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.

Opinion writer David French came up with a simple, yet profound description of Donald Trump, the U.S. president who defies description.

Writing in the New York Times, French said this:

“At the core of Trump’s worldview is a belief that the world is a fundamentally transactional place, and that everyone has a price.”

For me, this rings true for Trump who conducts himself in politics like no one else.  I say that based on my 40 years in politics, always in appointed or contractor realms, not as an elected official – and almost always in Oregon.

So, do I know what I am talking about when I mention Trump?  Well, who knows?

But, to put French’s point another way:  Trump says if you bow and scrape before him, he will give you what you want. 

That’s transactional.

Not politics in the sense of finding middle ground solutions to pressing public policy problems.

French continues:

“The Republican Party has done nothing to disabuse Trump of the transactional notion.  Even the religious leaders around him are fundamentally transactional.  As they’ve demonstrated, they’ll put up with virtually any behavior from Trump so long as he delivers on a few, simple promises.  And now — especially when it comes to abortion — he doesn’t even have to deliver on those.  For some, it seems as if access to power alone is compensation enough.”

So, how does French contend that Trump enabled himself to acquire so much power, even amidst his personal foibles, if not alleged crimes?

“The key to Trump’s power isn’t just that he accurately sensed that much of the Republican establishment paid lip service to principle but really cared about power — it’s that he knew millions upon millions of voters possessed similar values.  Their commitments to character or ideology took a back seat to the simple desire to defeat their opponents.  The most important thing was to win.  Anything else was a luxury.

“And, in a strange way, they appreciated him for his brazenness.  In this cynical view, all politicians are, deep down, just like Trump.  They were faking their dedication to principle.  As for Trump, he was the honest crook.  He was like the mob boss who didn’t insult our intelligence by pretending to be in the sanitation business.”

Plus, to French, it should come as no surprise that “prosperity gospel pastors” were among the first Christians to answer Trump’s call.  Their entire religion is transactional — with God dispensing health and wealth in direct response to the financial donations of the faithful.

So, is “all” political activity transactional?

No, even if, on occasion, it seems like it.

“ Not everyone is transactional,” French writes.  “Some people — for better and for worse — actually have beliefs that they’re willing to die for, and Trump is painfully, obviously baffled when he encounters belief like that.

“It’s embarrassing, for example, to watch him flail his way through the Iran war, shifting strategies, objectives and timelines sometimes by the day.  It’s obvious that he thought Iran would be another Venezuela.  In Venezuela, he was able to capture the leader and then more or less bend the remaining regime elements to his will, at least for now.

“But in Iran, he helped Israel decapitate virtually all of the nation’s senior leadership, and the rest of the regime seems to have become more intransigent and less willing to negotiate.”

In Iran, Trump plays the only cards he knows how to play — alternating between threatening death and destruction and proposing business deals.

And, a further reality is that business deals, if they occur, tend to line his personal pockets.

As I write this, Trump is landing in China to meet with its leader, but new came along the way that Trump invited a number of CEO business leaders to join him because, again, he views everything as transactional, including his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.