Perspective from the 19^th Hole 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 noticed the word “fealty” in a column that appeared in the Wall Street Journal this week.

I could have opened one of the departments I run, the Department of Words Matter, to discuss this word.

But I decided not to do that and just discuss the word.

Here is what the dictionary says it means:

“A feudal tenant’s or vassal’s sworn loyalty to a lord, as in these sentences:  They owed fealty to the Earl rather than the King; formal acknowledgement of loyalty to a lord.  A property for which she did fealty.”

A bit confusing to read this definition, for it relies on history.  But the point is that “fealty” prescribes bowing and scraping to a lord as if you were a servant.

That’s what Donald Trump, the soon-to-inaugurated president, wants from those who work for him — no from “those who serve him.”

The person who used the word fealty, was John Bolton, the longest-serving national security adviser in the first Trump administration and an assistant attorney general for the civil division at the Justice Department in the Reagan administration.  He is the author of “The Room Where It Happened.”

He probably rues the day he took a job in the Trump administration.

He wrote this:

“Four years ago this Monday, Donald Trump pressured Mike Pence to pursue a surreal interpretation of the vice president’s constitutional role in counting the Electoral College’s votes.  Pence refused, igniting Trump’s fury for not subordinating either philosophical or constitutional principles in service to him, thereby showing ‘disloyalty.’

“Now, Trump is selecting key personnel for his second term.  Although the prospective appointees vary in philosophy, competence and character, one requirement for them is unfortunately consistent:  The likelihood that they will carry out Trump’s orders blind to norms and standards underlying effective governance, or perhaps even to legality.”

So, on it goes.  Trump as lord with vassals and – here’s that word again – those with fealty toward him.