Michael D'Antonio is author of the book " Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success " (St. Martin's Press). The opinions expressed in this commentary are his. View more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN) Donald Trump seems determined to replicate in a few short years as President all of the Washington scandals of the past 50 years, from Watergate to the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings to the Hurricane Katrina debacle.

Case in point: After first showing unusual restraint when Christine Blasey Ford came forward to say that she was sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh -- a claim he denies -- when the current Supreme Court nominee was a 17-year-old prep school student, Trump on Friday did his best to own the controversy. He tweeted

"I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!"

Comparisons to the Clarence Thomas crisis of the George H. W. Bush administration are inevitable, even though Bush himself did not behave as Trump has. Trump had no way of knowing about Blasey Ford's allegation of Kavanaugh when he nominated the judge for the Supreme Court, but the President's handling of the matter has made it much worse. He has insulted her by calling her "the woman" and instead of asking the FBI to investigate, as Bush did with Thomas, he has said such probes are "not the FBI's thing." This is false.

Of course, every scandal is unique, so exact comparisons to the woes of earlier presidents cannot be drawn. But the echoes are unmistakable and have become impossible to ignore.

Trump's response to the Kavanaugh situation may not be quite as bad as his reaction to the study that concluded that nearly 3,000 people died because of Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico last year. The President has said that he thinks the tally is false and was developed as a political attack. Puerto Rico has accepted the findings.

With Maria already regarded as his version of President George W. Bush's slow response to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Trump's complaint confirmed that his hurricane debacle was proof of his cluelessness as well as his incompetence.

Then, of course, there is the Russia investigation, where the prosecution of Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn brings to mind the classic Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.

Lesser quagmires have swallowed many of Trump's appointees.

Among them: Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, resigned amid ethical scandals; former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, who resigned when his use of private jets at taxpayer expense was revealed; and Rob Porter, a White House staff secretary, who resigned when domestic abuse allegations surfaced. Porter has denied the allegations.

JUST WATCHED Watergate reporters compare Trump, Nixon Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Watergate reporters compare Trump, Nixon 02:08

Remarkably, only one administration official, former national security adviser Flynn, has been removed from office because of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. But here, again, Trump in on pace to outperform four decades' worth of presidents. One has to go back more than 40 years, to Nixon and Watergate, to find as much evidence of campaign-related scandal as has been revealed during the Trump presidency.

Campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents investigating the Russia scandal. In addition to Manafort, the campaign chairman, special counsel Robert Mueller had obtained a guilty plea from Rick Gates, who served in the Trump campaign and in the transition. Michael Cohen , who bragged about being the President's "fixer," has pleaded guilty to crimes related to buying the silence of Karen MacDougal and Stormy Daniels, Trump's alleged extramarital sexual partners, in order to aid the Trump campaign. Trump has denied the affairs.

Daniels is suing Trump and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, is seeking a sworn deposition from the President. Avenatti is making the same demand on behalf of another client, Summer Zervos, who was among a number of women who have alleged sexual harassment by Trump. Trump has denied the allegations of the women, including Zervos. Her defamation complaint has already put Trump in the position of having to answer written questions.

The peril Trump faces in the Daniels and Zervos matters appears similar to the presidential deposition in the Paula Jones civil suit , which was a turning point in the scandal that enveloped Clinton in the late 1990s. Clinton's evasions and lying led to an impeachment trial. (Under oath, during a deposition, Clinton said that he did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.) He escaped being removed from office following a trial in the US Senate.

Most of Trump's problems, including the controversy affecting the Kavanaugh nomination, have recent historical precedent but the number of crises impacting his administration does not. Trump's record is all the more striking because he follows a President, Barack Obama, who suffered only one cabinet resignation due to controversy -- former CIA Director David Petraeus, who resigned after an FBI investigation confirmed that he was having an affair with his biographer -- in eight years. Coming after No Drama Obama, as he was called, Trump has been one-man chaos machine.

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At the White House, insiders have been so aghast at Trump that, in the words of the anonymous writer who penned the recent article in The New York Times, "many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump's more misguided impulses until he is out of office."

Indeed, the man who says he knows how to find and hire the best people has presided over a team in constant turmoil.

The appointees who stand between Trump and his worst instincts recognize what many of us feel. They, and we, don't need a complete accounting of the debacles to conclude that a temperamentally, intellectually and morally unfit man occupies the Oval Office.