At the end of many Shakespearean dramas, self-destructive leaders are usually strewn dead on stage.

With modern presidencies, we have to watch the poignant tableau of such leaders realizing that they have squandered their chance for greatness even as they suffer the indignity of rejection by those who once sought their blessing.

These painful periods for W. and Bill Clinton, falling low after starting with such grand hopes, are recounted in two new books.

The pen-and-tell by Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer, “Speech-less,” is being denounced by some former Bushies and Republican commentators as a “Devil Wears Prada” betrayal. (Except, in this case, the Devil wears Crocs. Preparing to make a prime-time address explaining why the 2008 economic bailout wasn’t socialism  “We got to make this understandable for the average cat,” the president tells his speechwriters  W. pads around the White House in Crocs, an image that’s hard to get out of your head.)

“The guy is a worm,” Bill Bennett told Wolf Blitzer about Latimer, adding: “He needs to read his Dante. He probably hasn’t read ‘The Inferno.’ The lowest circles of hell are for people who are disloyal in the way this guy is disloyal, and at the very lowest point Satan chews on their bodies.”