THE UNPRESIDENT

ONE OF THE UNSPOKEN PRECEPTS OF the presidency is that you can’t complain about the job. You are the most powerful person on earth; no one is going to feel sorry for you, whatever the challenges and pressures, whatever the abuse and frustrations and regrets.

For those like Bill Clinton, who campaigned almost from birth, there was a joy about the job even in the most brutal times, and in his final days it was hard for him to imagine giving it up. For others, like Dwight D. Eisenhower, who were more reluctant recruits, the powerful sense of duty made the Oval Office an extension of their other works, just a logical transition. For someone like George W. Bush or Barack Obama, whose paths to the Oval Office were relatively short—a detour in a life headed elsewhere—they did the job, all in, and then left it behind.

With Donald Trump, the nation is seeing something new. Although he flirted with running as an independent decades ago, and as a Republican in 2012, he was never driven by a vision, an agenda or a set of goals. He gave every indication of wanting to win the presidency but not be the President.

That impression, and so much more, is brought to life in Michael Wolff’s explosive and controversial new book, Fire and Fury, a damning account of the first nine months of the Trump presidency that has Democrats salivating and studying the Constitution and Republicans fretting over its conclusions while pretending to criticize it as a hatchet job. The President was so incensed by the book and its many criticisms of his leadership style that he tried to block its publication even after