When I was starting in business at IBM, I met the owner of Hoffman Men’s Wear in downtown Dallas, whom I have described since as the best salesman I have ever seen. Back in the old computer days, IBM required its salesmen to wear dark suits, white shirts, and conservative ties. As young salesmen, my IBM sales partner and I shopped for our suits with Mr. Hoffman, who always greeted us warmly at the front of his store.
At the suit racks, he put a suit coat on each of us, and while we admired the apparel in his three-way mirrors, he selected a second suit, although we each came to purchase only a single suit. While we were admiring the second suit, he laid out four conservative ties to match the suits, along with IBM-standard white dress shirts. He knew that to dress our best, we needed two suits, which kept us from ever having to wear a wrinkled one. We shopped with him for many years!
Throughout history, the ending of successful wars has featured a massive military parade down the victor’s most impressive boulevard in celebration. This traditional victory celebration changed last Monday. Israeli citizens, instead of a victory parade, massed in Freedom Square, renamed from Hostage Square, joyfully to receive back their family members. The last of those hostages had been held captive just a few miles away in the tunnels of Gaza for over two years.
The event marked military victories, which were necessary, but this was a victory for the peacemakers, who needed to both win the war and get their family members home alive, with Donald Trump orchestrating every strategic move. Donald Trump may have learned his salesmanship from our Mr. Hoffman and then applied it on an international scale in Israel.
First, President Trump allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu free rein to destroy each of the Iranian proxies allied against Israel – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. When they were sufficiently weakened, he sanctioned Israel’s massive air attacks on Iran, then joined them in taking out the Iranian nuclear program, giving Netanyahu political cover when needed.
Trump assigned an elite bargaining team of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, who, with him, designed a twenty-point peace plan with an Arab Middle East coalition to force the last Hamas forces still opposing Israel to release their remaining hostages, which was their final bargaining chip. This coalition was the group that Trump met this past Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh to celebrate the return of the hostages and the end of the two-year-old Gaza War.
In his retail shop, Mr. Hoffman mastered the art of sizing those walking through his doors, reading their means and needs, and maximizing each sale. Mr. Trump had decades of experience negotiating with corrupt New York unions and politicians to get a Trump facility built. He paid crooked city officials to obtain expedited approvals for his local permits and contributed to the campaigns of politicians from both political parties. Trump interacted with his workers at all levels and placed his sons to work alongside them. He worked with financial types and bankers to finance his projects worldwide, providing him with interactions with businessmen and political leaders in many nations.
Donald Trump, the businessman-entrepreneur, learned how human systems operated, making him a master of ‘the art of the deal’ on the broader international stage.
This analysis suggests that the voting public should be more welcoming to political candidates with broader experience. We elect only lawyers and professional politicians who have been in Washington, courting them with handouts for too many years, and with their principal experience interacting daily with other politicians of similar backgrounds. Which significant Washington politician from either political party over the past twenty-five years can you see successfully orchestrating the hostage return and the Sharm el-Sheikh enclave of nations last Monday?
Broad business competence has made the American economy the envy of the world; broader governmental competence will lead us to enjoy the second great American Century. Blessed are the Peacemakers!
TW3
October 16, 2025
John Whitmore Jenkins
