When I watched Donald Trump standing on his balcony the other evening, visibly gasping for breath and looking as though he was being held up by a pole shoved down his shirt, I couldn't help thinking of President Merkin Muffley (played by Peter Sellers in the wonderful Dr Strangelove).
Muffley was 100 per cent bonkers and with the political nous of a bullfrog; yet compared to Trump he was a veritable Lincoln (which Donald probably thinks is a reference to a classic car).
Muffley, like Trump, was obsessed with his image. So obsessed, in fact, that one of his advisers tells him: "perhaps it might be better, Mr President, if you were more concerned with the American people than with your image in the history books."
Trump, of course, doesn't give a toss about the American people as a citizenry bound together in collective cause, purpose and belief. Never has. Never will. All he cares about is fermenting and fuelling division, setting citizen against citizen and undermining the 'united' in United States.
But what needs to be remembered about Trump is that he isn't just a one-off. And nor is he someone who became bonkers because power went to his head and tipped him over the edge. He won by being bonkers. He won by playing to a gallery that was already enraged by what was going on around them and hated just about anyone they perceived to be doing them down. They roared their approval when Trump told them he would 'drain the swamp'. They wrapped themselves in the flag and flocked to his rallies when he promised to build a wall and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. And while he may never have used the N word in any of his speeches he did make it clear where his racial preferences lay.
His pitch was rabid. His language was crude. His grasp on reality was tenuous at best. He had nothing in common with most of the people he claimed to champion. Yet he won. Not the popular vote (he trailed Hillary Clinton by almost three million votes), but by playing the house rules and winning the Electoral College vote - the only one that actually counts. And he won by ignoring the advice from the grey suits in the Republican Party to play to the centre on key issues. Hate delivers votes in a way that the centre ground never can.
Trump never shied away from any controversy during the 2016 campaign; lied when it suited him and dismissed as fake news anything that smacked of criticism. He laughed when caught out in a lie and then demonised his critics and pointed them out at his rallies. He was, by a considerable distance, the worst ever candidate for the Oval Office and yet 62,984,828 people voted for him.
If the polls are to be believed a substantial chunk of those voters intend to vote for him again this time. And that's because they believe that a second-term Trump, who doesn't have to worry about re-election, will be able to do anything he really wants. That's the message being pumped out to those voters - most of whom remain as enraged as they were in 2016. The last time I wrote about him I suggested he still had a route to victory. But I think that route has been blocked. I don't think he can win.
But even if he loses, America is still faced with a huge problem. Those millions of Trump supporters will be angry and they will want to demonstrate that anger. If their man isn't in the White House they will take to the streets (probably with his blessing). They will be looking for the next Trump and it won't be someone who wants to soften the image or blur the message. These Trumpians/Trumpets will want someone meaner, tougher, undiluted and congenitally incapable of compromise.
Joe Biden is not, however, the man to bring the country together by countering the Trump/post-Trump narrative. Trump's base despise him and will continue to despise him. And I'm not persuaded that the Republicans (the official leaders of the party who acquiesced to Trump's takeover of it) will be able to find a figure around whom the Trump base will rally. So it looks as though the United States is going to be weathering its internal political storms for quite a few years yet.
Which is, of course, good for China and Russia and very bad for the rest of us who care about democracy.
