MEN LIKE TRUMP SEEM COMPELLED TO BRING ABOUT THEIR OWN CATASTROPHIC DOWNFALL

HERE IS a quandary that has intrigued me for years.Why do men – it is almost always men – at the very pinnacle of power and prestige appear to develop an irresistible impulse to self-destruct?

Take Richard Nixon. Two terms as vice-president, a first as president with a second term virtually guaranteed – and he has to try to defend, protect and cover up the stupid burglary of theWatergate apartment block. He lied and lied, was exposed and ruined, leaving theWhite House in utter disgrace. And now it has happened again.

Donald Trump was fatally flawed from the outset but toward the end of his first term seemingly deranged. President of the richest nation in the world of the biggest economy in the world, of the most formidable military power in the world. Leader of the FreeWorld, chief of the planet’s biggest democracy after India. And yet he endorses a bunch of thugs who storm his country’s iconic meeting house, the Capitol in Washington.

Now he has lost it all. His own party has walked away en masse, most of his ultra-loyal former staff resigning in disgust. He has been impeached twice. Despite his personal wealth only ostracism and oblivion await. If his elegant and dignified wife Melania is still with him in a year I am the Tooth Fairy.

One has to contemplate the sheer authority of the man in theWhite House to understand the depth of the fall. A single immediate speech to denounce the Capitol-invaders could have saved him – yet he has to condone and praise them. He might as well have put a Colt .45 to his forehead and squeezed.