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 the risk of giving myself a compliment, a recent example underscores the worth of what I do most days, which is to read both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

The Journal on the right.  The Post on the left.  Neither to the extreme.

This week, I got what I expected – two views on President Joe Biden.

Rove is a critic.  Rubin is a supporter.

To illustrate, here goes:

From Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal

“In a wide-ranging interview, Kamala Harris was more fluid and articulate than her boss.  That’s something of a problem itself.   But she also showed that besides stock phrases and baseless assertions, there isn’t all that much to the Biden record that will endear it to Americans desperate for a better future.

“Voters are uneasy, angry, and deeply dissatisfied with the Administration’s performance.  Nothing Harris does will change that.  Less than a year from the election, the Biden-Harris team still hasn’t found a way to make its case.”

From Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post

“…In other words, the mainstream media would have to focus (not just for a single story but extended over weeks) on the consequences of electing a candidate echoing Adolf Hitler and vowing to use the military and Justice Department against his enemies.  They would have to look not at polling about the economy, but the actual economic record of the Administration, including inflation flattened, more than 14 million jobs created, and record low unemployment for Black people, Hispanics and women.”

So, two views.

Which do I accept?

Well, I might not write the way either Rove or Rubin do, but I will vote for Biden because a vote for Trump is a vote for a dictator who will use the powers of presidency for his own goals, not the country’s goals.

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.

Like many reporters, I’ve been operating in Casaubon mode for much of the past eight years, searching for the key to Donald Trump’s mythologies.

No single explanation of Trump is fully satisfactory, although Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer came closest when he observed that the cruelty is the point. Another person who helped me unscramble the mystery of Trump was his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Early in the Trump presidency, I had lunch with Kushner in his White House office.  We were meant to be discussing Middle East peace (more on that another time), but I was particularly curious to hear Kushner talk about his father-in-law’s behavior.

I was not inured then — and am not inured even now — to the many rococo manifestations of Trump’s defective character.

One of the first moments of real shock for me came in the summer of 2015, when Trump, then an implausible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said of Senator John McCain, “He’s not a war hero … I like people who weren’t captured, okay?”

I did not understand how so many ostensibly patriotic voters could subsequently embrace Trump, but mainly I couldn’t understand his soul sickness:  How does a person come to such a rotten, depraved thought?

That day in the White House, I mentioned to Kushner one of Trump’s more recent calumnies and told him that, in my view, his father-in-law’s incivility was damaging the country.  Strangely, Kushner seemed to agree with me:  “No one can go as low as the president,” he said.  “You shouldn’t even try.”

I was confused at first.  But then I understood:  Kushner wasn’t insulting his father-in-law.  He was paying him a compliment.

Perverse, of course.  But revelatory as well, and more than a little prophetic.  Because Trump, in the intervening years, has gone lower, and lower, and lower.  If there is a bottom — no sure thing — he’s getting closer.

Tom Nichols, who writes The Atlantic’s daily newsletter and is one of our in-house experts on authoritarianism, argued in mid-November that Trump has finally earned the epithet “fascist.”

“For weeks, Trump has been ramping up his rhetoric,” Nichols wrote. “Early last month, he echoed the vile and obsessively germophobic language of Adolf Hitler by describing immigrants as disease-ridden terrorists and psychiatric patients who are ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ ”

In a separate speech, Trump, Nichols wrote, “melded religious and political rhetoric to aim, not at foreign nations or immigrants, but at his fellow citizens.  This is when he crossed one of the last remaining lines that separated his usual authoritarian bluster from recognizable fascism.”

Trump’s rhetoric has numbed us in its hyperbole and frequency.  As David A. Graham, one of our magazine’s chroniclers of the Trump era, wrote recently, “The former president continues to produce substantive ideas — which is not to say they are wise or prudent, but they are certainly more than gibberish.

In fact, much of what Trump is discussing is un-American, not merely in the sense of being antithetical to some imagined national set of mores, but in that his ideas contravene basic principles of the Constitution or other bedrock bases of American government.”

There was a time when it seemed impossible to imagine that Trump would once again be a candidate for president.  That moment lasted from the night of January 6, 2021, until the afternoon of January 28, 2021, when the then-leader of the House Republican caucus, Kevin McCarthy, visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago and welcomed him back into the fold.

And so here we are.  It is not a sure thing that Trump will win the Republican nomination again, but as I write this, he’s the prohibitive front-runner.

Which is why we felt it necessary to share with our readers our collective understanding of what could take place in a second Trump term. I encourage you to read all the articles in this special issue carefully (though perhaps not in one sitting, for reasons of mental hygiene).

Our team of brilliant writers makes a convincingly dispositive case that both Trump and Trumpism pose an existential threat to America and to the ideas that animate it.  The country survived the first Trump term, though not without sustaining serious damage.  A second term, if there is one, will be much worse.

The Atlantic, as our loyal readers know, is deliberately not a partisan magazine.  “Of no party or clique” is our original 1857 motto, and it is true today.  Our concern with Trump is not that he is a Republican, or that he embraces — when convenient — certain conservative ideas.

We believe that a democracy needs, among other things, a strong liberal party and a strong conservative party in order to flourish.  Our concern is that the Republican Party has mortgaged itself to an anti-democratic demagogue, one who is completely devoid of decency.

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.

As the introduction to this blog states, I am a former newspaper reporter, so I it is natural for me to spend time considering how reporters these days could go about their business in better ways.  Especially those who write about politics.

Two commentators in the Washington Post – columnists Jennifer Rubin and Perry Bacon – dealt with this issue in what they wrote a couple days ago.

Here are excerpts of what they suggested.

FROM JENNIFER RUBIN

“My dim view of polling a year out from the election is no secret.  To illustrate the foolishness of building punditry around meaningless, premature polling, consider what would unfold if pundits ran with a spate of recent polling in President Biden’s favor.

“Political reporters are so used to this flawed approach to campaign coverage that many might be stumped if you told them they could not base their reporting on any polling this far out.

“But what would we say?!  As media critic and New York University professor Jay Rosen is found of saying, they would need to cover “not the odds but the stakes.”

“In other words, the mainstream media would have to focus (not just for a single story but extended over weeks) on the consequences of electing a candidate echoing Adolf Hitler and vowing to use the military and Justice Department against his enemies.

“They would have to look not at polling about the economy but the actual economic record of the Administration (e.g., inflation flattened, more than 14 million jobs created, record low unemployment for Black people, Hispanics and women).  They would need to examine the decisions of Trump-appointed judges and the social uproar it set off, especially among women in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“In sum, the electorate would be much better served if the punditocracy and political reporting dispensed with horse race and analysis.  Our democracy might depend on it”.

COMMENT:  Good ideas.  Especially the point about meaningless stories about polling when, (a) when potential respondents don’t want to respond; (b) when respondents don’t answer honestly; and (c) when the election is so far off that regular people don’t care.

Doing with Rubin advocates would require extra effort, honest imagination, and hard work, given what is at stake in this country – as Rubin writes, “the consequences of electing a candidate echoing Adolf Hitler and vowing to use the military and Justice Department against his enemies.”

FROM PERRY BACON

Political journalism is in crisis. Over the past few months, BuzzFeed News, FiveThirtyEight, Vice and a number of other outlets that specialize in political news have substantially cut staffing and coverage. Even CNN and The Post have laid off journalists. And the political media is struggling to cover an increasingly radical Republican Party without seeming to be on the side of the Democrats.

“Political journalism is in crisis.  Over the past few months, BuzzFeed News, FiveThirtyEight, Vice and a number of other outlets that specialize in political news have substantially cut staffing and coverage.  Even CNN and The Post have laid off journalists.  

“And the political media is struggling to cover an increasingly radical Republican Party without seeming to be on the side of the Democrats.

“But there is good news, too.  Several new or expanding outlets are addressing some of political journalism’s long-standing shortcomings:  Insufficient coverage of state and local government and of people who aren’t White and upper-income; an over-prioritization of elections over policy; a failure to recognize that the courts are a central front in today’s political conflicts.

“And this matters.  I don’t care about the state of political journalism just because it’s my field.  The coverage decisions and priorities of news outlets affect the behavior of elected officials and the lives of everyday citizens.  Good political journalism is vital.”

Bacon lists seven outlets he says are re-imagining political journalism in smart ways.

• The American Prospect/If you want to understand what’s happening inside the Biden Administration and the broader Democrat Party, the Prospect is a must-read.  The magazine focuses on policy, not elections.

• Balls and Strikes/Until recently, many news outlets treated the judiciary, particularly the U.S. Supreme Court, as a high-minded institution not caught up in the partisan battles dividing the rest of the country.  But there has been a push to tell a different, more accurate story:  The judiciary is partisan and political, too.  And the Republican Party, in particular, has stacked the courts with appointees who carry out its policy goals. 

Balls and Strikes, which is an arm of the progressive group Demand Justice, most embodies this style.

• Bolts/When there is a high-profile incident involving race or the police, the news media tends to descend on a given city for weeks, write a lot of stories and then move on.  Not Bolts.  The magazine recognizes that voting rights, gerrymandering, policing, and other issues that often play out at the state and local level are increasingly at the center of American politics.

A recent Bolts story not only explained how Atlanta police have arrested protesters who object to a massive police training facility being built there, but described similar actions being taken against activists across the country.

• The Guardian US/The U.S. edition of the London-based Guardian is one of the few outlets that does these three things at once:  Covers up-to-minute news like the New York Times or The Post; openly acknowledges its left of center ideology; writes about politics without the “insider” approach (unnamed sources, an obsession with consultants and strategy) that makes so much political coverage hard to parse if you aren’t already an expert.

• Hammer & Hope/This magazine was created by some activists and intellectuals who have been at the center of the Black Lives Matter movement.  So, Hammer & Hope takes it as a given that anti-Black discrimination still exists in America and concentrates on what should be done to address it.

• Popular Information/Neither the grocer Kroger nor the restaurant chain Olive Garden was offering all of its employees paid sick leave during the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic.  Many companies have broken their promises not to donate to Republican members of Congress who refused to certify the 2020 election results.  

Cameron Sexton, the GOP speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives, purchased a house in Nashville through a trust, perhaps trying to obscure that he and his family may functionally live in Music City, not Sexton’s home district about two hours away. 

Those are all stories that were extensively covered by other media outlets, but were first broken by Popular Information.

• States Newsroom/Local newspapers are shrinking, and most national media outlets mostly cover Congress and the president.  That has left a huge and important void as both parties increasingly enact their policy agendas at the state level.

Enter States Newsroom. Over the past six years, the company has founded news outlets focused on state government in 34 states.  They are usually quite small, only four to five staffers and a handful of contributing writers.  But because so much is happening at the state level and there are so few reporters in most capitals, these operations are extremely valuable.   I subscribe to the newsletter for the Kentucky Lantern and read it every day.

Bacon concludes his analysis by saying:  “We need more political journalism, but we also need better political journalism.  And amid all the bad news about the news, that better political journalism is emerging.”

For me, that’s good news.

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 didn’t watch professional golf on TV last weekend, but I did the next best thing – I read about it in my on-line golf blogs.

What happened?

It was, as this blog headline notes, a strange and complicated golf rules issue, which may be redundant because, in many ways, all golf rules always are complicated.

Here are excerpts from how GolfWeek described the situation which befell pro golfer Collin Morikawa who was hit with two-stroke penalty just before the start of his fourth round at the Hero World Challenge golf tournament.

It was reported that he “unwittingly” violated Model Local Golf Rule G-11 in the third round, so he started his final round two over par.

“NASSAU, Bahamas – Collin Morikawa was assessed a two-shot penalty for violating local model rule G-11, which restricts the use of green-reading material, on the fourth hole of the third round of the 2023 Hero World Challenge.

“The rules committee was alerted to a potential rule violation late Saturday night after a question was posed by a player in the field.  When asked if it was Morikawa’s playing partner during the third round, Matt Fitzpatrick, who brought the potential rule violation into question, chief referee Stephen Cox of the PGA Tour confirmed that was the case.”

What does the rule say?  Below, for everyone who, like me, is addicted to golf and its rules, I reprint the text below.  For now, this:

The “local” model rule was added in 2022 to protect the fundamental skill of reading greens.  Notice the word “local” in that sentence.  That means there is a rule that could be employed in a tournament if the “golf committee” for the tournament wants to use it.  At the Hero World Challenge, the committee had opted to use the rule.

What happened this time was that, in preparing for the third round, Morikawa’s caddie JJ Jakovac created a putting chart on the practice green.

Okay so far.

Then, he used a tool on the green — a level – to gauge putts, writing what he learned in the yardage book for the third round.

What he did created a later problem.

He used the book, with the notations provided by the tool, to judge a putt on the fourth hole in Saturday’s third round.

Under Rule G-11, that’s a breach.

The head rules official for the tournament, Cox, told GolfWeek:

“This is a very complicated issue.  We were very specific in the fact that these handwritten notes needed to be obtained through traditional methods to protect the fundamental skill of reading greens through our sport and that’s the foundation of why we put the model local rule in place.

“In this situation, again, unwittingly, the player used a level to determine degrees of slope on the practice putting green, which in itself, isolated, is not a breach, but what that player did was formulated a chart and transferred that into his book.

“Had Jakovac devised a chart using his feet and estimated the slope or simply retained the information obtained from the measuring devise to memory rather than as a handwritten note, there would have been no penalty.”

An unanswered question for me is how using a tool to gauge putts on the practice green would help on a specific golf course green, in this case green #4.  I suppose it would be that an experienced caddy would notice the same kind of slope on a green in play that existed on the practice and put his “tool knowledge” to use.

If there is good news in this strange and complicated situation, Morikawa eventually accepted the penalty, saying this:

“At the end of the day we made the mistake and it’s on us. Thankfully it only happened that one time.”

But one of my friends asked another very good question, which is why Morikawa did not get an extra penalty for signing an incorrect scorecard on Saturday.  Had he been penalized for posting a wrong score, it would have been much like what happened to Ladies Professional Golf Association golfer Lexi Thompson a couple years in a major tournament in Palm Springs.  She endured a “signing a wrong scorecard penalty” before starting her fourth and final round, generating loads of complaints for what she had to accept without knowing about it until she teed off in the final round.

When I first read about Morikawa’s problem, I couldn’t figure out how a rules official would come to have knowledge of the breach.  Then, I learned that it was through a report from another player, Fitzpatrick. 

No disrespect to Fitzpatrick.  He knew the rule, he saw that it may have been breached as he played on Saturday, and reported it to tournament officials. 

It’s called “protecting the field.”

And, for any golf rules afficionados, here is the wording of the specific rule in question:

Restricting the Use of Green-Reading Materials (Model Local Rule G-11): 

Purpose. Rule 4.3, and specifically Interpretation 4.3a/1, puts limitations on the size and scale of detailed green-reading materials. But to ensure that players and caddies use only their eyeand feel to help them read the line of play on the putting green.

The Committee may further restrict the use of green-reading materials by requiring that players are limited throughout their round to using only the yardage book that has been approved for use in the competition.

This Local Rule is intended only for the highest levels of competitive golf and, even then, only to competitions where it is realistic for the Committee to undertake an approval process for yardage books.

When introducing this Local Rule, the Committee is responsible for approving the yardage book that players may use, and the approved yardage book should contain diagrams of putting greens with minimal detail only (such as significant slopes, tiers or false edges that indicate

sections of greens).

Players and caddies may add handwritten notes to the approved yardage book to help them read the line of play on a putting green, so long as those notes are allowed under this Local Rule.

Enough!

 

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 borrowed this blog headline from one that appeared in the Wall Street Journal in a story that caught my attention.

Why?

I am a dog lover.  With my wife, we have had two dogs, and both enriched our lives.  We wouldn’t have had it any other way.

And a number friends have dogs, too, and we have become attached to those pets, as well.

Here is how the Wall Street Journal article started:

“Owning a dog can teach a person as much about herself as about her companion, The Wall Street Journal’s Katherine Bindley reflected in a recent essay.  From the beginning, owning a dog requires both love and resolve.

“But the most enduring lesson a dog can teach might be its last, according to hundreds of Journal readers who read and commented on Bindley’s essay.  The inevitable passing of a pet and the processing of the subsequent grief is a powerful lesson in resilience.”

My wife and I experienced that first-hand in the case of our first dog, Hogan.  We loved that boy and, today, we think of him as looking down at us as he romps in open fields in heaven. 

More from the Wall Street Journal:

• Wisconsin, native Richard Nelson is all too familiar with the anguish that comes with losing a pet. 

“My most devastating experiences in life have been saying farewell to my best friends,” he said, referring to the three English Springer spaniels he and his family have owned.  Their fourth, Captain, is two years old. “When the others passed, the pain was, well, unbearable.”

• Losing a dog is a unique brand of grief, according to Nancy Curotto, a licensed psychologist specializing in pet loss. 

The relationship a person has with their pet is “one of the most intense bonds one can have,” Curotto said.  “This relationship is unconditional.  Your pet witnesses you in ways other relationships don’t.”

• Although most owners adopt with the tacit understanding that they might outlive the object of their affection, these deep bonds mean that coming to terms with the loss when it does occur is especially difficult. 

New Jersey, native Sandra Sori can attest to how integrated pets are into our lives.

“You spend more time with your dog than any human, including your significant other,” she observed.  Sori has shared her home with four dogs over the past three decades, including the two she owns now:  Ray, a 10-year-old Brittany spaniel, and Frankie, a 5-year-old St. Bernard.  “You have daily rituals and routines that you may not even notice, but when they’re gone, it’s such a loss.”

So, is the pain of potential loss enough to make even the most seasoned dog owners question whether the love of a new dog is worth the price?

Could be.

But, for my wife and me, when we lost Hogan, there was a vacancy in our family.  We toyed with leaving that vacancy open, but, in the end, we could not do so.

So, we went to the same breeder who had given us Hogan and adopted Callaway— he was in the same line as Hogan who, in human terms, might have been his uncle —  into our family and he has now been with us for six years.

Curotto, the licensed psychologist mentioned above, often reminds her clients that choosing to adopt another dog doesn’t diminish or replace the relationship they had before:  “Grief isn’t something we get over,” she said. “We grow around our grief.  You can grieve and love at the same time.”

Potential heartbreak is part of the detail with a new pet, but think of it this way:  Never owning a dog is to deny yourself one of the most beautiful relationships  life can bring.   There is no other love like it.

One resident on the East Coast told the Journal:  “I came to believe that, if I didn’t have a canine companion, I was merely denying myself a richness of life while also denying a dog, somewhere, a human they might desperately need.”

Great points.

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 THE SECOND IN TWO-PART BLOG SERIES ON AN IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARY FOR ME

With my wife, we just celebrated our 50^th wedding anniversary on October 20.  Quite a milestone!

But another anniversary for me – and for us – occurs today.

It is December 1, 2004.  The date marks the 19^th anniversary of what I call “my episode.”

Say what?

The “episode” was a completely unexpected heart attack that came close to taking my life.  Out of the blue it came.

As I reflect on the 19 years God has given me since 2004, here are reflections on two counts:  (a) some of the specifics of what happened on the evening of December 1, and (b) credit to those family members, friends, and doctors who made it possible for me to survive.

WHAT HAPPENED

On the early evening of December 1, I had arrived back home in Salem, Oregon after a day-long trip to Seattle to meet with one of my firm’s clients.

When I got home, I felt something wasn’t right physically, so I sat down on the couch and tried to catch my breath.  I told my wife I felt bad and might need to visit the emergency room.  She said I looked wan and was sweating.

I said, well, let’s go to the ER to make sure everything is okay, so I went out to the car in the garage, and she went to get the car keys.  By the time she arrived in the garage, I was down on the floor because, I knew I would fall down, so I got down, still conscious.

She hurried to call the ambulance and it got to house quickly, even though we live outside the center of the center. 

I was still conscious on the ride to the hospital on a cold, winter night over a bumpy South River Road.  About five miles to the hospital.

Long story short, it turned out I was having a heart attack as I arrived at the hospital and, because of the ambulance, was admitted immediately. 

Which I add is an important detail because, if you are in an ambulance, you avoid the normal admitting process to which you’d be subject if you were on your own.  And, this is also a reflection on yesterday’s blog, which reported that the heart attack victim in that Washington Post story was transported by car to the ER, then had to wait in line because, he was told, “everyone there had an emergency.”  The bottom line:  The ambulance is the best approach.

At the hospital for me, in only a few hours, the doctor (see below) had done an angio-gram and inserted a stent which unblocked the major artery to my heart.  It had been at least 90 per cent shut down.

The next day I had two smaller stents inserted in different arteries and, in three days, I was allowed to go home to begin the recovery process.

I went through a cardiac rehab program at Salem Hospital and that helped me get back to some measure of health.

To verify the “out of the blue” character of the “episode,” I had none of the usual symptoms of heart problems, other than higher-than-desired cholesterol on a couple occasions.  Three days before the episode, I played golf two days in a row, walking 18 holes both times with no problems.

So, again, out of the blue.

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

When the episode occurred, my wife was home with me, so she took charge.  And so, there is no question but that I owe her my life.

Our son lived across the street from us and, when he and his wife happened to arrive home, they saw the ambulance, so he also took charge, alerting my friends and colleagues to the situation, though none of us knew what it was at the time.  The same can be said about my son – I owe him my life.

Coincidentally, with the ambulance out front, two of our friends drove by and told us later they stopped to pray.  Another good sign.

Our daughter, Lissy, too, began praying from her home in Woodinville, Washington, too far to come to Salem, but prayer works no matter where you happen to be.

At the hospital, Dr. Bill Stiles, from Oregon Cardiology Associates, was on-call and was the one who inserted the emergent stent, as well as the secondary stents. 

In my recovery over the next few years, he presided over all services for me until his retirement.  We had a great relationship.

After Stiles’ retirement, I was transferred to Dr. Kevin Thompson and he and I, too, have found good ways to be both “patient and doctor” and “friends.”

Here’s what on-line sources say about the cardiology services at what has now come to be called Oregon Health Center:

“Oregon Heart Center is the premiere cardiology practice in the Willamette Valley.

“With our specialists, we are committed to providing comprehensive cardiology services for you or a loved one.  Oregon Heart Center believes in a team approach to your care.  We work closely with your primary care and other specialist providers to ensure you get the best care.”

Services at the Heart Center have been fully and completely on target and effective for me.

My best friend who is like a brother to me, Morris Dirks, with whom I had worked for years at Salem Alliance Church, he as lead pastor and me as chair of the Governing Board of Elders, came down to Salem in the days after my episode to make sure I was recovering. 

As we talked, we agreed that God might have something more for me by sparing my life.

CONCLUSION

To state the obvious, I am glad to be, as we say in golf, “on the right side of the turf.”  I have been able to see my two children grow into being responsible adults and have watched three grandchildren grow into young people old enough to be considering college.

Plus, I continue to owe my life to solid medical practitioners, plus effective drugs.

Given my heart attack, my heart muscle was damaged in a way from which I was told it would never fully recover.  But medications, frankly, countered at least part of that prediction and helped me live good years marked by activity and travel – and, course, being present with family and friends.

So, give God the praise – praise which He richly deserves.

The classic symptoms of a heart attack are chest pain and pressure, but they’re not the only red flags

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 THE FIRST OF A TWO-PART BLOG ON AN IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARY FOR ME, DECEMBER 1, 2004, A DAY I ALMOST DIED; THE SECOND POST WILL RECOUNT MY SITUATION

Apart from a few specific details, the headline and subhead in this blog could have been about me 19 years ago.

I borrowed them from a Washington Post story that ran a few days ago.  Here it is, as written by Mark Shavin.

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My best friend is a retired emergency room doctor, and he has seen it all. Yet when I met him for a weekend walk recently and told him I wasn’t feeling well, he and I both attributed my symptoms to anxiety.

In reality, I was having a heart attack.

The classic symptoms of a heart attack are “chest pain and pressure that radiates to the left arm and jaw,” Grant Reed, an interventional cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, later told me.  But they’re not the only symptoms.

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“People can experience a range of symptoms that also include shortness of breath, sweating, nausea, and other symptoms.  Females and diabetics can have many of the symptoms other than discomfort,” Reed said.

That was the case for me.  On that recent fateful weekend, I told my friend I was anxious, attributing it to stress about my elderly mother’s health.  My breathing also felt shallow, and my left arm was numb.  But I didn’t have chest pain or pressure, nor was pain shooting down my arm.

As we began our walk through a park, my friend checked my pulse repeatedly.  It was steady, and he recommended measured breaths to help me relax.  I did as he instructed, but as we continued our walk, I couldn’t get a deep breath.  And after walking half a mile, I had to stop.

“We need to go to the hospital and have this checked out,” my friend said.  We turned around to walk back to where we parked, and I called my wife.  After a few minutes, I had to stop again.  Then, my friend noticed I was sweating profusely.  That tripped his alarm.

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I’m 66 years old, and 12 years ago, I had my first wake-up call when my doctor spotted an anomaly on a treadmill test during my routine physical.  Subsequently, a cardiologist placed two stents, or mesh coils, inside my arteries to keep them open and improve blood flow.

Walking has always been a respite for me, and for 15 years I’ve met my doctor buddy once a week for a stroll.  But on the day of my heart attack, I knew something wasn’t right.

As my symptoms worsened, my friend offered to summon an ambulance or to drive me to the hospital, but I was afraid to be alone while he went to get his car.  I texted my wife, and she arrived within minutes and rushed me to the emergency room, only four miles away.  My friend called ahead to alert them that I was coming, and yet, when I walked unsteadily into the hospital, the staff sat me down in a wheelchair in a line behind four other people.

“I’m having an emergency,” I said to a passing attendant.

“Everyone here is having an emergency,” he said and kept walking.

“You’ve got to get me help,” I told my wife, as my voice and breathing grew weaker.  She flew into action.

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The next thing I knew, the emergency room staff was slapping a defibrillator pad on my back.  Someone gave me an aspirin with a sip of water.  Someone else put a nitro-glycerin tablet under my tongue.  They pulled off my shirt and started to unfasten my shorts.  I grabbed at my underwear, clinging to a shred of modesty, but was rebuffed.

“Everything’s coming off, sir.”

Moments later, an electro-cardiogram revealed I was having a heart attack, and a nurse and an orderly propelled me on a stretcher down a series of hallways — ceiling lights flashing by at breakneck speed — to the cardiac catheterization lab, where imaging of my arteries revealed the total blockage of one of my previous stents.  A cardiologist cleared the obstruction and inserted a new stent inside the old one.

All of this happened on a Saturday.  While still recovering in the cath lab, 15 minutes after my procedure, I asked the cardiologist, who had just saved my life, if I could go back to teaching my college journalism classes on Monday.  He was incredulous.

“Don’t you understand you’ve had a heart attack?”

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I didn’t.  Nor did my wife until that moment.  In fact, it turned out I’d had a so-called widow-maker heart attack, in which the largest artery in the heart — the left anterior descending artery — is blocked.  That artery provides 50 per cent of the heart muscle’s blood supply, and “a widow-maker is immediately life-threatening,” the Cleveland Clinic says.  Mine was 100 per cent obstructed.

Cardiac arrest — when the heart stops — kills 300,000 to 450,000 people in the United States annually, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.  Reed told me later that the obstruction in my artery could have been fatal had my heart stopped, but that I was lucky.

“You also paid attention to your symptoms and were with someone who helped you get prompt medical attention,” he said.  “Some people either do not pay attention or don’t know enough to recognize the symptoms could be a heart attack and come in hours into their heart attack.”

In that case, Reed said, a lot of damage may already be done:  “Heart muscle function may not be restored even when you open up the artery. It’s important to seek medical attention early to keep the heart from being permanently injured.  We say, “Time is muscle,” he added.

Reed and my friend both noted that panic attacks often mimic heart attacks.  Shortness of breath is common to both.  Typically, though, panic attacks resolve in about 10 minutes, Reed said.  “Definitely seek medical attention if your symptoms do not resolve quickly. … The consequences of missing a heart attack can be very severe.”

“I think the only lesson to be learned is, if there is any doubt, have it checked out,” said my friend.

I am lucky to be alive — lucky, too, to have a devoted wife who rushed me to the hospital and, through her tears, reassured our three children that I was okay.  I am grateful to have a caring friend who sat with my wife in the hospital from the moment I was admitted.

After a few days, I left the hospital with a damaged but grateful heart.  But before my wife drove me home, I asked her to drive me back to the park.  I needed to see the spot where my life almost ended.  I needed to feel that eventually I could resume the healthy habits of my old life.

I know I need to make changes, particularly to reduce my stress.  I have started cardiac rehab, but I am also tending to my emotional well-being, the bouts of sadness, even despair, that are common after a heart attack.

I am looking at my life through a new lens, working hard to visualize a future that feels hopeful and worthy of the second chance I have been granted.  I have a long road ahead of me, but I won’t have to walk it alone.

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 Wall Street Journal used words the other day that illustrate its editors’ suspicion for the law and Washington Post writer Jennifer Rubin posted a column questioning polling in a presidential race this far from the election.

Both matters fit into my interest in words.

So, I decided to open one of the five departments I run with a free hand to manage as I see fit – the Department of Words Matter.  The others are the Department of Pet Peeves, the Department of Inquiring Minds Want to Know, the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering, and the Department of “Just Saying.”

ITEM #1/WHAT WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORS WROTE

“But Trump’s antagonists, instead of trying to defeat him politically, have unleashed the criminal justice system against him in every way possible.”

For me, the words that matter:  “Antagonists have unleased the criminal justice system.”

So, the Journal’s point is that antagonists are setting out to use the criminal justice system against Trump.  That’s the word “unleashed.”

I find that hard to believe.

My view:  Trump allegedly (note I use the word “allegedly” to verify that even Trump is innocent until proven guilty) has violated a huge panoply of laws and is now being held to account in court.  About time!

Opponents are not using the system to get Trump.  He and his minions have done that to themselves.

Of course – and incredibly, to me – Trump benefits from all this because, as he faces criminal charges that ought to shake him senseless as they would any other defendant, he simply turns those charges into a political benefit.  That was on view as Trump appeared in a New York court and tried to turn his time on the witness stand into just another political foray.

The judge tried to stop Trump, at least part of the time.

At rallies, in fundraising letters, and wherever he can find an attentive listener, the former president — who faces 91 felony charges, four criminal trials and, in the New York civil case, the prospect of a court-ordered dismantling of his financial empire — has taken up a new mantra: 

“They’re not after me; they’re after you,” said the headline plastered across the top of Trump’s campaign website when the New York trial began.  “I’m just standing in the way.”

COMMENT:  What appears above illustrates how much words matter.

ITEM #2/POLITICAL COVERAGE FROM JENNIFER RUBIN

“Last week,” Rubin writes, “demonstrated the sorry state of political coverage in this country.  The fixation on early, non-predictive polling and endless speculation that President Joe Biden might step away from the 2024 race (contrary to all evidence) created an endless cycle of frenzied coverage, none of it informative about democracy, the issues or the threat of an authoritarian regime in a second Trump presidency.

“No major American news outlet has been immune.

“Political coverage could be different.  Cover what is happening, including abortion rights organizing, job creation in the heartland, political activism among young people, internal migration’s effect on states, and demographic changes since 2020.  

News outlets could provide insight into campaign operations such as political organizing, message testing, and surrogate effectiveness.  That would be interesting.

“Americans deserve better. Our democracy needs better.”

COMMENT:  Rubin is right and I agree based on my background in journalism, albeit long ago. 

The focus on “horse race politics” – who’s ahead, etc. – gets old, especially at least a year in advance of the presidential election.

Rubin is writing about polling, but she uses good points to question whether polling matters any more – at least not as much as it once might have.

First, many persons who are called to participate often don’t want to do so…so they hang up.  Second, some persons who respond don’t answer honestly for who knows what reasons.  Third, some persons just are not paying attention and that argues against any notion that their responses mean much.

In my professional career, I worked with several excellent pollsters, including one who was a partner in the firm where I also was a partner.  He and others who did quality work worried a lot about at least three things – the timing of their work, using words that would be understandable to those who read or heard them, and striving for quality science.

Given today’s “get even” form of politics, journalists have a tough job to do, but, as an aspiration, I say, with Rubin, that they can do better.  So can pollsters.

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 THE SECOND IN A TWO-PART BLOG SERIES DOCUMENTING DONALD TRUMP’S VULGARITY

If you want more information about Donald Trump’s rage (not sure you or I do), just consider an essay from Thomas Edsall, who writes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics, and inequality.

It contends that Trump’s actions illustrate that he is mentally ill.

Edsall’s newest effort appeared under this headline:  “The Roots of Trump’s Rage.”

Here is how the essay started.

“Brian Klaas, a political scientist at University College London, captured the remarkable nature of the 2024 presidential election in an October 1 essay, ‘The Case for Amplifying Trump’s Insanity.’

“Klaas argued that the presidential contest now pits a 77-year-old racist, misogynist bigot who has been found liable for rape, who incited a deadly, violent insurrection aimed at overturning a democratic election, who has committed mass fraud for personal enrichment, who is facing 91 separate counts of felony criminal charges against him, and who has overtly discussed his authoritarian strategies for governing if he returns to power, against an 80-year-old with mainstream Democrat Party views who sometimes misspeaks or trips.

“’One of those two candidates,’ Klaas noted, ‘faces relentless newspaper columns and TV pundit ‘takes’ arguing that he should drop out of the race.’ (Spoiler alert:  It’s somehow not the racist authoritarian sexual abuse fraudster facing 91 felony charges.)

“Klaas asked:  What is going on?  How is it possible that the leading candidate to become president of the United States can float the prospect of executing a general and the media response is … crickets?

“How is it possible that it’s not front-page news when a man who soon may return to power calls for law enforcement to kill people for minor crimes?  And why do so few people question Trump’s mental acuity rather than Biden’s, when Trump proposes delusional, unhinged plans for forest management and warns his supporters that Biden is going to lead us into World War II (which would require a time machine), or wrongly claims that he defeated Barack Obama in 2016?”

The media, Klaas argues, has adopted a policy in covering Donald Trump of, ‘Don’t amplify him! You’re just spreading his message.’

And, Klaas opposes this form of journalism, as do I, based on my long-ago past as a journalist.  As I have written in previous blogs, today’s form of over-the-top politics requires a special form of journalism, not the old habit of covering one side, then the other – or the horse-race form of political coverage.

It requires delicacy, discretion, and the ability to call out autocracy in what is supposed to be a democracy – to call out Trump.

Regarding this delusional candidate for president, I remember the best-selling book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” in which a number of psychiatrists and mental health experts assessed a president, Trump, and found him to be mentally ill.

Edsall writes:

“The warnings that Trump is dangerous and unstable began well before his 2016 election and have become increasingly urgent.

“These warnings came during the 2016 primary and general election campaigns, continued throughout Trump’s four years in the White House, and remain relentless as he gets older and more delusional about the outcome of the 2020 election.”

Edsall went on to report that he asked some of those who first warned about the dangers Trump poses what their views are now.  Here is a summary of the responses:

• Leonard L. Glass, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School:

“Trump acts like he’s impervious, ‘a very stable genius,’ but we know he is rageful, grandiose, vengeful, impulsive, devoid of empathy, boastful, inciting of violence and thin-skinned.  At times it seems as if he cannot control himself or his hateful speech.  We need to wonder if these are the precursors of a major deterioration in his character defenses.

“If Trump — in adopting language that he cannot help knowing replicates that of Hitler (especially the references to opponents as ‘vermin’ and ‘poisoning the blood of our country’), we have to wonder if he has crossed into ‘new terrain.’

“That terrain, driven by grandiosity and dread of exposure (e.g., at the trials) could signal the emergence of an even less constrained, more overtly vicious and remorseless Trump who, should he regain the presidency, would, indeed act like the authoritarians he praises.  Absent conscientious aides who could contain him (as they barely did last time), this could lead to the literal shedding of American blood on American soil by a man who believes he is ‘the only one’ and the one, some believe, is a purifying agent of God and in whom they see no evil nor do they doubt.

Edsall continues:

“Nothing captures Trump’s megalomania and narcissism more vividly than his openly declared agenda, should he win back the White House next year.

“On November. 6, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Devlin Barrett reported in The Washington Post that Trump ‘wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff John F. Kelly and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb, and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark A. Milley.”

“In an earlier story, Haberman, Savage and Swan reported that Trump allies are preparing to reissue an executive order known as Schedule F, which Trump promulgated at the end of his presidency but which never went into effect.

“Schedule F, the reporters wrote, would have empowered his administration to strip job protections from many career federal employees — who are supposed to be hired based on merit and cannot be arbitrarily fired.  While the order said agencies should not hire or fire Schedule F employees based on political affiliation, it effectively would have made these employees more like political appointees who can be fired at will.”

•  Joshua D. Miller, professor of psychology at the University of Georgia:

“Did Trump’s ‘vermin’ comment represent a tipping point, an escalation in his willingness to attack opponents.  My bet is we’re seeing the same basic traits, but their manifestation has been ratcheted up by the stress of his legal problems and also by some sense of invulnerability in that he has yet to face any dire consequences for his previous behavior.”

• Donald R. Lynam, professor of psychology at Purdue: 

“The escalation is quite consistent with grandiose narcissism.  Trump is reacting more and more angrily to what he perceives as his unfair treatment and failure to be admired, appreciated, and adored in the way that he believes is his due.

“Grandiose narcissists feel they are special and that normal rules don’t apply to them. They require attention and admiration.  This behavior is also consistent with psychopathy, which is pretty much grandiose narcissism, plus poor impulse control.”

• Aaron L. Pincus, professor of psychology at Penn State:

“Trump is an aging malignant narcissist.  As he ages, he appears to be losing impulse control and is slipping cognitively.  So, we are seeing a more unfiltered version of his pathology.  Quite dangerous.

“Trump seems increasingly paranoid, which can also be a reflection of his aging brain and mental decline.  The result?  Greater hostility and less ability to reflect on the implications and consequences of his behavior.”

• Edwin B. Fisher, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina:

“Trump’s insistence on the validity of his own distorted claims has created a vicious circle, pressuring him to limit his close relations to those willing to confirm his beliefs.  His isolation is much of his own making.

“The enormous pressures he puts on others for confirmation and unquestioning loyalty and his harsh, often vicious responses to perceived disloyalty lead to a strong, accelerating dynamic of more and more pressure for loyalty, harsher and harsher judgment of the disloyal and greater and greater shrinking of pool of supporters.

“Trump is showing signs of cognitive deterioration, such as the confusion of Sioux Falls and Sioux City, several times referring to having beaten and/or now running against Obama or the odd garbling of words on a number of occasions for it seems like about a year now.  Add to these the tremendous pressure and threat he is under, and you have, if you will, a trifecta of danger — lifelong habit, threat, and possible cognitive decline. They each exacerbate the other two.”

• Craig Malkin, lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School:

“If the evidence emerging proves true — that Trump knew he lost and continued to push the big lie anyway — his character problems go well beyond simple narcissism and reach troubling levels of psychopathy.  And psychopaths are far more concerned with their own power than preserving truth, democracy or even lives.”

Edsall concludes his essay this way:

“The man who, as president, incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn an election is again openly fomenting political violence while explicitly endorsing authoritarian strategies should he return to power.  That is the story of the 2024 election.  Everything else is just window dressing.”

To be sure.  And Edsall’s conclusion should strike fear into all of us if Trump ascends – or in his case, the best word is “descends” – to the presidency again.

If he does, our country will never be the same. 

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 THE FIRST OF TWO-PART SERIES OF BLOGS FOCUSING ON DONALD TRUMP’S VULGARITY

It’s almost too much to grasp.

What?

Two things:

• First, Donald Trump is so insecure that he lacks any basic human instincts of kindness and discretion.  So, he yells and screams based on his narcissism.
• Second, his MAGA followers like his style and go so far as to mimic his over-the-top conduct.  So, they are narcissists, too.

This was made clear in a Washington Post story the other day that caught my attention, not because it was fun to read, but because it told a tale about politics in this country – a tale that needs to be told as we head toward another presidential election.

The article by Hannah Knowles appeared under a headline I borrowed for this blog.  This was the subhead:

“Many GOP voters are not just tolerating, but relishing and emulating Trump’s often crass and cruel approach to politics.”

Yes, followers emulate Trump.

They don’t just support his policies, whatever those policies are – and they might be able to describe those policies.  They adopt Trump style as their own.

Here is how Knowles started her story:

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“DES MOINES — Donald Trump was conspicuously absent at a conservative Christian forum here, where his long-shot rivals for the Republican presidential nomination were asked how they could be role models from the White House. The host brought up Trump’s insulting nicknames:  ‘How do we raise the bar?’ he asked.

“The next day, Trump swooped into Iowa for his own event — where he lobbed insults, made crude references, and casually tossed out baseless and false claims designed to belittle his opponents and critics in vicious terms.

“Children wandered around in shirts and hats with the letters ‘FJB,’ an abbreviation for an obscene jab at President Biden that other merchandise spelled out:  ‘F— Biden.’

“During his speech inside a high school gym in Fort Dodge, former president Trump called one GOP rival a ‘son of a b—-,’ referred to another as ‘birdbrain’ and had the crowd shrieking with laughter at his comments on Representative Adam B. Schiff (D-California), who he called ‘pencil neck’ before asking, ‘How does he hold up that fat, ugly face?’  He brought the house down while mocking Biden, at one point baselessly suggesting Biden is using drugs and can’t get offstage ‘by the time whatever it is he’s taken wears off.’”

Trump’s coarseness and cruelty, Knowles writes, have come to define the Republican Party since his rise to the presidency — and many GOP voters relish and emulate the approach.

For me, one of the most egregious examples of Trump’s insane conduct over the years occurred when he said he was no fan of the late military hero John McCain because “McCain got captured.”

How would Trump even know what it meant to be captured during a war?  He never served.

As they have been offered the chance to support other presidential hopefuls who champion a similar agenda to Trump in a less abrasive package, many Republicans appear to be sticking with the former president — underscoring how his personality and shattering of behavioral norms have long been a major part of his appeal.

More from Knowles:

“Conservative evangelicals influential in Iowa — the first state in the GOP nominating calendar — have previously set aside some distaste for Trump’s personal behavior as he took up their causes, including appointing anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court.

“An event in Fort Dodge served as a stark illustration of the crudeness, meanness, and unfounded accusations that he has helped normalize in politics.

“T-shirts on sale at the event neatly summed up that appeal with images of Trump giving a middle finger.  ‘Even my dog hates Biden!’ one of the merchants yelled each time someone walked up to look.

“Anticipating another general election matchup with Biden, Trump is criticizing Biden’s policies but also attacking him in highly personal terms as weak or ‘stupid.’  On Saturday he suggested Biden is unimposing to the dictators Trump often compliments, saying Chinese President Xi Jinping, who recently met with Biden, is ‘strong like granite’ and musing that Taliban leaders might not call Biden ‘your excellency, as Trump says they once addressed him.”

Trump’s language has rubbed off on many of his supporters.

And, so has Trump’s overall conduct and disrespect for any political norms.  It bodes ill for this country.