That Would Be a No-Vote for the Incumbent: "[Pres. Donald Trump] continually demonstrates an authoritarian, narcissistic belief that the government is his personal tool to do with as he pleases. He erroneously conflates disloyalty to him with disloyalty to the country.".

• Author: Kane, Bradford R.
• Position: POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

POLICY is the cornerstone of governing: driving the budget, allocation of human and fiscal resources, regulation of industries, administration of justice, provision of goods and services, and virtually all other governmental activities. Past presidents based their decisions on policy and the principles underlying them.

Donald Trump is different. Instead of basing his policies on facts and understanding, Trump typically regards each decision as an isolated transaction that is independent from consistent policy. His decisions and actions are driven by his own interests, instincts, and emotions to fit his momentary needs and whims. During his 2016 campaign, Trump said that he would govern on an adhoc basis, applying his skills to issues as they arise, which foreshadowed his transaction-based approach.

Throughout his life, Trump has treated his business and personal activities like a series of transactions that he can reject when he no longer considers them beneficial. He aims to control everything in his midst to promote his self-interests and -enrichment, requiring others to comply with his control.

His well-documented business practice is to enter into a transaction with a contractor, receive the benefit of the transaction, renege on the contract, contrive a reason for doing so, pay pennies on the dollar instead of full payment, threaten a lawsuit, and please himself that the only thing he lost is the chance to transact with that contractor again.

Trump's myopic focus on self-enrichment also led him, as an adult, to collude with his father in shielding millions of dollars from tax liability by transferring his father's assets to him and his siblings.

As president, Trump has replicated his lifelong transactional modus operandi. He takes the value he wants from each person and each issue, and then treats that individual as if he or she is fungible and dispensable. These practices may explain Trump's infatuation with authoritarians and autocrats who have no restraints on their conduct, enabling them to do what they please without accountability. Trump acts as if they are role models, emulating their authority to reward people who are supportive and punish those who are not, but our government does not work that way.

Trump's transactional approach to governing foregoes principle-based, consistent, coherent policy, and instead revolves around an authoritarian individual who is not tethered by policy. It is especially insidious because it ignores the relationship among our three branches of government.

A transactional approach:

* Diminishes the relationships, both personal and institutional, between the President and Congress, and between the President and the courts.

* Treats every issue as its own isolated demand, drama, and power struggle, as if nothing before it or after it matters, disregarding both stakeholders and consequences.

* Emboldens the President to think that he unilaterally can abrogate alliances, agreements, and strategies that incrementally were cultivated by preceding presidents.

* Negates our collaborative, mutually respectful, and responsive system of accountability with checks and balances by replacing it with an imperious, egocentric, imprudent system based on command-and-control, personal whim, and the "cult of personality."

* Assumes that Congress and the courts are subservient to the President, and that they should abide by his decisions, even when capricious, impulsive, or driven by self-interests.

* Reduces issues to mere bargaining chips that cynically can be offered and withheld for the sake of deal-making, regardless of the importance of the issues to constituencies.

* Provides neither consistency between policies nor guidance on decisionmaking processes and determinations on forthcoming issues.

* Deludes the president into believing he narcissistically can undermine, insult, degrade, or threaten anyone and anything to get his way, without consequences for future issues or concern for others on whom he must rely for future results, as if there are no relationships and no carryover from...