Two clocks, two egos, and the gods who are never late

Sophocles put it in four words the Chorus never had to repeat: “Pride breeds the tyrant.” Twenty-five centuries later, two men who believe themselves the smartest people ever to occupy their offices are proving the old Greeks right in real time, on two different continents, on two different election clocks — and both are running out of road. Start with the arithmetic of vanity. Donald Trump has called his own brainpower “off the charts” so many times it has become a campaign liturgy, the sequel to his 2018 boast of being a “very stable genius.” Genius, in Trump’s flowery language, apparently means picking a fight with the Strait of Hormuz in an election year. But a strait does not care […]