As he recorded in his autobiography, “I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read.”

I mention this in this place, of a fixed purpose, because it is the clue by which I am to be followed into my poor labyrinth.

On the lintel stone above the bronze figure of Eisenhower are two lines from his second inaugural address: “We look upon this shaken earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose — the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails.”

Most men and women who rise above or venture outside the norm turn out to have a bewildering variety of gifts and defects, and they blunder as often as they pursue a fixed purpose.

Arguably, it has exposed Mr Trumpov as the actor-politician—with a penchant for talking tough, a lifelong aversion to costly wars and no fixed purpose beyond concern for his own interests—that he always was.