PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 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 of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

The blog headline above also was the headline in a piece in the Washington Post by columnist Eugene Robinson.

As good a writer as Robinson – and he does know how to use words well – he is not one of my favorite columnists.

Still, in a Washington Post piece, he succeeds by going after President Donald Trump as a master of ‘ignorance on top of ignorance,’ even if he, Trump, utters only a few words.

He displayed his ignorance on several occaisons as he toured Europe, including the United Kingdom, over the last few days.

I paid a bit of attention to this because, coincidentally, I was in Europe around the same time as Trump was, though never – fortunately for me — in the same place. As the day of D-Day dawned, June 6, my wife and I were on the way home after a 10-day river cruise down the Danube.

So, upon my return home, I reviewed a few of the comments about Trump, including those from Robinson, as news coverage of Trump’s visit to a D-Day site in the area of Normandy dominated newspaper space and air waves.

To be fair, it could be contended that Trump did well, for a change, when he made this comments at a commemoration of the D-Day Invasion of Europe by allied forces in the start of ridding the world of one of its most deadly despots, Adolph Hitler.

According to the New York Times, standing on a sun-drenched bluff in Colleville-Sur-Mer, France, overlooking the Normandy beaches (an estimated 10,000 soldiers sacrificed themselves to a savage fusillade of gunfire thus opening the way for Europe’s liberation in 1944), Trump declared, “We are gathered here on freedom’s altar.”

Seventy-five years after the D-Day invasion, the president, who has called into question America’s alliances around the world — including with countries that fought with the United States in Normandy — pledged fidelity to friendships “forged in the heat of battle, tested in the trials of war, and proven in the blessings of peace.”

It was Trump’s only reference to the importance of the Atlantic alliance, in a speech that dwelled, probably appropriately, on the service of D-Day’s American veterans. Dozens of them were seated behind him overlooking the white grave markers of fallen comrades, and Omaha Beach beyond.

Speaking gravely, with few of the ad-libs that usually pepper his speeches, Trump recounted stories of heroism and suffering, often in graphic terms. The veterans not only had vanquished Nazi tyranny, he said, but built the American century.

“To the men who sit behind me and to the boys who rest in the field before me,” Trump said, “your example will never, ever grow old, your legend will never tire, your spirit — brave, unyielding and true — will never die.

“To all of our friends and partners: Our cherished alliance was forged in the heat of battle, tested in the trials of war and proven in the blessings of peace. Our bond is unbreakable.”

Of course, Trump didn’t stop there.

As solid as his comments were about the D-Day, he went beyond them to violate inter-country norms by advocating for a premier candidate – Boris Johnson – to replace the outgoing Theresa May.

He also met with Prince Charles to hear the prince advocate for international action to control climate change.

Here is what columnist Robinson wrote:

“It is not unfair to point out that President Trump, on many important subjects, is just an ignoramus.

“A vivid illustration of this unfortunate fact came this week in London, when it was revealed that Prince Charles, a knowledgeable environmentalist, had tried to educate the president on climate change — and utterly failed.

“I believe that there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways,” Trump told the ‘Good Morning Britain’ program. “Don’t forget it used to be called global warming. That wasn’t working. Then it was called climate change. Now it’s actually called extreme weather, because, with extreme weather, you can’t miss.”

“Good Lord,” Robinson wrote, “it’s breathtaking that anyone could pack so much ignorance into so few words.”

Robinson also wrote tariffs: “Who bears the cost of tariffs is another topic about which Trump has views that are both unshakably settled and spectacularly wrong.

“China is paying the tariffs he imposed, Trump claims. Companies in Mexico will pay the tariffs he threatens, he promises. Yet, that simply is not how tariffs work.

“Tariffs are taxes, paid by the U.S. firms that import Chinese, Mexican and other foreign products. Those companies pass along those costs to American consumers, in the form of higher prices for foreign-made merchandise. In other words, the money that Trump claims is flowing into the treasury doesn’t come from Beijing or Mexico City. It comes out of your pocket and mine.”

Robinson avers that “the president is often wrong but never in doubt, a know-it-all on subjects about which he knows nothing. He is not, for example, any kind of expert on horse racing. Yet when Maximum Security was disqualified in last month’s Kentucky Derby, Trump immediately sent out an authoritative-sounding tweet:

“The Kentucky Derby decision was not a good one. It was a rough and tumble race on a wet and sloppy track, actually, a beautiful thing to watch. Only in these days of political correctness could such an overturn occur. The best horse did NOT win the Kentucky Derby – not even close!”

Political correctness? About a horse? “What’s wrong with the man,” Robinson asks.

“Even more dangerous than Trump’s ignorance is the near-impossibility of changing his mind about certain things. It’s one thing to stick to one’s guns. It’s another thing to stubbornly resist fact and reason — especially when the stakes are so high.”

I have developed in recent years my own list of words to describe Trump, most of them of the derisive type, which he richly deserves, as he believes that what he says illustrates, which is far from the truth.

I won’t list my words here, but Robinson goes one better by saying that “only Trump can pack this much ignorance into a few words.”

I wish I would have thought to write or utter those words.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 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 of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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 thought of the question in the headline on the last day of our Danube River Cruise that is due to end in Budapest, Hungary.

Along the way, my wife and I visited several sites in Germany which called to mind, again, the evils of the Nazi role in World War II, which, of course, started with Adolph Hitler’s vision to take over the world.

So, I thought, Hitler committed war crimes that should have subjected him to a trial along with many of his minions (see below). U.S. President Donald Trump also has committed crimes, though not in war, at least not yet.

Why not subject him to a political crimes trial?

I supposed you could call that impeachment. The risk is that, however much he has earned impeachment, subjecting him to it would tend to cement his re-election to another four-year term. All the so-called “Trumpians” would really to his cause.

Still, who knows? An impeachment trial might produce enough facts that even, (a) the Senate would have to consider going along with the House to convict, and (b) American voters might even learn that Trump is evil enough to avoid casting ballots for him again.

On our river cruise, one of mid-trip stops was at what is called “The Documentation Center” in Nuremburg, hard by the Zeppelin Field where Hitler held rallies to call thousands of Germans to support his vision.

Of course, it is possible that few German citizens knew at the time that Hitler’s vision called, not just for restoring the German economy after World War I and its aftermath, but for exterminating an entire race of the people, the Jews, which he nearly managed to do, killing more than six million of them.

A number of Hitler’s aides were called to account in a War Crimes Trial in Nuremberg just after the war. Twelve of them were sentenced to death and many others to long prison terms. It’s unfortunate that Hitler could not join them, for he had committed suicide in his “bunker” as the war ended, thus avoiding a fate that would have shown his evil to the world.

He deserved a War Crimes trial and a death sentence, which he managed to produce at his own hand.

So, you may ask, what has Trump done – or not done – that warrants a political crimes trial?

Here’s my list:

• He has not defended human dignity.
• He has not called on Americans to respect other peoples and other races.
• Rather, he has sown discord and dissension at every turn.
• He has denigrated immigrants, labeling all of them to be criminals not deserving a new chance in America.
• He has considered women to be objects for whatever he wants to do with each of them.
• He has ridiculed anyone who doesn’t agree with him, including, incredibly, U.S. war heroes such as the late Senator John McCain and Seal Team leader William McRaven.
• He has refused to negotiate with Congress on anything, believing that his way always in the right way.
• He has refused to recognize middle ground. Either his way or the highway. So, compromise be damned.

Given all of the uncertainty of a Political Crimes Trial for Trump, perhaps the best approach would be limit him to one term in office. Let’s hope for that outcome in 2020 regardless of whether he gets what he deserves, which is the trial.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 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 of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

To say that Trump goes overboard is an understatement.

He did so again yesterday when he had the temerity in Europe to suggest that “Britain should go for a no-deal Brexit with the European Union and refuse to pay the agreed upon” money in the divorce bill.

I write this as I am sitting on the Scenic Amber, our river cruise ship as we travel down the Danube toward Budapest.

Now, what I know about Brexit could be written on the head of a pin – or least summarized in Wall Street Journal and Washington Post newspapers, which I read daily.

But, the following Trump comment says volumes:

In negotiating deals when it comes to Brexit, Trump said, “If they don’t get what they want, I would walk away. If you don’t get the deal you want, then you walk away.”

That is not negotiating.

It is juvenile behavior. It’s the “take your toys and go home when you don’t get what you want” idea.

Trump fancies himself a supreme negotiator.

He is not.

He is a dictator.

I can hear him saying, “I want what I want and I am going to get it whether you like it or not.”

No wonder leaders in Congress have difficulty negotiating with Trump.

Some say it is like “negotiating with jello. Poke it one way and it pops out the other way.”

Let’s say that, in “negotiating” with Trump, you establish a tentative agreement somewhere in the middle. You get something. You give something.

For Trump, this agreement represents only a new floor. He then ups the ante as he tries to get what he wants, no matter what the other side wants.

That’s not negotiating. It’s just another sign that Trump is not up to holding the top political job in the U.S.

I wish he would shut up in the United Kingdom. Too much to ask, you say. No doubt. But at least that’s half-way around the world and not at home where what he says would tend to matter more because a variety of folks pay attention him,

In the U.K., not so much.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 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 of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

Startling.

Appalling.

Abominable.

Grotesque.

Come up with your own word.

I came up with these after visiting the Documentation Center in Nuremberg, Germany, which is near the Zeppelin, a field Hitler used as a Nazi rallying point to spread his gospel of hate back in the late 1930s.

On our river cruise on the Danube, we were told here that the field and the Documentation Center exist to help make sure Germans and the rest of the world don’t forget the atrocities of Nazism and, thus, with memory, don’t repeat them.

From 1933 to 1938, the National Socialist Party in Germany held its rallies in Nuremberg. Remains of huge structures still bear witness to how Hitler formulated a propaganda machine to spread his gospel of hate as he emerged from an orifice above the huge crowd to salute “Heil Hitler” and expect salutes in return.

Some call the Documentation Center a “museum,” but that term is a bit inaccurate because the word museum could conjure up positive images. This exhibit is not positive; it provides a horrific glimpse into the gross misdeeds of a despot, Hitler – misdeeds that almost exterminated an entire race of people, the Jews, and misdeeds that many Germans today want to remember so such an atrocity never happens again.

The last exhibit in the Center is a summary of the Nuremberg trials, which found 12 high-level Nazi officers guilty of atrocities that resulted in the death penalty, plus found a number of other officers guilty of crimes that produced long prison sentences.

The executions were carried out in Nuremberg, but, unfortunately, the acknowledged #2 Nazi, Herman Goering, escaped execution at the last by swallowing a cyanide pill that no knew he had somehow obtained.

Of course, the architect of the holocaust – Hitler – escaped standing trial for his crimes when he killed himself in a bunker just after Germany had lost the war. There has been a dispute as to whether Hitler actually killed himself or, instead, somehow escaped. Our guide said most Germans believe he succeeded in committing suicide, which, if you think about, was a good way for him to go – perhaps not what he deserved in the sense of the fitting character of an execution, but, still, an ignominious end.

I have been in Germany a couple times in the last few years and, each time, my mind races along to draw comparisons between Hitler and Donald Trump.

For me, the parallels are stark, though there is at least some distance between the two. Hitler was guilty of genocide and Trump is not. I also hesitate, other than through this blog, to talk to some of my friends about this because they appear to revere Trump, believing he is the answer to the future of the our country.

I don’t believe that, so here are the parallels I see between Hitler and Trump (and, for this use, I use present-tense verbs, which pertain to Hitler as if he were here today, as well as to Trump who, unfortunately, is here):

• Each exalts himself and “his race” by denigrating others.
• Each practices gross dishonesty as a stock in trade; truth is no barometer.
• Each produces propaganda to extend their message to the masses.
• Each expresses no value for human life. For Hitler, it was exterminating Jews. For Trump, it is blaming immigrants for everything, though they are not guilty as Trump contends – most of them just want a better life.
• Each had no relevant experience for the top political job in their countries — Germany and the U.S.
• Each appeals to the worst instincts in people, fomenting hate and atrocity, not goodwill and collaboration.

Both Hitler and Trump rose to power by contending that their country had to rise again. To Hitler, it could have been “Make Germany Great Again,” as a way to recover from the devastation of World War I and the post-war subjugation of Germany by those who “won” the war.

To Trump, his pet slogan is “Make America Great Again.” For the life of me, I have no idea what he means by those words because, for me, his policies do not make America great again, though they do represent a rallying cry for his supporters. But that’s all.

Both Hitler and Trump manipulate the media for their own ends. Hitler used a movie documentarian to make a propaganda film about his vision of Germany that managed to send his message, first delivered at the Zeppelin, out broadly to the German people, even if millions of Germans were not able to join the 500,000 persons who crowded onto the field.

Like Hitler, Trump also doesn’t know how to tell the truth about anything. Instead, Trump relies on propaganda, apparently believing that, if he says something, it must be true. The Washington Post Fact Checker column has counted an incredible tally of more than 10,000 lies since he took office and Fox News, with Trump’s steadfast support, continues to parrot his views as if they are gospel.

Perhaps it is good for me to be in Europe, including in Germany, in the sense that, being here, reinforces my commitment not to settle for Trump’s supposed “doctrine” in my country, given the history of what Hitler did to Germany and, in fact, the rest of the world – and what I feel Trump is doing to “my” country.

I sometimes wonder how the German people convinced themselves to submit to Hitler’s atrocities. It is likely that many of them were either ignorant or brainwashed.

I refuse to be subject to the same frailties – submitting to a tyrant, Trump, who leads this country down a path that, for me, resembles what Hitler did in – and to – Germany. Trump’s vision for America is not my vision for America.

So, I hope Trump is a one-term president. We might not survive a second four years.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 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 of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

Issues of socialism came to mind this week, though I never lived under such tyranny.

What prompted thoughts of socialism involved our ground tour guide in Prague, Czech Republic, where my wife and I spent three days on the way to a river cruise on the Danube.

The guide reported that her mother, still alive in Prague at the age of 73, yearns for a return to the socialist state in the Czech Republic. The reason? She feels that collective action, not individual action, would protect her in her old age.

Her daughter, the guide, relishes the ability, in a non-communist state, to be able to think for yourself, discuss subjects, and practice creativity. All are banned in communism.

Socialism also came to mind as I read a piece by author Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street under this headline:

Socialists Don’t Know History

Young people don’t remember the Soviet nightmare. But what’s Sanders’s excuse?

Epstein continued:

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. I can’t help but mumble this famous sentence from Karl Marx’s ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ whenever I hear about the socialist wing of the new — and distinctly not your father’s — Democrat Party. Socialism caused the deaths of more than 100 million people under Lenin, Stalin and Mao, but young progressives (I dislike that word to describe someone who wants to change because the change support surely does not represent “progress) in the U.S. want to give it another go.”

As the headline says, Epstein gives some of the young people a pass because they did not see or live through the history of previous socialists movements, such as in Russia or the Czech Republic.

But he gives no pass to Senator Bernie Sanders who fancies himself, again, as worthy of being president as he stands on a platform of socialism.

It is hard for me to fault the woman in Prague who worries about her future.

It is not hard for me to fault Sanders – and others like him – who believe that government is the answer to every problem.

Epstein wonders if Sanders, who proudly calls himself a “democratic socialist,” actually is practicing a real political dogma. “Democratic socialist,” Epstein avers, is much like “military justice” or “good kosher meal,” — an oxymoron. Under socialism the state always takes priority over the people. “Unfortunately,” as Win McCormack writes in the New Republic, “no self-identified socialist regime in the world — all of which have been installed by professional revolutionists in the Marxist-Leninist tradition — has ever been the least bit democratic.”

More from Epstein:

“Many Democrats who are looking to socialism are not old enough to remember the more than 70-year-long socialist horror movie called the Soviet Union.

“Throughout history under its various regimes, in its pursuit of a spurious utopian equality, socialism has produced no great art, profound thinkers or enduring science. It has been death on entrepreneurship. Yet it is an idea — or, more accurately, an ideal —that refuses to die. The socialism currently advocated by a segment of the Democrat Party brings to mind another famous sentence, this one by George Santayana: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’”

Notice the phrase above – “It (socialism) has been death on entrepreneurship.”

One of the virtues of capitalism is its emphasis on the power of effort, energy, verve and “entrepreneurship.” Without complimenting myself too highly, those were exactly the phrases that we – myself and two partners – claimed when we started our firm, CFM Strategic Communications, about 30 years ago.

Without entrepreneurship and the freedom of individual action, we would have been dead in the water.

Besides the all of the “e’s” – energy, effort and entrepreneurship – we also benefited from one of my previous bosses, an Oregon congressman, called being “a fiscal conservative with a conscience.”

That is part slogan, of course, but it also represents a commitment to help those who happen to be less fortunate than you, even, as in our case, we started and ran a business. As a firm, we supported a variety of good causes, including representing some worthy clients on a pro bono basis.

So, I say, tell Bernie Sanders and his ilk to acknowledge the lessons of history and disavow socialism. No chance, you say. Probably right.

But, if those who favor capitalism would behave smart when it comes to a “social conscience,” we would see huge benefits from the commitment and would not follow down a negative path advocated by Sanders and others running for president from the left.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 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 of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

If you need something to convince you that the Holocaust is a true fact, then visit the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague in what is called the “Jewish Quarter.”

That is where I am writing this blog, the second on our river cruise trip to Europe, which began with land tours in the Czech Republic’s largest city and progresses tomorrow to Nuremburg where we are scheduled to board our Scenic Cruises ship for a trip down the Danube.

Regarding the Holocaust, I don’t need convincing. I am Holocaust believer, not a Holocaust denier.

Visiting the Pinkas Synagogue today was a sobering experience.

Aaron Meshulam Horowitz, a prosperous merchant in his day, built the synagogue in 1535. But, today, the focus of the synagogue is its walls. They are inscribed with the hand-written names of 77,297 names of Czech Jews sent to the gas chambers during the Holocaust.

Yes, 77,297.

It is a number that, in some ways, could pale in comparison to the six million Jews who were exterminated by Adolph Hitler and those who followed his incredible orders. But, there is no way for the pale to remain if you even take a stab at noting the names on the walls.

Real people.

Real deaths.

Real cases of children watching their family members die.

Real verification of Hitler’s plan to exterminate a complete race of people.

Here are my wife’s comments on our Synagogue visit:

“There has been a Jewish community in Prague since the 10^th century. During the 12^th century, it was deemed that Jews and Christians had to live in separate areas, so an area of Prague was walled off for them.

“In the 16^th century, there were 11,000 inhabitants. As Jews could only be buried in their own area, an unkempt cemetery reveals the different levels of the dead — as many as 15 deep.

“Various eras brought prosperity, including in the 1890’s when walls around the area were torn down and there was great wealth for Jews, some of whom built amazing Art Deco mansions (which now house designer shops).

“When the Nazis came to power, it was a different story. Jewish leaders had to organize groups of 1,000 at a time to be sent out of the city. We don’t know if they knew where people were being sent. Before the groups were shipped out, they had to hand over any money, jewelry, and the keys to their homes.

“Some were sent first to a ‘model camp,’ Terazin, designed to show the world that the Nazis were humane. Children were given school and art and drama lessons — before being sent to their deaths at other camps.

“A total of 8,000 children were sent to Terazin. Only 240 survived. One of the rooms in the Pinkas Synagogue museum is covered with children’s drawings of camp life — with their birth and death dates. Most we saw died between 10-14 years of age.”

On a couple previous visits to Europe, including to Germany, I have come face-to-face with fact of the Holocaust. Face-to-face in the sense of being where the Holocaust literally occurred.

Three years ago in Germany, I first came to a perception that, in many ways, President Donald Trump reminds me of what I know about Hitler, which mercifully is not as much as many scholars. Still, Hitler was the generator of the Holocaust.

He rose, at least in part, by promising to exhalt the economy and race of Germans after World War I. One of his ways of doing do was to exterminate an entire race of people, the Jews. He made progress on the almost-too-hard-to-comprehend task by eliminating six million members of the Jewish race, including the 77,297 Czech Jews.

In what I only hope may not be a similar way, Trump has risen, at least in part, for his attack on immigrants – those from other countries, including and especially Mexico, who want to embark on a new life.

He appears to believe, in contrast to America’s long history of welcoming immigrants, to believe that all of them are criminals. No. For the most part, they are individuals, often with families, who want a chance at freedom.

No doubt, the visit to Pinkas Synagogue will stick with me for awhile. Good. Good in the sense that grasping more of man’s incredible inhumanity to man will underline the admonition to avoid continuing to go down a path of personal destruction, as if you are better than someone else.

As I was writing this blog, I learned that the Oregon Legislature passed a bill to require Oregon schools to teach about the Holocaust. Good for the Legislature.

According to a story by the Associated Press, ten other states require some level of genocide education in schools; now Oregon joins those ranks for the 2019-20 school year.

Meanwhile, a recent poll found that one in five American millennials surveyed were unfamiliar with the Holocaust.

Some say those awareness gaps carry consequences. In fact, the Anti-Defamation League reports that anti-Semitic incidents at K-12 schools in this country quadrupled from 2015 to 2017.

One of the most notable anti-Semitic propaganda movements to develop over the past two decades has been the organized effort to deny or minimize the established history of Nazi genocide against the Jews.

In the United States, the movement – known as “Holocaust Deniers” — has publicized itself primarily through editorial-style advertisements in college campus newspapers. The first of these ads claimed to call for “open debate on the Holocaust;” it purported to question, not necessarily the fact of Nazi anti-Semitism, but whether this hatred resulted in an organized killing program. A more recent ad has questioned the authenticity of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

So, I say, forget the deniers. Deny the deniers.

Instead, remember the Holocaust. It is a sad chapter in world history that dare not be repeated again lest we end up with future Pinkas Synagogues with names of those who died because of man’s inhumanity to man.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 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 of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

The headline on this blog makes it seem like I know more than I do about the U.S. and the Czech Republic.

I know just enough to be dangerous.

Still, as I write this, I am sitting in Prague where my wife, Nancy, and I will be spending another day or so before heading four hours away by bus to Nuremberg where will board our ship for a river cruise on the Danube.

We are on a line called Scenic, which began as a land-tour operation in Australia, then expanded to river cruising in Europe. One of the good things is that – and this could be true of more lines than Scenic – once you pay your will you are done.

Everything is covered, including wine and tips.

Should be a fun and rewarding experience where we will see a lot history, as we have done in several previous European river cruises, including on the Rhine, Mosel and Senn.

On the Senn, one of the highlights was a visit to the D-Day battlefields where we saw so many graves that, I suppose, to call the visit a “highlight” is not altogether accurate, given the gravity of so many graves.

This time, here in Prague, on a four-hour walking tour of the city with our guide, I gained a couple of quick perceptions:

1. It was raining here yesterday, which is not an unusual occurrence in Prague. The Czech Republic is surrounded on all sides by various mountain ranges, so, in a way like Oregon, rain is a fact of life.
2. It is possible that the United States and the Czech Republic have one other unfortunate fact in common: The countries are led by a crazy person.

In our case, of course, it is Donald Trump who continues to confound, not only in the U.S., but also around the world with his erratic behavior that, for me, conjures up the image of a TV entertainer who has no idea what he is doing in the nation’s highest political office.

In the case of the Czech Republic, the culprit is Milos Zeman, now more than 80 years old who appears to have a good chance to continue leading the Republic.

He has a fondness for alcohol, so much so that our guide told us, in one TV shot of his performance as president, he was seen tottering toward the door of the meeting room without any ability to find it.

Our guide told us he roles with an iron hand in a country that is “a republic,” which is better, I guess, than communism. Like Trump, he also appears to have a yen to get close to Russian premier Vladimur Putin. Some in the Czech Republic worry that, with at least a personal lead toward the Russian, Zeman could enable a Russian takeover of the Czech Republic – again – or, at least, more Russian influence.

Perhaps that is an overstatement and, of course, I don’t know much about all of the political to-ing and fro-ing in this country.

Our guide, who said she risked a bit by getting into politics – and, also, religion – did say the country is roughly 50-50 split between wanting a Republic, which could be described as a democracy, and communism, which could build a bridge to Russia.

Here is the way my wife described the issue in her first-day travelogue of our trip — a description that brings a major political issue down to earth:

“Our guide is probably 45 years of age, so was a child in the Russian-control years and revels in freedom to travel and to share opinions. She is worried that the current president’s coziness with Putin will bring back too much Russian influence.

“Her mother, on the other hand, is 73 and, while she endured hardships (months of no toilet paper, queuing up for food, worrying about KGB spies, etc.), is fearful of spending older years without the expected government support of communist years.

“Our guide thinks the country is divided 50/50 over whether communism or current freedom is better. We would not have expected that.”

Here is what the New York Times wrote in 2018 after Zeman won his second term in office.

“After an election campaign centered on questions of civility in politics and the Czech Republic’s place in Europe, voters decided to stick with President Milos Zeman and his often-caustic brand of populism that has stoked resentment toward Muslim immigrants and ruptured the country’s relationship with its allies to the west.”

So, politics is askew in the Czech Republic as it is in the U.S.

Further, we also did not know in advance that the Czech Republic is basically an atheist society, which has been true since the Russian years. That is true even though there are wonderful old churches, with high steeples, all over the city.

More from Prague and the Danube if I think or more to write.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 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 of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

Here’s a far-fetched idea.

How about those who represent us in today’s political system – as well as us, as voters – work together to solve the country’s problems?

Possible?

Should be.

Probably not.

This notion crossed my mind as I listened a few weeks ago now to Attorney General William Barr announce release of the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a report about possible collusion with Russians to affect the 2016 election.

It would seem possible that, with release of the report, at least in a redacted version that was in line with statutory authority, the release would mean the end of occupation or preoccupation with the Mueller report.

No.

Democrats didn’t get what they wanted, potential criminal charges against Donald Trump, but they are not inclined to stop their hunt for a way to bring Trump down through investigations.

In many ways, I wish them success for, in Trump, we have the nation’s worst ever chief executive, someone who tries to lie his way out of every dilemma he faces, most of them of his own making.

Here’s the way the Washington Post, Dan Balz, one of the most experienced journalists in Washington, D.C., put it the other day:

“The Trump presidency long has been an exercise in normalizing extraordinary behavior, with President Trump repeatedly stretching the limits of what is considered appropriate conduct by the nation’s chief executive. The report from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III puts into high relief the degree to which President Trump has violated the norms.

“The principal focus of the special counsel’s investigation was on questions of criminality. But there is more than the issue of what rises to the level of criminal conspiracy or criminal obstruction when judging a president and his administration. These are questions that go to the heart of what is acceptable or normal or advisable in a democracy. On that basis, the Mueller report provides a damning portrait of the president and those around him for actions taken during the 2016 campaign and while in office.

“The 448-page document is replete with evidence of repeated lying by public officials and others (some of whom have been charged for that conduct), of the president urging not to tell the truth, of the president seeking to shut down the investigation, of a Trump campaign hoping to benefit politically from Russian hacking and leaks of information damaging to its opponent, of a White House in chaos and operating under abnormal rules.”

So, the Mueller report, far from exonerating Trump, described him in accurate terms. According to Balz, “President Trump repeatedly stretched the limits of what is considered appropriate conduct by the nation’s chief executive.”

An understatement!

Still, Democrats would be better off if they would get about the business of governing. That would be the best way to hold Trump to account, defeating him in 2020.

If the Ds just head off into further investigations of Trump, however they would be warranted given his abhorrent content, what they could do is fuel Trump supporters to elect him again. Perish the thought of four more years in the Oval Office.

So, with all of us dominated by bad news every day, is there a chance for public officials in the Nation’s Capital to work together? That’s the question I asked at the beginning of this post and I suspect the answer is a hearty and unfortunate no.

I wish we could return to a time when Republicans and Democrats found a way to disagree agreeably.

No longer and all of us, as citizens, are worse for the descent into the political abyss.

 PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 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 of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

This could be a long list – Americans President Donald Trump has criticized because they don’t agree with him.

But, for me, two of the most perplexing involve true American war heroes – the late Senator John McCain and the retired Special Forces officer, William McRaven.

On this Memorial Day, far better to honor their service.

Trump, who has no military service of any kind – he selfishly managed to avoid any obligation – has no standing to fire off criticisms of two military veterans who played major roles in preserving freedoms in the United States of America.

You can argue about Trump until you-know-what freezes over, but, if you were to defend Trump’s diatribes against McCain and McRaven, you would illustrate your own insensitivity, as well as failure to grasp history.

Trump’s criticism of McCain are well-documented.

I have no idea why Trump felt it necessary to say the McCain deserved no credit for his military service because “I (Trump) like people who weren’t captured.”

That McCain survived incredible torture at the hands of the Vietnamese and returned home to run for and win a U.S. Senate seat is the stuff of legend. Whether you agreed with him on policy issues or not, he was a true American hero.

The same can be said of McRaven, once the longest-serving Navy SEAL on active duty. He played key roles in thousands of dangerous missions abroad, including commanding the one that cost Osama bin Laden his life.

McRaven, who is retired, has warned that the greatest threat to American democracy he has seen during his decades in national security comes not from a rogue regime or a terrorist group but from the caustic rhetoric of Trump.

“An attack on the press or an attack on the Department of Justice, or to imply that there are dirty cops at the FBI or to ignore the intelligence community.  Trump’s conduct really undermines our institutions,” McRaven told USA TODAY in an interview about his memoir, ‘Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations.’ “And that,” McRaven said, “makes me fearful of the future direction of the nation.”

McRaven’s service in daredevil missions includes the following: Intercepting Somali pirates, freeing American missionaries held hostage in the Philippines, interrogating Saddam Hussein and recovering long-frozen military remains in British Columbia.

Of course, Trump denigrates all of this, hammering both McCain and McRaven because they didn’t or don’t agree with him.

Trump’s behavior and conduct is all the more incredible to me as all of us, as Americans, look forward to celebrating Memorial Day on Monday. This is a time when we should respect the sacrifice of all those who served with distinction and honor.

That includes McCain and McRaven.

I’ll take their character any day over Trump, the buffoon who thinks he rises as he ridicules.

PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: 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 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 of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and 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.

At first blush, it may sound a bit juvenile.

Leaders of the Executive Branch in Washington, D.C. won’t subject themselves to questions, in public, from legislative staff.

The Members of Congress, if they were summoned to the White House or to a federal agency’s headquarters, would expect to speak to the top person – either the president or the agency director – not lower-level staff.

All of this came to mind late this week as I was reading a piece in the Wall Street Journal by columnist James Freeman. It appeared under this headline:

Nancy Pelosi Backs William Barr

The Speaker agrees that senior government officials don’t answer to staff

Freeman added: “It’s not easy keeping up with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s shifting position on the conduct of President Donald Trump. But at least for the moment the California Democrat seems to be in agreement with Attorney General William Barr on a key question regarding our co-equal branches of government.

“President Trump abruptly blew up a meeting with Democratic congressional leaders on Wednesday, declaring that he could not work with them until they stopped investigating him and lashing out at Speaker Nancy Pelosi for accusing him of a cover-up.

“After Trump walked out, Pelosi turned to other Democrats there and recounted a story about how Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt had each brought people together to solve infrastructure problems.

“Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to the president, was in the room. ‘Respectfully, Madam Speaker,’ she asked, ‘do you have a direct response to the president?

“Pelosi said she was responding to the president, not members of his staff.”

There!  The co-equal branches point.

Pelosi’s position is in direct conflict with the House Judiciary Committee where the incendiary chair, Representative Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, wants Attorney General William Barr to submit to questions from Judiciary staff, not just elected members of the committee.

Barr, properly, said no.

In a statement, a Justice Department spokesperson described the conditions set by the committee’s chair as “unprecedented and unnecessary.”

“Congress and the executive branch are co-equal branches of government, and each have a constitutional obligation to respect and accommodate one another’s legitimate interests. Chair Nadler’s insistence on having staff question the attorney general, a Senate-confirmed cabinet member, is inappropriate.

Wall Street Journal reader Greg Woods put it this way in a letter to the editor:

“Imagine for a moment that the House invites the leadership of the Senate over to discuss pending legislation. When the senators arrive, they find only staff waiting for them. They would no doubt walk out the door in a huff. The way Congress acknowledges that the Executive Branch is a co-equal branch is by following this simple rule: Staff meets with staff, and principals meet with principals.

“Nadler’s violation of this rule isn’t just an insult to Barr, it is a constitutional insult to the Office of the Attorney General, implying that Congress has supremacy over the executive branch. If Barr does meet with the Judiciary Committee, and Nadler allows a staff member to ask questions, Barr should direct a member of his staff to replace him at the table and direct that staff member to answer each question with: ‘I am not authorized by the attorney general to answer that question.’”

This resonates with me as a former member of the state government Executive Branch in Oregon. I thought then and think now that the branches ought to be – and appear to be – co-equal. The Executive Branch runs government programs and relates to the Legislative Branch.

Mutual respect. Each deserves it from the other.

Many years ago, sitting at the witness table as the deputy director of the Oregon Economic Development Department before a legislative committee, I often had to endure hard questions from legislators. No problem, as long as the goal was policy, not personality.

For me, it never got as bad as it did for one agency head, a friend. He was at the witness table where he was subjected to over-the-top negative questions, including about his personality.

At one point, he had enough. He stood at the table and said, “I don’t have to take this s_____ from anyone,” and stalked out of the room.

I was one of the agency directors in the back of the hearing room and, with others, I nearly rose to give the one who walked a standing ovation. Plus, he was credible enough that he survived the episode.

The point: Developing sound policy on pressing problems requires mutual requires branch to branch. It also requires top leader-to-top-leader contact buttressed by staff-to-staff contact.

It would be good if all of us would remember this key approach to operating in an ever-changing political world that sometimes is not marked by mutual respect, but by the politics of personal destruction.