More on Trump (since I can't drop the subject)

Look, I really shouldn't be wasting time on this fluff. A reporter approached Donald Trump as he was walking away after a press conference and his campaign manager grabbed her arm too hard and roughly pulled her away.  I do not regard this as part of a serious culture of violence around Donald Trump or a generalized attempt to intimidate the press, or anything but a brief exercise of bad judgment on the campaign manager's part.

But, as the saying goes, it isn't the crime, it's the cover up.  And I highly recommend this article on why the cover up has been disturbing.  He appears to have denied the incident, even as he had video footage confirming it, and demanded to know if she was assaulted, why the reporter didn't file charges.  Then, when she felt that she had no choice but to do so, Trump complained how unfairly his campaign manager was being treated, with criminal charges being filed over such a (genuinely) minor matter.  Instead, Trump has fiercely stood by his campaign manager, to the point of threatening criminal charges against the reporter, and saying the incident is too trivial to ruin his campaign manager's life over.  Fair enough, except that if he had simply admitted the mistake in the first place, the damage would have been minimal. The article remarks that such an escalation is harmless enough if it is simply a kerfuffle over a campaign manager grabbing a reporter by the arm.  Now imagine if it had been an international incident between nuclear powers.  It goes on to comment that Trump is simply not capable of de-escalating:

One of the most important skills for a negotiator to have — maybe even the most important — is the willingness to actually make concessions: to realize when you're losing more by fighting for a particular provision than you would by losing the thing itself, and let those things go accordingly. 

Trump can't do that. To him, fighting for things makes those things all the more important. That leaves him, time and again, a victim of the sunk cost fallacy. It makes it essentially inevitable that he'll lose the forest for the trees. And it makes it extremely easy for someone else to control Trump's priorities, simply by picking a fight. 

I'm not spelling all this out simply to show that the central qualification Donald Trump offers for the presidency is an exaggeration at best (though that is also true). The point is that someone with these qualities would make a terrible president.

 Followed by a picture of Richard Nixon, and an account of just how much Nixon let personal grudges run his presidency, to the point of destroying it.

I know my mother once said that Nixon's best trait was his loyalty to his friends, but that he turned this virtue into a vice by making terrible choices of friends.  Trump is doing the same.

Back when George W. Bush was President someone on a blog comments thread said that he combined all the worst traits of our recent Presidents.  He was

More egotistical than Johnson
More vindictive than Nixon
Stupider than Ford
Less competent than Carter
Lazier than Reagan
Less honest than Clinton.  

It was unfair to poor Gerald Ford, who wasn't stupid at all, but otherwise my response was to applaud.  Well, I hereby apologize to George W. Bush.  He made a disastrous mistake invading Iraq and refusing to admit that he had made a mistake.  But it is only now that we are beginning to get a look at what a President who is truly

More egotistical than Johnson
More vindictive than Nixon
Stupider than Ford
Less competent than Carter
Lazier than Reagan
Less honest than Clinton.  

And, I should add, less qualified than Sarah Palin.

 Or, to compare him to other CEO candidates, he is less qualified than Herman Caine, and just as authoritarian as Ross Perot.  Admittedly, Trump has not shown any of Perot's symptoms of outright clinical insanity, merely megalomania.  But I think megalomania can be just as dangerous if carried far enough.  I won't even insult Mitt Romney or Herbert Hoover by comparing them.

God help us all if he wins!