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.

Every time you turn around, you see President Donald Trump doing or saying something that generates headlines, usually ones that detract from what should be his main agenda – helping the private sector create jobs and boost the economy.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Capital Journal columnist Gerald Seib put it very well:

“Most people prefer to avoid controversy. Donald Trump seeks it out.

“Indeed, it sometimes seems that, if a controversy isn’t roiling, he works to create one and then stoke it. Sometimes this is to change the subject to one he prefers, sometimes to distract attention from the last controversy he wants to move beyond.

“It’s an approach mostly foreign to the worlds of politics and governance, which is exactly what his supporters like about it. Somehow it worked for Mr. Trump as a presidential candidate. We are watching a live experiment in whether it can work as president. Chances are it will always be thus.”

To put it mildly, Trump ran an unconventional campaign to win the presidency. The very fact of that approach drove many Americans to vote for him because they said they had enough of political convention.

The latest Trump feint occurred when he was reported to have revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week. Some U.S. officials said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.

According to a Washington Post story, “the information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.

“The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said that Trump’s decision to do so risks cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and National Security Agency.”

In the Washington Post, Stephen Strasbourg said the action was a “picture not so much of conspiracy or malevoleance, but unfathomable carelessness.”

One of the biggest risks is that Trump doesn’t even understand the tension of U.S. intelligence sources and resources, so, speaking on the fly with Russians he wants to impress them with his own access to detail, thus revealing information that should be confidential.

“I get great intel,” he told the Russians. “I have people brief me on great intel every day.”

As president, Trump has broad authority to declassify government secrets, so it is unlikely his disclosures broke the law. Still, they were stupid, if not worse, by compromising the U.S. international position.

His decision to fire FBI Director James Comey also appeared to divert focus on such issues in Congress as reforming health care and redesigning the country’s tax system. If you look at this situation dispassionately, it stood to reason that Comey should go because he failed to understand his role as part of a national law enforcement bureaucracy, not an independent actor. Reasons to fire him were very well laid out by Deputy U.S. AG Ron Rosenstein in a credible memorandum.

For Trump, the risk is that he compromises his own agenda or at least what, to his supporters, should be his main agenda — to grow the national economy.

If Trump thought about it, it might be assumed he would stay on track and on message. Perhaps he doesn’t think. He just acts in accord with his own egotism.