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

I have a couple go-to strategies to organize my thoughts.

One is to use retired late night host Dave Letterman’s approach to develop a “Top 10 List.” Otherwise, I could have 50 topics on my list.

The second is to use a movie title – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – to prompt organization.

This time I use that movie title to align a few comments about the state of the game I love, golf.

THE GOOD:  Grayson Murray, who is living free of alcoholism for eight months now after defining himself as an “alcoholic,” conquered a lot of demons when he won the Sony Open in Hawaii.  And he made a 40-foot on the first playoff hole to do so.

Yes, 40 feet!

MORE GOOD in comments from long-time pro golfer Stewart
Cink (or it is “good” or bad”):  He is playing the regular tour on occasion at age 50, so has been around the professional golf block.  What he said recently made GolfWeek:

“A 29-year pro, Cink has witnessed the PGA Tour transform from a medium-sized league to a professional sports behemoth — and then watched again as that behemoth grew big enough to become the target of a rival league funded by a foreign autocracy.

“By now you know about the signature events series, a circuit of eight big-money PGA Tour events, many of which feature limited fields and no cuts. The series was made primarily to help the PGA Tour stymie the threat of LIV defections by allowing its best players to compete against one another more often for larger paychecks.

“The downside of that shift, however, was what it did to the Tour’s so-called ‘working class.’  Those players, who rank outside of the top 50 in the FedEx Cup rankings, are not guaranteed entrance into the signature events series, a development that leaves them in a considerably weaker financial position than their top-50 counterparts.

“Cink says he understands the market forces that led to Tour being the way it now is, and he was careful not to point his criticism in the direction of Tour leadership for making the best of a very difficult situation.  But he echoed a complaint we’ve heard from a series of pros outside the top 50 over the last nine months:  The Tour changes create a closed system, making it difficult for those who fall outside the top-50 from ever making it in.

“’To me, it’s a little bit out of balance. I understand where it all came from. We had to do something because we had a competing venture out there trying to swallow our players up,’ Cink said.  ‘We had to give our players a reason to stay, so I get it.  It’s not easy, but where I’m sitting I don’t really love it.”

What to do?  Who knows?  It’s just that the trend is not good for the game of golf.  Perhaps it’s just capitalism. 

But “good” comments from Cink make it “bad” for golf.

THE BAD:  Several writers of letters-to-the-editor in Global Golf Post said that they and many golf fans are leaving the game, at least watching it, perhaps only to stay with the “major events.”

The reasons?  What is stated above – the aim to offset LIV golf and pay huge sums to a few golfers. 

THE UGLY:  There was a terrible golf ruling the other day as golfer Carl Yuan came to the 18^th hole in the Sony Open.

He hit his second shot on the par 5 closing hole far to the right and it was hard to tell where it landed, given the corporate tent in the way.

But, rather than look for the ball before a ruling, the official on-site just gave Yuan a free drop in a far better spot than would have been the case IF the ball had been found.  And, I put IF in caps because that was a key.

The ball could have been lost or could have been out-of-bounds and, in either case under normal golf rules, he would have had to go back to the spot of his second shot and hit again, with a two-stroke penalty.

At the very least, the official on the site should have asked for a second opinion before delivering, in short order, the quick ruling – and a bad one at that.

The upshot?  The good news is that Yuan did not make the extra hole playoff.  Still, the ruling snafu qualifies as “ugly.”

**********

And this post-script, another GOOD.

I attended another “Tale of the Tour” event last night near where we live in La Quinta, California, in the winter, just before the American Express pro event, which gets under way Thursday.

With leadership provided by former pro golfer Jeff Cranford, now a pastor in the California desert, four golfers summarized how they play golf, why they play golf, and how “being a golfer” does not comprise “their identity.”

All four said they relied on God for their ability to perform and their status, even those they also said God doesn’t always “make them play great.” 

Good stuff from the four who had their life in balance!

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

This is as good day to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. for all he did for race relations in America.

To be sure, not everything since King lived has been marked by progress and contentment.

But, his actions – as well as words – are worth nothing today on a holiday named for him.

From the Birmingham jail, here is one thing he wrote that is worth remembering:

“Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having non-violent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

I, for one, have an impossible dream in my mind, if I can use the phrase “I have a dream phrase” from King.

It is that Donald Trump and his ilk would read King’s words, today and everyday, and live according to King’s precepts.

If they did – too much to hope for, I recognize – we’d all be better off.

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all 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.

At least the view in this blog headline is maintained by Republican analyst Karl Rove, who now writes a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal.

His latest effort appeared under this headline and sub-head:  “The Biden-Trump Foot-Shooting Contest; Unforced errors from an AWOL defense secretary to promises of January 6 pardons.”

Rove continues:

“Voters don’t like either party’s presidential front-runner, and it’s little wonder why.  But that leaves a larger question:  If there’s a Biden-Trump contest, who will have made himself more odious by November?

“Right now, the two men are in a dislikability dead heat:  The RealClearPolitics polling average says 55.6 per cent of Americans view President Biden unfavorably to 55.3 per cent for Donald Trump.

“It’s for reasons that are unlikely to change. An August 14 Associated Press/NORC poll found the most common words voters use to describe Biden are “old/outdated/aging/elderly” and Trump’s are “corrupt/criminal/crooked.”

Using an analogy from tennis, Rove contends that a Biden-Trump re-match “would likely be decided by who commits fewer unforced errors.”

So, events this past week, Rove avers, should unsettle both campaigns — “Trump’s because he keeps re-opening an old wound, Biden’s because of bloody gashes his friends created.”

Rove provides more information on both foot-shots:

“First Trump.  By the time he arrived at his rally in Clinton, Iowa, the venue was rocking.  ‘The polls are showing we’re going to win by a lot,’ he crowed, urging supporters to ‘get out and . . . vote, vote, vote.’  He did his greatest hits — attacking the media, listing his accomplishments, decrying Biden’s failed presidency, and knocking the stuffing out of Republican competitors and detractors.

“The crowd lapped it up.

“Then, about 33 minutes in, he shot himself in the foot by yet again bringing up January 6.  This time, he went to a new extreme:  Calling for the pardon of those now serving time for their part in the Capitol riot. ‘They ought to release the J-6 hostages, they’ve suffered enough,’ he said to cheers. ‘Some people call them prisoners,’ the ex-president said. ‘I call them hostages.’

“The more Trump hypes his January 6 catch-and-release program, the more he makes that violent day a key consideration for the independent and undecided voters he needs to beat Biden.”

Drawing on his political consultant pedigree, Roves goes on write as if he’s running a political campaign.

“Imagine the Democrat ads if Trump is the GOP nominee.  There will be scenes of Capitol police being beaten bloody, sprayed with chemical agents, and assaulted with their own shields and batons as a rioter screams, ‘Kill them all!’  Americans will be treated to the confessions of the roughly 730 January 6 convicts who pleaded guilty, and the media will spotlight the legal travails of the 330 or so yet to be tried.

“Law-enforcement veterans of the riot will shadow Trump on the campaign trail, sharing their experiences and asking why the former president would pardon people who committed violence in his name.

Trump’s only hope is that Biden manages somehow to look worse.

Speaking of Bide and judging by how the president’s friends damaged him recently, that level of “worse” could well happen, Rove said.

“The first round of friendly fire was Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s failure to alert the White House that he’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer in early December and then, after complications, put into intensive care this month, making him unable to fulfill his official responsibilities.

“To make an irresponsible decision look downright negligent, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks was vacationing in Puerto Rico when she assumed some of his operational duties on January 2 and didn’t learn for days that her boss was in the Walter Reed Medical Center ICU.

“While the onus for all this lies with Austin, the mess makes the Biden White House look disorganized and the Pentagon badly run during a dangerous period for the world.”

Further, another columnist recently drew on Austin’s military service to say that “he had risked the chain of command.”

This conclusion from Rove:

“Trump’s mistake is more serious because it’s more offensive and unlikely to be his last of this kind.  

“On the other hand, Biden and those around him can’t seem to stop making his Administration look incompetent.  He’ll need a lot of mistakes from the ultimate Republican nominee to win.  Trump is his opponent, so Biden will get an assist.  The only question is how big.”

For me, Biden’s mistakes pale in comparison to Trump’s.  Which is why, if the presidential re-match takes place later this year, I am with Biden. 

And, not with Trump who has no one’s interests at heart other than his own.  Not the country’s!

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all 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.

For two reasons, I was interested in the column reprinted below:

• I am a former journalist – a newspaper reporter – so I have been concerned about the faulty way many outlets today are covering a fanatic, Donald Trump, who wants to be president again.
• After writing for a newspaper, I worked for about 40 years in politics, so today I am a bit of a political junkie, concerned about the current state of politics – read governance – in America, which relies mostly on assault and innuendo, not the tough work of finding middle ground on public policy issues, either in Washington, D.C., or in Oregon’s capitol, Salem, where I live.

So it was Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin captured my attention in a piece that appeared under a headline I stole for this blog.

Rather than quote part of and then comment on Rubin’s work, it was so good that I chose to reprint it here, with, obviously, due attribution to Rubin for her sagacity.

Here is the column.

*********

This week, I look at the media’s worst error in covering four-time-indicted former president Donald Trump. 

What caught my eye

After missing the significance of the MAGA movement in 2016, innumerable mainstream outlets spent thousands of hours, gallons of ink and billions of pixels trying to understand “the Trump voter.”

How had democracy failed them? What did the rest of us miss about these Americans?

The journey to Rust Belt diners became a cliché amid the newfound fascination with aggrieved White working-class Americans.  But the theory that such voters were economic casualties of globalization turned out to be false.  Surveys and analyses generally found that racial resentment and cultural panic, not economic distress, fueled their affinity for a would-be strongman.

Unfortunately, patronizing excuses (e.g., “they feel disrespected”) for their cult-like attachment to a figure increasingly divorced from reality largely took the place of exacting reporting on the right-wing cult that swallowed a large part of the Republican Party.

In an effort to maintain false equivalence and normalize Trump, many media outlets seemed to ignore that much of the GOP left the universe of democratic (small-d) politics and was no longer a traditional democratic (again, small-d) party with an agenda, a governing philosophy, a set of beliefs.  

The result:  Trump was normalized and a false equivalence between the parties was created.

Instead of reporting Trump’s wild assertions as legitimate arguments, media outlets should explain how Trump rallies are designed to instill anger and cultivate his hold on people who believe whatever hooey he spouts.  How different are these events from what we see in grainy images of European fascist rallies in the 1930s?

When Trump apologists insist that tens of millions of people cannot be part of a cult, it’s critical to remember mass fascist movements that swept entire populations.

The appeals to emotion, the specter of a malicious enemy, the fear of societal decline, the fascination with violence, and the elation just to be in the presence of the leader are telltale signs of frenetic fascist gatherings.

Trump’s language (“poisoning the blood”) even mimics Hitler’s calls for racial purity.

Even as Trump shows his authoritarian colors and his rants become angrier, more unhinged and more incoherent, his followers still meekly accept inane assertions (e.g., convicted January 6, 2021, rioters are “hostages,” magnets dissolve in water, wind turbines drive whales insane).

More of the media should be covering this phenomenon as it would any right-wing authoritarian movement in a foreign country.

Though polls continue to show Trump’s iron grip on his followers, mainstream outlets spend far too little attention on why and how MAGA members cling to demonstrably false beliefs, excuse what should be inexcusable conduct, and treat him as infallible.

Outlets should routinely consult psychologists and historians to ask the vital questions:  How do people abandon rationality?  What drives their fury and anxiety?  How does an authoritarian figure maintain his hold on followers?  How do ideas of racial purity play into it?

Media outlets fail news consumers when they do not explain the authoritarian playbook that Trump employs.  Americans need media outlets to spell out what is happening.

“Authoritarian, not democratic dynamics, hold the key to Trump’s behavior as a candidate now and in the future,” historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote.  “The main goals of his campaign events are not to advance policy proposals but rather to prop up his personality cult, circulate his lies, and emotionally retrain Americans to see violence as positive and even patriotic.”

Plenty of experts are available to dissect the phenomenon.  Expert Steven Hassan, for example, explained to the Atlantic’s Peter Sagal that, as Sagal wrote, “the MAGA movement checks all the boxes of his ‘BITE’ model of cult mind control — behavior, information, thought, and emotional control.”

Sagal continued, “Like all cult leaders, Trump restricts the information his followers are allowed to accept; demands purity of belief (beliefs that can change from moment to moment, as per his whims and needs); and appeals to his followers through the conjuring of primal emotions — not just fear but also joy.”

Another expert, Daniella Mestyanek Young, explained:  “The first rule of cults is you’re never in a cult.  The second rule of cults is the cult will forgive any sin, except the sin of leaving.  The third rule of cults is even if he did it, that doesn’t mean he’s guilty.”

A message from a mentally sound, serious leader (President Joe Biden) cannot be equated with the message of an authoritarian who seeks absolute power through a web of disinformation and, if need be, violence.

Instead of probing why MAGA followers, despite all evidence to the contrary, deny that Trump was an insurrectionist and a proven liar, pollsters insist on asking Trump followers which candidate they think might better handle, for example, health care.

The answer for Republicans (Trump! Trump!) has nothing to do with the question (Trump never had a health-care plan, you recall), and the question has nothing to do with the campaign.

The race between an ordinary democrat candidate and an unhinged fascist is not a normal American election.  At stake is whether a democracy can protect itself from a malicious candidate with narcissistic tendencies or a rational electorate can beat back a dangerous, lawless cult of personality.

Unfortunately, too many media outlets have not caught on or, worse, simply feign ignorance to avoid coming down on the side of democracy, rationality, and truth.

**********

And my closing comments are these: 

1. Given Rubin’s rational explanation, a lot rides on the next presidential election.  Many of us may not like the apparent choices – Biden and Trump.  But one, Biden, wants to preserve democracy.

The other, Trump, wants to make government in his own image, which is that it is a dictatorship, subject to his whims and caprice – and those change nearly every minute.  He runs a cult.  And the media, not to mention all of us as voters, should recognize that reality.

•  As a former journalist, I grew up with the notion that, as a reporter, you covered both sides rather than give one side the benefit.

But, today, this is called “both-sideism” and it works against the kind of rational, real coverage Trump deserves as a cult leader.  So, the media needs to reckon with this change of approach – and, if it does, we’ll all be better for it.

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all 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 of the departments I run with a free hand to manage as I see fit is The Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering.  It is open again today.

And, if you read what follows, you may note that all the good quotes today come from the Wall Street Journal.  Well, that is because it was as far as I got this morning — the Washington Post and the New York Times are next.

The Good Quotes Department is one of five I run:  The others are the Department of Pet Peeves, the Department of “Just Saying,” the Department of Inquiring Minds Want to Know, and the Department of Words Matter.

So, on to good quotes.

FROM DANIEL HENNINGER WHO WRITES THE WONDER LAND COLUMN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  “Surveying the record of his three years in office, President Joe Biden has decided his re-election turns on two events:  The Capitol riot of 2021 and Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 presidential election results in several states.

“Anyone else out there as tired as I am of hearing the phrase ‘our democracy’?

“From all the recent quavering about threats to ‘our democracy,’ you’d think we were living in Venezuela or Zimbabwe.  Yet Biden stood Saturday near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, invoking George Washington to argue that Trump is on the brink of overturning an American democratic order that has survived since 1789.

“’We’re living in an era,’ Biden said, ‘where a determined minority is doing everything in its power to try to destroy our democracy for their own agenda.’

“The word ‘democracy’ appears in Biden’s speech almost as many times as its more than 40 nearby references to Trump.

“’He’s willing,’ says Biden, ‘to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power.’ The sitting president raised the specter of an American democracy that ‘falls.’

COMMENT:  I run contrary to Henninger, who believes that American democracy is strong enough to tolerate Trump.  No.  I believe that Trump, if he gains the presidency a second time, will turn the country on its head.  He admires dictators and wants to be done, even if, for example, that means pardoning all those now in prison for their actions on January 6, and pardoning himself if he can get away with that now-illegal action.

So, for Trump, democracy is just a word, not a commitment to save it for America.

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  “Claudine Gay’s resignation as president of Harvard might seem like a ripe moment for introspection at America’s institutions of higher learning.  Alas, they seem to be circling the progressive wagons instead.

“Public figures these days, no matter their race, are too often targets of invective and lies.  Yet, Gay brushed past the substantive criticism of her leadership and failure to punish anti-semitism on campus.  So did her bosses at the Harvard Corporation, which issued a statement lauding her ‘insight, decisiveness, and empathy.’  Jewish students at Harvard might disagree.

“Gay was correct in one respect:  ‘The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader.’  Her equivocation before Congress about whether calling for genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s code of conduct made her a symbol of the progressive group-think infecting higher education and American institutions more broadly.”

COMMENT:  I think the Wall Street Journal is right when it says:  “This might seem like a ripe moment for introspection at America’s institutions of higher learning.  Alas, they seem to be circling the progressive wagons instead.”

The ability to inspect itself in just such issues as “diversity, equity and inclusion” and plagiarism ought to be a skill in higher education.  So far, it does not appear to be so as higher ed sets out to be insular, not open.

FROM COLUMNIST PEGGY NOONAN IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  Under this headline and sub-head – “The Voters Finally Get Their Say:  Each party seems set to make a big mistake, but a Trump-Biden rematch isn’t yet inevitable,” Noonan writes this”

“Finally, we vote.  Iowa is Monday, New Hampshire a week from Tuesday. I refuse to see the story as over.  Nothing is written.  Both big parties look set on making a mistake, but there’s time to turn it around.

“Democrats on the ground are making a mistake in not rebelling against the inevitability of Joe Biden.  He’s no longer up to the job, the vice president never was, and this doesn’t go under the heading National Security Secret Number 379; everybody knows.

“The problem isn’t the Biden campaign, however lame it may or may not be.  It isn’t that the president’s most important advisers are in the White House, not the campaign.  It’s him, and it’s not only his age.

“His speeches are boring, he never seems sincere, he seems propped up.  He doesn’t have a tropism toward intellectual content and likes things airy; his subject matter isn’t life as most people are experiencing it, but something many steps removed.  He often seems like he just met the text.

“Democrats on the ground should raise a ruckus, issue a mighty roar. They can do better than this. To win, I think, they must.

“Republicans similarly shouldn’t accept the inevitability of Donald Trump.  On the debate stage Wednesday Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis were the Bickersons, and seemed smaller.  On Fox, in a counter-programming coup, the former president was Big Daddy with a sinister side, and seemed big.  He’s riding high.  He thinks he’s got this thing.

“Trump will say anything for attention; he wants the cameras on him.

“Haley is a steely, orderly lady, DeSantis a bull, Trump a malign screaming meemie.” 

COMMENT:  As is often the case, I agree with Noonan.  She has a way with words in her own style, which tends to be conversational, not over-the-top rhetoric. 

This time, she is right on two counts:  First, as voters, we need better options thaneither Biden or Trump; second, what we’ll see this week is Americans voting for the first time, which is better than more to’ing and fro’ing among commentators – yes, even Noonan, and no doubt she’d agree.

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all 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 lot of to’ing and fro’ing these days – don’t you like that phrase? – about what Donald Trump is doing in court.

But, to me, a non-lawyer, there seems to be one clear objective for Trump:  Delay court proceedings so the election can occur without a ruling going against him.

Of course, on the other hand, this also appears to be the case:  Trump benefits politically whenever he is hauled into court as he could be as he faces an incredible list of 91 charges.  His sycophants like when he portrays himself as the victim, as any narcissist would.

Washington Post Associate Editor Ruth Marcus covered these issues in a column that appeared this morning under this headline:  “Trump’s sly ‘I’m immune from prosecution’ claim finally runs aground.”

Here is how she started her column:

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“Donald Trump’s bid to evade criminal accountability for seeking to undo the 2020 election results might finally be hitting a brick wall.  With Trump in attendance, a three-judge federal appeals court panel seemed ready to reject the former president’s preposterous assertion of absolute immunity from prosecution for his official conduct, even after leaving office.

“The audacity of Trump’s claim has been evident since he raised it in the fall, as was the near-certainty that it would ultimately fail.  Still, there was something clarifying about hearing his motion to dismiss demolished by the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit:  George H.W. Bush appointee Karen L. Henderson, joined by Biden nominees Florence Y. Pan and J. Michelle Childs.”

Of course, no matter what happened, Trump chortled after his day in court:  “We think we had a very good day today.”

Marcus answered as I would:  “…his spin does not make it so.  The panel’s questions got to the heart of Trump’s staggering overreach.  Their hypotheticals exposed the intolerable consequences of establishing such immunity.”

Marcus reports that judges confronted Trump lawyer D. John Sauer with the concessions his legal predecessors had made on Trump’s behalf long before — in the New York criminal investigation, that Trump enjoyed only “temporary presidential immunity,” while in office; in the second impeachment trial, that Trump could be criminally charged and so didn’t need to be convicted.

Sauer didn’t have a good response, though he and his co-counsels on behalf of Trump appear to be saying this:  In order to be charged with anything in court, a president or former president would have to be convicted first in an impeachment process in Congress.

In general comments, members of the three-judge panel hearing the case appeared to dispute the logic of Trump’s attorneys.

Here is how Marcus described the to’ing and fro’ing in court:

“Judge Henderson expressed some hesitation about the consequences of such a decision, asking:  ‘How do we write an opinion that will stop the floodgates” of tit-for-tat prosecutions of former presidents?  But she also questioned Sauer’s argument about Trump’s asserted immunity.  I think it’s paradoxical to say that Trump’s constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal laws.’”

Good point.

Then, in a development that all of us non-attorneys could understand fully, Marcus reported on what she called, “The most chilling part of the Trump team’s argument — the part that revealed the implications of granting presidents the broad immunity Trump claims.  The example involved SEAL Team 6, the elite military unit.  Judge Pan put the question to Sauer:  “Could a president order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival?”

She pressed Sauer:  “…you’re saying a president could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival?”

If this didn’t underline the reality of Trump’s audacious claims, nothing would.

Then came the bottom line from Marcus:

“And that is the real point of the immunity dispute.  Trump’s lawyers don’t really expect to win it — they just want to run out the clock, past the current March 4 trial date and, preferably, past Election Day.  That won’t take just a quick ruling by Tuesday’s panel to avoid, but also an equally swift disposition by the full appeals court or Supreme Court, when the case inevitably comes its way.

“Timing isn’t everything here, but it’s awfully close.”

My conclusion mimics Marcus.  Trump is trying to run out the clock as a way to gain a second term in the Oval Office.

Perish the thought of that occurring.

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all 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.

Could Nikki Haley become U.S. president?

A good question.

Betters – even those who choose to bet on politics so far in advance of a result — might say “no.”  She has too steep a hill to climb to get over Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.

But, in the Washington Post, columnist Kathleen Parker, makes the case for Haley in a piece that appeared under this headline:  “A Rational Case for Nikki Haley As President.”

Parkers’ words are worth considering so I include these excerpts in my blog, with a few additional comments from me along the way:

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From Parker:  “Though it seems as if campaigning for the 2024 presidential election began right after the last one ended, the voting is only now beginning, with Iowa’s Republican caucuses on January 15.

“As usual, we’ll learn that the caucuses are strange and chaotic.  We’ll be reminded that the winner might not become the GOP nominee but one of the losers might.  And it’s on to New Hampshire on January 23 and South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary on February 24.

“Most bets are on Donald Trump, despite fierce campaigning by his top challengers, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has visited all 99 Iowa counties and secured the Iowa governor’s endorsement.  DeSantis is seen as needing to score second place in Iowa to continue his bid, as Haley and Trump are polling ahead of him in New Hampshire.”

Parker contends – and I agree – that there are “countless reasons” Trump, who has declared himself the revenge candidate, should be, as Parker put it well, “swept into history’s dustbin and left to spend his golden years as a professional defendant.”

More from Parker:

“In addition to risking a repeat of January 6, 2021, a Trump loss would leave us with the elderly Joe Biden in the presidency and the painful probability that he won’t live to complete his second term.  And you know what that means.  The single strongest argument against Biden’s re-election is Vice President Harris.

“I can’t stress enough how irresponsible it would be to make a Harris presidency possible.  Just listen to her speeches.  Her rhetorical flourishes can be dumbfounding, as when she says, “When we talk about the children of the community, they are a children of the community.”

I think Parker goes too far in criticizing Harris.  First, Harris is the vice president and what goes with that job is almost nothing.  To be sure, Harris may not have performed well in the role, but that, to me, is not enough to rail against her possibility of becoming president if – yes, if — Biden wins.

Biden has different issues, Parker continues and then goes on:

“Never mind the verbal pratfalls for which he has long been infamous; it’s his physical ones that are most worrisome.  Falling is the No. 1 cause of fatal injuries in older people, and at times, it seems Biden is tilting too far for comfort.  No one wants to hear personal criticism of our aged president, so we’ll leave it at:  Go home, Joe.

“Biden was surely the better choice in 2020 — far preferable to a guy accused of paying a porn star for sex and silence while his wife was taking care of an infant, a constitutional heathen who encouraged a siege of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters and believers in the ‘big lie.’
“Trump, don’t forget, was impeached by the House of Representatives for inciting violence against the Government of the United States.

“This glowering, pouty-frowned schlump belongs nowhere near the White House.  Trump is an unfit candidate.  Full stop.”

Parker provides this conclusion:

“Thus, we are left with Haley and DeSantis.  My view is that Haley is far and above the best pick for the jobs of chief executive and commander in chief.  Like DeSantis, she has been a governor — South Carolina, where she was popular enough to be re-elected.  She left that job to become Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, where she was a natural.

“Articulate, knowledgeable and a quick study, she entered and left the position as a polished pro.

“Do the right thing for your country, Iowa, and vote for Haley.”

If I lived in Iowa, I would vote for Haley.  And, if I was a Republican, she would be a far better option for me than Trump.  Not even close.

Given my status – an Oregonian who is an independent – I’ll just keep hoping that voters do something better than Trump.  He is the worst choice among Republicans.  Haley is the best.

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all 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 phrase in this blog headline refers to an unfortunate but understandable status of the game I love – golf.

Rather than admiring all of the top plays and shots in golf, today it’s all about the money.

Global Golf Post founder, editor and writer, Jim Nugent, made that point in a column he wrote for the most recent edition.

I was interested enough in his column that it prompted me to write again a about a subject I detest:  LIV, which is a professional golf tour financed by tainted money from Saudia Arabia.

For his part, Nugent bemoaned that result, but also took time over the holidays to talk to many of his contacts about the state of the golf fame.

What he did, obviously, was not conducting a scientific poll.  Rather, he collected conversations from friends and contacts, then wrote his column. 

The summary:  “I heard time and again,” Nugent wrote, “that many recreational golfers are done with the professional game and are not going to watch television coverage any longer, except, perhaps, for the majors.”

What has created this sullied reputation?

I think it is that various pro golfers – the latest is Jon Rahm who went back on his previous criticisms of LIV to take $600 million in LIV money to bolt from the PGA Tour – won’t admit that they are doing what they are doing “for the money.”

Instead, golfers like Rahm say they are joining LIV “to grow the game.”  It’s as if they are uttering a platitude from a “list of what you should say” to the media and the public when you join LIV.

Balderdash.

There is only pro who joined LIV and told like it was – Harold Varner, Jr.  He said he joined “to take the money” for the good of his family and to assure a bright, monied future for his children.

Good for Varner.

That’s honesty.

I add that, if someone offered me $600 million, I’d take it.  I just hope I would give an honest, solid reason for the action.

Meanwhile, the future of pro golf is uncertain for several reasons:

• LIV and the PGA Tour are still negotiating over a possible alliance.  The deadline to succeed came and went a couple weeks ago, but both sides say they are still talking.

• It also is not clear that two leaders on both sides – Greg Norman for LIV and Jay Monahan for the PGA Tour – have much of a future.  For my part, Norman can go away any time, given all his flamboyance to advance his personal causes.  As for Monahan, Nugent says (a) he deserves to stay because of the good he has done in the past to boost golf (including management of the Covid pandemic), and (b) because his actions in the LIV deal were done in concert with other members of the PGA Tour Board, not just himself.

• The battle over limiting golf ball distance – something not under formal consideration —  also is viewed, Nugent reports, as ignoring the interests of recreational golfers.

Finally, another uncertainty for the PGA Tour is its relationships with current corporate golf sponsors, as well as new sponsors it is trying to recruit. 

Over the last few days, a long-time sponsor, Wells Fargo, said it would continue by paying $20 million to the Tour as a way to stay involved with its sponsorship. 

The Tour said it would settle only for $25 million.  Wells Fargo bolted.

Not a smart move by the PGA Tour.

So, on and on it goes.  Dissension.  Disagreement.  Dishonesty.

For my part, I hope to be able to play the game I love and wait for at least one more pro event, the Masters, my favorite tournament of any year.   I’ll watch that; not sure about others.

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all 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 other day I wrote that I needed the “head of a pin” to convey all I knew about a certain subject.

Well, today, I need a new pin.

On it, I would write all I know about the Webb Telescope, the one that, far away in the heavens, sends pictures back to earth of stuff that occurred billions of years ago.  Yes, billions!

Here is the way Washington Post columnist George Will wrote about Webb in a piece that appeared under a headline that I borrowed for this blog:

“Everything began, cosmologists currently think, with a bang — the Big Bang; if it does not deserve to be a proper noun, what does? — 13.7 billion years ago.  All the material in the universe, including us, is — literally — stardust (cue Nat King Cole’s rendition), meaning residues of the explosion.  

“The light gathered by Webb’s mirrors expands our knowledge of how stars form.  And perish:  This is not going to end well.

“Launched 13 months ago, Webb is orbiting 940,000 miles away.  With its 18 mirrors and its five sunshield layers unfolded, it is a tennis-court-size engineering masterpiece.  To function, each mirror must, after being hurled into space on a shuddering rocket, retain this exquisite precision:  If each mirror were the size of the continental United States, each should not vary more than two inches from perfect conformity with the others.”

Will goes on to write using, as usually is the case, stalwart prose, and good words.

All of this called to my memory a blog I wrote a year or so ago citing an editorial writer for the Arizona Republica who composed a thought-provoking piece including this statement:

“Peering into deep outer space, images from some 13 billion years ago, stirs not only our wonderment, but also takes us on a journey of spirituality.”

The writer, Phil Boas, went on to ask this probing question:  “Did the Webb Telescope show us the face of God?”

He didn’t directly answer the question, leaving readers with the option of doing so themselves.  But he did include incredible facts in his column, which I repeat here.

• “…what a patch of sky!  It includes a massive cluster of galaxies about four billion light-years away that astronomers use as a kind of cosmic telescope.  The cluster’s enormous gravitation field acts as a lens, warping and magnifying the light from galaxies behind it that would otherwise be too faint and faraway to see.”
• Through the Webb Telescope, mankind is seeing extremely distant galaxies “that stretch back to the beginning of time.  It’s a galaxy-finding machine.”
• A lonely speck in the cosmic dark:  This is the oldest documented light in the history of the universe from 13 billion years — let me say that again — 13 billion years ago.
• A billion is a number so large it is essentially an abstraction to the human mind.  Light that has traveled 13 billion light-years requires context so we can begin to understand it – see the next bullet.  
• Light moves at a speed of 670.6 million miles per hour.  A beam of light can travel approximately 6 trillion miles in a single earth year, according to Space.com.  At that speed, you could travel around the Earth 7.5 times in a single second.
• The numbers are staggering.  Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is about 100,000 light-years across and contains some 100-400 billion stars, according to NASA.  Its size is too big to comprehend, but, within the context of the larger universe, it is smaller than a grain of sand.
• One of our neighboring galaxies is Andromeda. It is 220,000 light-years wide.  More than twice the size of our own.
• How many galaxies do you think there are?  NASA estimates 2 trillion. And if you can wrap your brain around that, ask yourself this question:  How many planets are there in all those galaxies?
• Too many planets to comprehend:  Roughly 700 quintillion — that’s 7 followed by 20 zeroes — 700,000,000,000,000,000,000.

My mind is boggled by these statistics, not to mention the photos produced by the telescope.

In the face of these numbers and photos, my eyes glaze over, not just my mind, which raises the need for a new “head of a pin.”

Then, to regain my composure, I return to my basic premise, a choice I presume to make:   It is that God created all of what we see and cannot see  –-  and I admire his handiwork, at least what I can understand of it.

And, more good news:  We can have a personal relationship with this very big God.

Does this mean, as some have suggested, that the Webb Telescope “allows us to see the face of God?”

I say “no.”

God is too big for a telescope, even a complicated and huge one like Webb, to reckon with God.  But what the telescope has produced provides this conclusion:  A glimpse into the past – yes, billions of years ago – when God created all we see and cannot see.

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all 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.

George Will writes for the Washington Post and appears other places in a role where he analyzes politics.

He is one of the best going for three reasons:  First, he uses words very well and often I find myself having to look up one of them to make sure I know the definition (and Will is always right); second, he has a knack for going behind-the-scenes to find cases of alleged government wrong-doing; and, third, he often skewers the worst former president and wannabe future president in history,  Donald Trump.

In his current column, however, Will goes too far writing under this headline:  “A Constitution-flouting ‘authoritarian’ is already in the White House.”

In what he writes, Will compares Trump’s clear-cut sedition on January 6 to President Joe Biden’s decision to go around Congress in a particular federal appointment.

Conflating the two is beyond the pale.

Here is how Will started his most recent column.

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“Overcaffeinated Cassandras continue to forecast an ‘authoritarian’ and anti-constitutional Donald Trump dictatorship.  They are mistaken about the near future because, among other reasons, they misread the recent past.  Also, they are oblivious to, or at least reticent about, the behavior of Trump’s successor:  Joe Biden is, like Trump, an authoritarian recidivist mostly stymied by courts.

“When Trump wielded presidential power, he could not even build his border wall.  But next time, the fevered forecasters warn, the entire federal apparatus, which mostly loathes him, will suddenly be submissive.  Such alarmism, which evidently gives some people pleasurable frissons, distracts attention from the similarity of Trump’s and Biden’s disdain for legality.”

Will admits that “instances of Trump’s anti-constitutional behavior have been amply reported and deplored.”

But, then, he compares Trump to Biden this way:

“Biden’s, less so — although they (e.g., the eviction moratorium, the vaccine mandate, the cancellation of student debt), and judicial reprimands of them, have been frequent.  Now, consider the lack of attention to his contempt for the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, and the Senate majority’s supine complicity.”

The president, Will says, “has plenary power to nominate principal officers of the federal government without seeking prior advice from the Senate.  The Senate has plenary power to confirm — or reject — nominees, and it can somewhat condition the president’s power by stipulating certain qualifications for particular offices.”

Will goes on to recount a current event.

“Biden nominated Ann Carlson last March to be administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  Two months later, when it was clear that the Senate would not confirm her, Biden withdrew the nomination.

“But less than five weeks after that, he named Carlson acting administrator.  His impertinence would perhaps be limited, by the Vacancies Act, to 210 days, which would expire December 26.  Furthermore, the Supreme Court has held that the act prohibits ‘any person who has been nominated to fill any vacant office from performing that office’s duties in an acting capacity.’”

After he uncovered this behind-the-scenes, situation, Will says Biden’s “indifference to these legalities is Trumpian.”

I say “no.”

Biden may try to find a way around certain laws and procedures as he did in the case Will reports.  Part of the reason he does is intransigence in Congress as Republicans, often for fun and spite, try to make life difficult for a president they don’t like.

For his part, Trump, if he rises again to the highest political office in the land, wants to overturn the country’s democracy.  He wants to be an autocrat, pardoning all those who have convicted of crimes in the January 6 insurrection, as well, if at all possible, himself.

Then, he wants all of the federal government to do his direct bidding, no matter the consequences.

I wish we had a better choice for president this time around in the presidential election, a point I have made before.

But, given the probable choice facing all of us as voters this year, I go with Biden.

*********

And this footnote:  Biden went on the attack against Trump yesterday in a clear indication that it will be Biden v. Trump in the presidential election.

Here, from the Washington Post, is an excerpt of what Biden said:

“He said other world leaders have approached him with concerns about the impact of another Trump term, and he recounted in detail Trump’s encouragement of the January 6 rioters, calling it ‘among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history.’  He added, ‘He still doesn’t understand a basic truth, and that is you can’t love your country only when you win.”

Good words from Biden.  I agree with him and I hope other Americans will find a way to do the same.