Most of his predecessors did nothing of the kind. They understood that the day belonged to the country, not its leader, and they didn’t conflate the two.

Trump does, all the time, and it’s alternately annoying, confounding and galling. If you’re not thrilling to his vision and submitting to him, you’re possibly guilty of treason — remember that rant? If you’re asking legitimate questions about unholy alliances that he may have forged or conflicts of interest he may possess, you’re orchestrating a coup.

Trumpian logic, more narcissistic than syllogistic, holds that if it’s the president’s job to lift up the country, then it’s the country’s job to lift up the president — spiritually, financially, with appointments for his cronies and sycophants, with jobs for his kin, with applause and of course with parades.

A parade: That’s how this whole impulse to convert the Fourth of July into the Fourth of Trump started, according to reporting by The Washington Post. In Paris, beside President Emmanuel Macron, Trump beheld a Bastille Day procession with all its military hardware, and he wanted the same in Washington, the same for him, tanks in the streets, fighter jets in the air. But that was too financially costly and politically risky, so now this: a tentative plan for a starring role amid the starbursts that less needy and more dignified presidents were content to marvel at, not exploit. For Trump, everything — a national holiday, America itself — is an opportunity for brand enhancement, another tall building on which to slap the letters of his name in gold.

And his response to effacement is hyperbole and swagger: He’s like one of those animals that puffs itself up when predators come around, using illusory might to conceal intrinsic weakness. Is it any accident that in the middle of an escalating feud with congressional Democrats, as the more damning aspects of Robert Mueller’s report sank in and his namesake was served a subpoena by a Republican-led Senate committee, he played host to and praised a loathsome autocrat, Viktor Orban of Hungary; again flaunted his friendship with Vladimir Putin; toughened his talk about Iran; and ratcheted up his trade war with China? For Trump, vulnerability begets a pantomime of super-potency.