known simply as CFM.

Over the course of 35 years, our name has changed a few times as we tried to convey the scope of what we do.  The most recent change to CFM Advocates says the most in the fewest words.   However, most people still call us CFM.

Recruiting Clients
Before departing Tektronix, we made quiet overtures to potential clients.  The first client to sign up was the Providence Health System, which had never retained an outside lobbying firm before us.  Dave took the lead on Providence even as I got to know the Providence CEO by being a recurring patient at St. Vincent Hospital.  Because of Dave’s outstanding work, Providence remains a CFM client today.

We also attracted high tech firms, including Tek-spinoff Mentor Graphics, that had seen and benefitted from our work with the Oregon Chapter of the American Electronics Association.  Pat planted the electronics industry on the policy map for the governor and lawmakers.

My role as co-founder of the Business-Education Compact landed us a lobbying gig for the Beaverton School District.  That started the firm’s continuing relationship with Oregon public education – and led to a string of gubernatorial vetoes of bills that would allow high-growth school districts to acquire school sites outside urban growth boundaries.  I live nearby one of the school sites the Beaverton School District was eventually able to acquire.

CFM has enjoyed a long relationship with Oregon’s wine industry and many of its pioneers.  We got the job after the industry’s original lobbyist lost his temper at a legislative hearing and flipped off the committee chairman.  Willamette Valley Vineyards founder Jim Bernau was a strong CFM supporter and bottled a special Pinot Noir for a CFM anniversary.

The Oregon Graduate Institute in Hillsboro was an early client that hired CFM to convince the legislature to fund engineering education and research.  We succeeded and later OGI’s Norm Eder joined CFM as a partner specializing in big, long-term projects like the Willamette Water Supply project, which after a decade of work will finally be finished in 2026.

Pat introduced CFM to ballot measure campaigns that dealt with divisive issues such as doctor-assisted suicide, genetically altered crops and Liberty Mutual’s effort to brush aside the State Accident Insurance Fund (SAIF) as Oregon’s sole workers’ compensation provider. 

Pat influenced our thinking that strategic communications is only strategic when based on solid research.  He cultivated a close relationship with Tom Eiland, a veteran researcher who had put out his own shingle.  Over time, Tom’s and our practice overlapped so often, we invited him to become a CFM partner.  As a result, research infused our entire practice.  Along the way, Tom pioneered online focus groups, which played a critical role in passage of a major Oregon transportation package.  Tom died last year.

Fear and Exhilaration
Starting a new business is a mix of exhilaration and fear.  We fortunately got off to a strong start with blue-blood clients, but we wondered what would it take to sustain our practice over the long haul?  What services should we offer?  Should we add staff and, if so, to do what?  How would we judge success?  What level of profitability did we want to achieve? 

Dave, Pat and I held our first partner retreat in a condo near Lincoln City to discuss those and other questions.  One of the earliest decisions we made was not to represent tobacco interests, despite the huge commissions they offered to provide PR for their campaigns.  Instead, we chose to work for anti-tobacco advocates for far less money but a lot more satisfaction.  CFM’s anti-tobacco work was honored with the Public Relations Society of America’s highest honor, the Silver Anvil Award.

The three of us didn’t always agree, which in retrospect was a strength.  But there never was a moment of doubt all of us wanted long-term success without sacrificing our honor or good judgment.  Not all our clients were saints, but they had legitimate issues we helped them resolve.

The vibe at CFM today is different, yet very similar.  Younger people who now own and run the firm share CFM’s long-time commitment to principled advocacy.  They added that promise to the firm’s logo.

As for the three founders, Dave continues to golf and chairs the Oregon Ethics Commission.  Pat is “retired” but still joins CFM teams to work on teacher strikes and roll out new major infrastructure projects.  As for me, I’m still on the clock.  Advocacy, it appears, is a hard drug to kick.

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 borrowed this headline from a column by Dana Milbank that appeared in the Washington Post.

I toyed with building off the column to write another personal blog.  But the more I thought about it the more sense it made to reprint Milbank’s column intact.  It is that good, for it chronicles the stupid errors made across the board by Donald Trump and his minions.

It could have fit under another blog headline by me a few weeks ago – this is an administration run by amateurs.

Here is Milbank’s column.

*********

It Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.

There is no sanctuary from Trump administration buffoonery.

On May 29, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a “comprehensive list of sanctuary jurisdictions.” She was “exposing these sanctuary politicians” because they are “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”

But it immediately became clear that the list of more than 500 states, counties and cities was riddled with errors: misspellings, cities and counties mistaken for each other, and places that don’t exist. Cincinnati became “Cincinnatti,” Campbell County (Kentucky) became “Cambell” County, Greeley County (Nebraska) became “Greenley” County, Takoma Park (Maryland) became “Tacoma” Park, while “Martinsville County” (Virginia) was invented. And so on.

Worse, scores of the “sanctuary politicians” she called out turned out to be leaders of MAGA counties and towns with no sanctuary policies on their books. Complaints poured in from Trump allies across the country. “You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document,” said Pat Burns, the Trump-backing mayor of the right-wing stronghold of Huntington Beach, California, mislabeled as a sanctuary city.

He told the Associated Press that “somebody’s got to answer” for this “negligent” behavior.

Good luck with that. The only answer was to disappear the list this week, leaving behind a “Page Not Found” error.

Such a massive screwup hadn’t happened since … well, the previous week, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to the White House and released his ballyhooed “Make America Healthy Again” report full of citations of studies that don’t exist, the product of AI hallucinations.

This, in turn, was reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, which targeted an island full of penguins and other unpopulated or sparsely populated corners of the globe — and raised taxes on most of the world based on a math error.

And these, of course, were on top of the “mistakes” that led Trump officials to share war plans with a journalist, to deport people protected by court order, to launch a destructive fight with Harvard University, to fire and then attempt to rehire thousands of crucial federal workers, to cancel and then reinstate various vital government functions, and to misstate, often by orders of magnitude, the alleged savings from its cost-cutting attempts.

Trying to make sense of any of this? Page Not Found.

Nearly five months into this reign of error, the mistakes are multiplying. It becomes more obvious each week that Trump and his aides are just not good at this governing thing.

This week brought the spectacular crack-up of Trump’s relationship with Elon Musk — and with it the prospective implosion of the House-passed tax and spending bill, the centerpiece of Trump’s legislative agenda. Musk blasted the bill, which piles up another $2.4 trillion in federal deficits, as a “disgusting abomination” and launched a “KILL the BILL” campaign that escalated wildly Thursday into claims that Trump only won the election because of Musk, that Trump’s tariffs will cause a recession and that Trump “is in the Epstein files” — along with an endorsement of impeaching Trump.

A “very disappointed” Trump responded that Musk “just went CRAZY!” because Trump “asked him to leave” and “took away his EV Mandate” — and the president threatened to terminate Musk’s government contracts, causing Tesla to shed $152 billion in market value.

“It’s like mommy and daddy are fighting,” Representative Eric Burlison (R-Missouri) told reporters at the start of the spat. Now members of the House, including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and various members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, are rushing to condemn the bill they just voted for.

Republican lawmakers attacked each other as “pathetic.” Far-right senators such as Ron Johnson of Wisconsin joined in condemnation of the “immoral” and “grotesque” bill. The White House accused these allies of “not having their facts together.”

Then there were the quieter moments of incompetence.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in testimony on Capitol Hill, seemed not to know what the Tulsa race massacre was (“I’d like to look into it more and get back to you”), and she drew a blank on Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to integrate schools in the South (“I will look into it and get back to you”).

She also testified about savings of $1 trillion that would come from eliminating a program to help poor kids attend college (actual amount: $12 billion), and she flubbed a question about where American schoolchildren ranked on tests of math and reading.

Error! Filename not specified.

In the White House briefing room, press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked if she had a reaction to the results of the South Korean election. “Yes, we do,” she said, looking through papers. “In fact, let me find it here for you.” (Pause.) “It should be somewhere in here.” (Pause.) “Thank you.” (Pause.) “Um, we do not. But I will get you one.”

But nobody has fumbled as frequently as Noem in recent days. Officially, she is in charge of protecting us from terrorists and planning for natural disasters. In practice, she has been on a months-long cosplay adventure: riding a camel and wearing a headscarf in the Middle East; posing in full tactical gear while pointing an M4 muzzle at the head of an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent; displaying her Rolex while standing in front of deported prisoners in El Salvador; joining an immigration raid in ICE hat and bulletproof vest; wearing firefighting gear and carrying a hose; donning an aviator jacket and sitting at the controls of a C-130; wearing a cowboy hat while on horseback at the border; and so on.

Last week, a day before she issued her error-plagued list of “sanctuary jurisdictions,” she made a startling announcement: “Thanks to our ICE officers,” she wrote, an “illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump is behind bars.”

The statement included a photo of the alleged would-be assassin and one of the letters he was accused of writing, which said, “We are tired of this president messing with us Mexicans.” But it was all a ruse. Authorities said another man confessed to writing the letters in an attempt to frame the migrant Noem accused. Instead of correcting her error, Noem left the false accusation on social media and the DHS website.

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In another blunder, ICE agents forced their way into the district office of Representative Jerry Nadler (D-New York) and handcuffed one of his staffers who resisted. The agents claimed that Nadler’s office was “harboring rioters” — but they found no such people.

The administration, in a court filing last week, blamed “a confluence of administrative errors” by ICE for the deportation of a migrant whose removal had been blocked by a court order. This was at least the fourth time the administration had done such a thing, and not the first time it had claimed an “administrative error” was the reason.

On Monday, another part of DHS, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, picked up the blunder baton. Its director, David Richardson, left staff “baffled” at a briefing when he said “he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season.”

Richardson, who has no experience in emergency response, got the job when the previous director was fired a day after testifying to Congress that he didn’t think FEMA should be abolished.

The administration said Richardson’s surprise upon learning that there is such a thing as a hurricane season was a “joke.” No doubt there are gales of hilarity blowing through the Southeast right now.

Trump, at a town hall this spring, was asked what mistakes he had made in his first 100 days. He was silent for a moment, then said, “I’ll tell you, that’s the toughest question I can have because I don’t really believe I’ve made any mistakes.” The audience laughed.

Even by then, the administration had already racked up an impressive catalogue of maladministration.  The administration accidentally canceled Ebola prevention efforts, rescinded jobs for the Veterans Crisis Line, and fired people working on bird flu and safeguarding nuclear weapons.

It claimed to have eliminated an $8 billion contract that was actually worth $8 million. Confusing Gaza Province in Mozambique with Gaza in the Middle East, it purported to have exposed a program that donated condoms to Hamas. It “mistakenly” gave Musk’s team the ability to alter a federal payments database.

It launched a civil rights probe of the “University of Tulsa School of Medicine,” which doesn’t exist. It inadvertently appointed the wrong person as acting director of the FBI. It “mistakenly removed” a web page honoring Jackie Robinson. It accidentally released Social Security numbers along with the JFK files and sent an unclassified email with the names of CIA hires.

The list went on — and it keeps getting longer. On Wednesday night, Trump released a video statement citing “the recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado” to justify an expanded travel ban he was imposing on 19 countries, many in Africa. But the man charged with the antisemitic attack in Boulder was from Egypt — which isn’t on Trump’s list.

On government spending, Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency had promised savings of as much as $2 trillion from their efforts. But now Musk is gone, and when the White House sent its first round of proposed cuts to Congress this week, it was for all of $9.4 billion, or about 0.01 percent of federal spending. “There are no DOGE cuts,” Trump ally Steve Bannon fumed on his podcast, blaming Musk for giving “false hope.”

DOGE, rather than making the government more efficient, created “layers of new red tape” and caused “significant lags in work in some agencies, notably Social Security.” Musk, for his part, found it necessary to assert that “I am NOT taking drugs!” after the New York Times reported that he took so much ketamine he had bladder problems.

On trade, Trump adviser Peter Navarro had said he wanted to secure “90 deals in 90 days.” But nearly 60 days later, Trump has secured only one — a vaguely phrased framework with Britain that still hasn’t been made public. Trump has reignited tensions with China and doubled steel and aluminum tariffs to 50 per cent.

U.S. automakers may be forced to shut some car production within weeks because they can’t get rare earth minerals from China. One closely watched payroll survey found that private-sector job creation came to a virtual halt in May. Yet Trump, in Pittsburgh last week, boasted that he “cut the trade deficit in half.” He neglected to mention that this was because he had doubled the trade deficit in the previous months.

In foreign affairs, the administration has proposed a nuclear deal that would allow Iran to continue in the short term to enrich low levels of uranium.  The American offer “is similar in many key respects” to the Obama administration’s Iran deal — which Trump called “the worst deal ever.”

At the same time, the world is bracing for the major attack on Ukraine that Vladimir Putin is threatening in retaliation for drone strikes that hit Russian airfields. Trump now likens the war to “two young children fighting” and to a hockey game. But fear not:  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is on the case. He has ordered that the Navy remove the name of gay rights icon Harvey Milk from one of its ships, and he is considering doing the same for vessels honoring Thurgood Marshall and Harriet Tubman.

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Evidently frustrated by the lack of results, Trump and his aides are turning against natural allies. With its mass deportation effort stalled, the White House unloaded on top ICE officials. Trump aide Stephen Miller summoned 50 of them to Washington for an “emergency” meeting at which, the Washington Examiner reported, he “ripped into everybody.”

And with judges appointed by presidents of both parties continuing to block Trump’s executive orders, Trump lashed out at the conservative Federalist Society for supposedly duping him into naming insufficiently MAGA judges during his first term. He called the group’s co-chairman, Leonard Leo, a “sleazebag” and a “bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America.”

Of course, it’s easier for Trump to blame others than to accept that the failures are more likely attributable to his own bungling. Among this week’s errata: He withdrew his nominee to be NASA administrator on the eve of the confirmation hearing, even though the candidate had broad support. The head of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, whom Trump claimed to have fired last week, was found still to be on the job this week.

The Post reported that subscriptions to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts are down 36 per cent since Trump took over the organization with a promise to make it “GREAT AGAIN.” The administration threatened to revoke Columbia University’s accreditation — even though the Ivy League school had already acceded to Trump’s demands. And Trump needled the German chancellor in the Oval Office, telling him D-Day was “not a pleasant day for you.”

Trump has so little interest in the details of national security that he has received the President’s Daily Brief, a summation of the nation’s most sensitive intelligence, only 14 times so far (compared to 90 by Joe Biden at this point in his presidency). It’s so worrisome that, NBC News reports, intelligence officials are talking about reimagining the PDB so it looks more like a Fox News broadcast.

But Trump gets his intelligence from other sources. This week he reposted a message on Truth Social asserting that Biden was “executed in 2020” and replaced by “robotic engineered soulless mindless entities”; Trump later ordered an investigation into the “conspiracy” of Biden’s “cognitive decline.” He also shared a post about a House bill that would rename the D.C.-area transit system from WMATA to WMAGA and its Metrorail to the “Trump Train.”

It’s a great idea. Qatar will donate the subway cars, which will be powered by coal. Passengers will pay for fares with cryptocurrency after first showing proof of citizenship. And the trains will reverse themselves regularly and without warning — never quite reaching their original destination.

*********

Plus, this footnote:

Elon Musk and Donald Trump, who compete for having the largest egos in the world, are arguing aggressively with each other.

On social media:

• Musk now says he opposes “Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill,” and wants Trump to be impeached.

• Not to be out-done, Trump now says he will now take away all Musk’s federal contracts.

My view? 

They deserve each other.

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.

Many of us who are watching Donald Trump turn this country into his personal playground have grappled with the posit in this blog headline.

There is no magic answer.

Some possibilities:

• Trump practices retaliation, going after those he hates simply because they have opposed him in the past. 

• Trump goes after those he feels have not appropriately honored him. 

• Trump acts before he thinks, which is why he is being called “The TACO President,” which stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” an acronym which you could imagine riles Trump.

On this notion – acting before he thinks – Thomas Friedman in the New York Times used that reality to write a new column this week.  It appeared under this headline:  “Trump’s Gilded Gut Instinct.’

Here is how Friedman started his column:

“Wall Street analysts recently began joking that the best way to predict the behavior of Trump — and make money in the process — was by practicing the  ‘TACO trade,’ which stands for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out.’  You can always bet on Trump rolling back a reckless tariff.

“This mocking of Trump’s inconsistency, which drives him nuts — “Don’t ever say what you said,” he told a reporter who asked him about it — not only is accurate but also deserves to be more widely applied.”

As examples of chickening out, Friedman cites:

• One day he is pushing Ukraine away; the next day he is shaking Ukraine down for its minerals; the next day Ukraine is back in the fold.
• One day Vladimir Putin is Trump’s friend; the next day he’s “crazy.”
• One day Canada will be the 51st state; the next day it is the target of tariffs.
• One day he brags that he hires only “the best” people; the next day more than 100 experts at the National Security Council are pushed out just weeks after many were hired.
• One day the president hosts a gala at his Virginia golf club for the biggest buyers of his meme coin, who spent a combined $148 million for the chance to hear him give a talk standing behind the presidential seal.  The next day the White House spokeswoman suggests it’s not corruption because the president was “attending it on his personal time.”

Friedman puts it this way:

“Trump is governing by unchecked gut impulses, with little or no homework or coordination among agencies.  He respects no real lines of authority, has his golfing buddy (Steve Witkoff) act as  Secretary of State and his Secretary of State (Marco Rubio) act as his ambassador to Panama.  He compels anyone who wants to stop him to take him to court, while blurring all lines between his legal duties and personal enrichment.”

What this telling us, Friedman says, is that “we are not being governed anymore by a traditional American administration…we are being governed by the Trump Organization. Inc.

“In Trump II, the president is unchained and running the U.S. government exactly the way he ran his private company:  Out of his hip pocket and with only the markets or the courts able to stop him.” 

I add that markets or courts don’t usually stop Trump.  He just ignores both.

More from Friedman:

“Weeks after taking office, Trump announced a series of global tariffs without any serious consultation with the U.S. auto industry.  Along the way, he discovered that only about one-third of the parts of the popular Ford F-150 are made in America and cannot be replaced anytime soon.  The tariffs have been such a blow to the whole auto industry that Ford, General Motors and Stellantis announced they could not give earning predictions for the rest of 2025, citing tariff uncertainty and possible supply-chain disruptions.

“Then China reacted predictably to Trump’s 145 per cent tariffs on all Chinese exports to America.  Beijing abruptly halted exports of rare-earth magnets that go into U.S.-made cars, drones, robots and missiles.  If Trump doesn’t find a way to strike a deal (“chicken out”) on some of his China tariffs, U.S. car factories may have to cut back production in the coming days and weeks.

“It gets worse.  His ridiculous right-wing woke obsession with destroying the U.S. electric vehicle industry that President Joe Biden was trying to build up undermines U.S. efforts to compete with China in electric batteries.  Batteries are the new oil; they will power the new industrial ecosystem of A.I.-infused self-driving cars, robots, drones and clean tech.”

Then, Friedman goes to a phrase that, to me, explains exactly how Trump acts – “fire, ready, aim.”

It’s a phrase I often used when I was a lobbyist and how I saw how various legislators react to proposals before them.  They criticized a proposal before they had reviewed it.  Fire.  Ready.  Aim.

To conclude, Friedman writes:

“In sum, what you are seeing from this Trump II administration, and its bended-knee Congress, is a dangerous, undisciplined, intellectually inconsistent farce that we will pay dearly for in the future.  Major geo-economic moves are being made by one man who has done no homework, modeling or stress-testing and has fostered little apparent interagency process, with no congressional oversight or apparent reference to history.

“If you think this is not dangerous, just keep in mind that the Trump Organization, Inc. over the years filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for six different businesses.  There was a reason for that:  The operating style and values of its boss.”

So, now I am among those who are losing sleep over Trump, not to mention those minions who help him destroy America by creating his own autocracy.

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.

Another blog about slow play on a golf course.

Yes, this is a hot-button for me.

For this blog headline, I borrowedfrom the Wall Street Journal which ran an excellent story about what one golf course is doing to curb slow play.

Here is the subhead on the Journal’s story:

“Erin Hills had spent years trying to get recreational golfers to speed up their pace of play.  The solution boiled down to a simple question:  How far can you hit a 7-iron?”

Plus, know that Erin Hills is a very reputable course because, for one reason, it hosted the LPGA Open last week.

The Journal’s writer Andrew Beaton put it this way in his story:

“As the head golf pro at Erin Hills, Jim Lombardo has spent years dreaming up new ways to speed up the pace of play at the world-class course.

“His staff even uses GPS devices to monitor the exact location of each group on the course to identify any stragglers who might slow things down.

“But lately, Lombardo and his team have discovered a new way to get a bunch of everyday hackers through 18 holes in a hurry — and it has nothing to do with a fancy piece of technology.  Instead, it boils down to one simple question.

“How far do you hit your 7-iron?” 

So, how does the “7-iron approach” work?

From the Journal:

“On the walls of the starter’s shack and inside the caddie barn there’s a chart on display that advises players which sets of tees to use based on how far they typically hit that one club.  Since Lombardo first put up the chart in 2023, Erin Hills has seen a 26 per cent uptick in people using the shorter, white tees.  And the overall speed of play has picked up.”

Slow play is a scourge of the golf game at all levels.

The PGA Tour has taken steps – some of them halting, in my judgment —  to limit the amount of time top pros spend standing over their golf balls before playing a shot.  But the problem is more acute for regular folks who carve time out of their busy schedules to sneak in a round, only to find the local course is so backed up that they’re waiting at every tee box.

The answer, at Erin Hills and elsewhere is not just to make golfers play faster.  It is to make them play shorter.

“The idea for the 7-iron solution came from a joint paper published in 2020 by the U.S. Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.  The headline item from the ‘Distance Insights Report’ was that the growing power of pro golfers was threatening to undermine the game. 

“But what caught the attention of the USGA’s director of research, was the less-publicized conclusion that recreational players take too long because they play from tees that are too far away.

Many courses, including Erin Hills, had tried to advise golfers on which tees to play from based on how far they hit their driver, but that didn’t work because many people embellish that statistic. 

The driver is the most exaggerated club in the bag.  Players tell you how long they hit their best drives — not their average drives. 

That’s less true when it comes to a 7-iron.  

Another issue was that old advice recommended the same playing distance regardless of the golf course that was being measured.  In reality, 6,000 yard tees at one course might be nothing like the 6,000 yards somewhere else. 

More from the Journal:

“By contrast, the ‘7-ron solution’ is custom fit for each course.  It looks at every hole from every tee in order to determine the optimal distance for every player, a calculation that’s helped by a survey the USGA conducted of 65,000 golfers to better understand their games. 

“The idea isn’t to make everyone play such short distances that they feel like they’re at a pitch-and-putt.  Rather, it’s to turn a course into a fair challenge that forces players to use a diverse set of clubs without being unnecessarily difficult. 

“Once Lombardo heard about the method, Erin Hills became one of the pilot courses, and it quickly noticed a change in behavior.  In 2022, 24.2 per cent of players teed off from the whites, a shorter set of tees at Erin Hills.  Last year, that was up to 30.6 per cent.

“The upshot:  Fewer golfers had to be chased down for gumming up the course.  It whittles down the number of groups that might be a challenge for pace of play.”

So, my advice on this issue for courses like those I play:  Try the “7-iron solution.”

Or, just expect recreational golfers to follow the advice from none other than all-time great Jack Nicklaus.  “Play it forward.”

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.

Note the word I chose to include in this blog headline:  “Choose.”

Those of us who play golf choose to do so, no matter how hard the game is and how many mistakes we make along the way.  It is a choice because, just think, – at some point you’ll figure it all out and have a great round!

One of my golfing friends often puts it this way to me as he returns from the range:  “Hey, Dave, guess what?  I found it.”

Yeah, I respond.  But how long will “I found it last.”

Usually, a day or so.

With this mind, I enjoyed reading a story in the New York Times about Max Homa, a pro golfer who appears to have lost his way, though he is still persevering to find it even as he wonders why.

Here is how the Times story started:

“It’s hard,” Homa said, eyes moving, looking nowhere.  “It’s hard just to not want to do this anymore.”

Some background on Homa from the Times:

“We were standing in the breezeway beside Quail Hollow’s clubhouse, a spot Homa knows well.  Six years ago, in May 2019, he stood right here, processing equal levels of disbelief and self-actualization. Then 28, Homa won his first PGA Tour event, legitimizing what had otherwise been a middling career.

“Outside Quail’s clubhouse that day, fellow tour pros stopped one after another to congratulate him.

“A few years later, in 2022, Homa walked through here again, this time as the fist-pumping, ripping-and-tearing action star of the U.S. Presidents Cup team.  After one particularly raucous afternoon that week, he said that, at long last, he finally felt like he belonged among the game’s best.”

But, then this.

“It’s 2025.  Homa is 34.  He is a six-time winner on the PGA Tour.  He has been ranked as high as fifth in the world and played in the Ryder Cup.

“’To be completely honest — I don’t know what I’m getting out of this,’ Homa said Sunday.  ‘But it’s my job.  So, I’ll keep trying and hopefully something great happens.  But yeah, I’m not really sure what’s the point.’”

The Times story continues:

“Then Friday.  Some kind of dreamscape.  Six birdies and a tap-in eagle on the par-4 14th highlighted a 7-under 64, his best score in 70 career major championship rounds.  Homa sat for a 22-minute press conference afterward.  Three shots off the lead, fresh off the round of his life, it was tempting to think his fates might once again be aligning.  The only line missing on the résumé is major champion.  Maybe this was finally it.

“Then came the weekend.

“A round of 76 on Saturday, 12 shots worse than the day prior.  Homa not only imploded but spent the afternoon playing alongside Scottie Scheffler; the world’s best player, the eventual tournament winner, the guy who finished Saturday eagle-birdie-par-birdie-birdie.

“And Sunday.  Homa pulled into the parking lot a little before 9 a.m., nearly six hours before the leaders’ tee times.  Back to the range.  Back to the course.  A round of 77 — four pars, five birdies, seven bogeys, two double-bogeys.  Homa missed left, he missed long, he missed everywhere.

“Golf, perhaps more than any other sport, has a way of most heavily taxing those who love it.  When Homa tossed that club on Sunday, the mini fit of rage made for a kitschy little video clip of a player reaching a boiling point.  What gets left out in such moments is all that comes before it.  Homa has had a trying year.  There was an equipment change, a switch to a new swing coach and a plummet in the rankings.

Then, this conclusion, with which many of us, not pro golfers, but recreational golfers, could say:

“Perhaps more than any other sport, these are the psychosomatic cycles of golf.  Find something.  Lose it.  Search for it.  Suffer.  Find something.  Success.  Happiness.  Wait, it’s gone.  Why?  What happened?  Oh, no.  Lost again.  Another search.  Torment.  Rinse.  Repeat.”

We’ve all been there and will be there again.  Still, golf beckons.

So, I am going out in a moment to try “to find it” 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.

Yesterday I posted excerpts from a column in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, the writer who has connections in and around Oregon.

He wrote about ways to oppose an autocrat like Donald Trump.

Today, in part two, Kristof adds perspective about how vulnerable Trump is despite his claims always to be the smartest person in the room – or everywhere.

So, here are excerpts from Kristof’s column that appeared under this headline:  Trump Is Immensely Vulnerable.  The column started this way:

“How can Americans best defend their democracy from their president?

“In my last column, I recounted three lessons from other countries where popular movements have made headway challenging authoritarian rulers.  Critics of Trump have frankly been fairly ineffective — witness his election and the way his approval ratings have risen in some polls lately — but Trump does give us a great deal to work with.

“He is immensely vulnerable.

“Drawing upon these lessons from my last column, here are what I see as the most promising lines of attack for his critics:

• Trump is deeply corrupt.  All presidents are accused of shady practices, but Trump is a felon who is using his office to enrich himself as no president has in history.

“The Times reported that more than $2 billion has flowed to Trump companies in just a month, and some of his ventures look alarmingly like opportunities for influence-peddling.  How else do we explain his announcement that the biggest investors in his new cryptocurrency memecoin, $TRUMP, would get dinner with him? “

• Trump is hurting you in the pocketbook.  One reason Trump won the presidency was voter resentment at inflation and economic weakness under Joe Biden.  Now it’s Trump who is badly damaging the economy and hitting voters in the wallet.

“Trump’s tariffs amount to the largest tax increase for Americans since 1993, with one study suggesting that a typical household may pay an extra $1,400 per year.  Trump may already have sent the economy spinning into a recession and plans for huge increases in American debt are pushing interest rates upward — which for many Americans means putting off any hope of buying a home.”

• Trump looks down on you and thinks he can manipulate you.

“Several studies have found that warning teenagers that smoking may kill them is often not effective.  What does work is showing them how tobacco companies are trying to deceive and manipulate them.  That outrages them — and in the same way, MAGA voters may shrug at Trump’s defiance of the courts but be offended by evidence that he thinks they are dummies.”

Moving beyond specifics, Kristof adds that one lesson from other countries is the importance of finding a compelling individual story to make a point.  Democrats too often cite large numbers — the 70 million Americans depend on Medicaid — rather than leaning on storytelling about individual tragedies.

And, in conclusion, he adds:  “However appalling Trump’s own behavior may be, his critics have to show that they can not only mock him — but can also govern.  If we are to hold Trump accountable, we must also hold ourselves accountable.”

Kristof’s points make sense to me, especially the one about storytelling. 

Back when I lobbied in Oregon for more money for Medicaid, which serves the health care needs pof the low-income population, we used stories featuring doctors, nurses, and patients to deliver advocacy.

The point wasn’t big numbers.  It was real stories that could strike a chord with legislators at the Capitol in Oregon.

It worked here back in the day and it a good lesson – inspired by Kristof’s writing – to learn again against Trump.