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 remember when I first heard former president George H. W. Bush utter what became his signature phrase – “A thousand points of light.”

At the time, I wasn’t sure what the words meant just as I’m sure was true for many other Americans. Still, the phrase had a lilt to it, conjuring up a number of positive images as I and others looked skyward to see the point of light. To be sure, an interesting turn of phrase for this president who was not known for being very quotable, yet still substantive.

But, what, in fact, does the phrase mean?

Well, in a piece for the Wall Street Journal this morning, two writers, B. Boyden Gray, White House counsel under Bush, and Elise Passamani, Gray’s director of research, shed light on the answer under this headline:

Here’s the Point of ‘Points of Light’

Trump hasn’t figured out George Bush’s signature phrase. That’s completely understandable.

Here is how they started their piece: “Donald Trump made fun of George H.W. Bush’s signature phrase, ‘a thousand points of light,’ at a West Virginia rally Saturday, saying it was something that ‘nobody has really figured out.’ This wasn’t the first time. In Montana this summer he asked: ‘What the hell is that? Has anyone ever figured that one out? This observation is not unfair, and has more to do with the press’s misrepresentation of the phrase than with either Bush or Trump.”

Boyden and Passamani point that the phrase emerged 1988 when then-Vice President Bush accepted the Republican presidential nomination.

“Bush was praising America’s volunteer organizations—‘a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.’ Even though Bush would later tell the New York Times, ‘I can’t do poetry,’ he returned to this lyrical phrase again and again during the ’88 campaign and his presidency.”

So what does “a thousand points of light” really mean? Bush used the phrase in nearly 200 presidential speeches. They reveal an often-overlooked conviction of his—that there are limits to what government can do, but no limits to what volunteers can do. “A thousand points of light” is shorthand for a philosophy of limited government.

According to Boyden and Passamani, “On April 26, 1990, Bush exhorted his audience to reject the hand of big government in favor of a thousand points of light, joining hands and linking hearts. To his detractors, he added: When we started talking about a thousand points of light, there were a few snickers out there. I had to keep defining what I meant. But I think people understand this. I think Americans understand it. It’s real: One American wanting to help another. So I’m going to continue to say that any definition of a successful life must be the involvement in lives of others—one American helping another.”

I find Bush’s phrase – one written for him, by the way, by Peggy Noonan, one of my favorite political columnists these days — to be, in a word, elegant.

In the Washington Post: Bush’s (and Noonan’s) phrase is elegant—though elusive, as poetry often is. Yet, the more important thing is its intellectual heft. George Bush’s vision of volunteerism as a check on big government and as a crucial element of liberty is worth remembering.”

Kudos to Bush. It would be good if this country would return to the idea that big government is not the answer to every perceived problem. Is there a role for government? Of course. But not one that is automatic.

This is not a partisan proposition. Both Republicans and Democrats, as well as those who claim independence from party labels, should be able to accept of limits on government intervention – accept, as the Post put it, the “intellectual heft of the idea.”

At least in that way, such a focus would allow government to achieve better results in programs that it does accept as being withing its orbit. Volunteerism – “A Thousand Points of Light” – can become a current-day highlight, not something in our past.