The author, a longtime Democrat and legal scholar, says he would gladly accept a golf invitation from Donald Trump—not out of admiration, but to use the informal setting for candid questions about China, Iran and America’s strategic direction. He frames the meeting as a chance for reconnaissance rather than endorsement, insisting that dialogue with an opponent is a pragmatic necessity in a fractured world.
He points to historic moments—Trump’s 2018 summit with Kim Jong Un, Nixon’s 1972 visit to China, Reagan’s Reykjavik talks with Gorbachev, Carter’s Camp David negotiations, and Mandela’s friendship with his prison guard—to illustrate how personal contact, even when awkward or symbolic, can break down imagined enemies and lay groundwork for treaties or policy shifts. Those encounters, he notes, often produced concrete outcomes despite lacking immediate breakthroughs.
The piece concludes that avoiding conversation out of ideological fear only weakens convictions. Engaging across the aisle, whether on a fairway or in a diplomatic hallway, is not a betrayal but a vital step toward understanding the emerging global order.
