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.

No one knows the answer to the question in this blog headline.

Not Donald Trump, who proved he doesn’t know what he is doing or what the future holds when he said almost nothing coherent in a nationally-televised speech to Americans this week.

I didn’t expect anything credible and Trump met my expectations.

Thomas Friedman, a national writer who’s work appears in the New York Times and elsewhere, wrote about Trump’s folly this week.

Here is how he started his most recent column:

“If it wasn’t clear before, it is undeniable now.  President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel started a war with Iran assuming that they would trigger quick and easy regime change.  They vastly underestimated the staying power of Iran’s surviving leadership and its military capacity, not only to inflict damage on Israel and America’s Arab allies, but also to close off the most important oil and gas shipping lane in the world.

“This is imposing serious harm on the global economy, including the U.S. stock market, and Trump has no clue how to get out of the mess that he has created by starting a war without thinking through the implications.”

It is tempting for me just to reprint Friedman’s entire column, but, instead, I’ll post excerpts, starting with…

• It is actually embarrassing to watch the American president flip-flopping around, from telling us that the surviving Iranian leaders have pretty much agreed to his every demand, that the war is close to being over and Trump won, admitting that he has no idea how to get the Strait of Hormuz shipping lane out of Iran’s grip.
• If America’s Western allies, whom Trump never consulted before the war, won’t send their armies and navies to do the job for Trump, then it’s too bad for them, he says:  We have all the oil we need.  That is, unless Trump decides to “obliterate” — his favorite word — Iran’s industrial base and desalination plants until Iran says uncle.
• In short, we are watching what happens when you put into the Oval Office an impulsive, unstable man who ran for president largely to get revenge on his political foes.  Then he surrounded himself with a cabinet chosen for its handsome looks and its willingness to put loyalty to Trump over loyalty to the Constitution.
• Add to that Republican majorities in the House and Senate willing to write him blank checks, and it all eventually leads to sloppy, undisciplined decision-making, including starting a huge war in the Middle East with no plan for the morning after.

Friedman says Trump is a “man-child playing with matches — the world’s most powerful military — in a gas-filled room.”

Beyond that, Friedman says “we have a secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who holds extreme Christian nationalist beliefs and, last week, reportedly held a prayer session at the Pentagon in which he prayed for U.S. troops to deliver “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

So, while Friedman is not in charge of anything, what would he do to end the war?

This:

“Trump should set aside his 15-point peace plan — which would be ridiculously complicated to implement — and reduce it to two points:  Iran gives up its more than 950 pounds of nearly bomb-grade highly enriched uranium, and in return the United States gives up on regime change.  Both sides would then agree to end all hostilities.”

Unless something like this happens, Friedman put it this way:  “We are all going to get what Trump deserves, which is more fighting in the Middle East with no reliable end in sight.”

And, to repeat this excellent paragraph from Friedman:  “In short, we are watching what happens when you put into the Oval Office an impulsive, unstable man who ran for president largely to get revenge on his political foes.”