One day, back in the late 50s, my father, flanked by my brother, was standing in the hall of the Capitol with a congressman and some of his staffers.

Mike Dowd, a strapping Catholic Washington D.C. police inspector born in County Clare, Ireland, was in charge of Senate security for 13 years and Michael, my oldest brother, was working his way through law school as a Capitol elevator operator.

The congressman began to tell a dirty joke. My dad raised his hand.

“Stop,” Mike Dowd said. “Go say a Hail Mary.” Then he sauntered away with Michael in tow.

Young Michael was a brainiac, with a Google memory before Google, who rarely lavished praise. But he always recounted that story about my dad with great pride.

Someone should have told Donald J. Trump long ago to go say a Hail Mary when he started to say something smutty. Maybe then, the cheesy and cheddar-colored billionaire wouldn’t be reaping the whirlwind tonight, figuring out how to throw a Hail Mary pass to save his teetering candidacy, shore up his cowering party and salvage whatever is left of his brand.

“Everything Trump touches dies,” Rick Wilson, a Republican consultant, told The Washington Post’s Phil Rucker.

Trump has had an apocalyptic effect on the nation. Those who know him well describe being friends with “a hurricane.” And for 16 months, the Republican Party, Trump’s ever-shifting cast of advisers and at times, the media, have all been handcuffed to this hurricane.

He has changed everything about politics. There were some good things in the beginning, like when he turned over the golden apple cart of political hucksters, showing that you can make it without a lot of high-priced mercenaries and a couple hundred million dollars worth of negative ads.

But then came the avalanche of dreadful things: the bigotry, the xenophobia, the misogyny, the violence at rallies, the profane language, the vile epithets and uncontrollable vindictiveness. (I feel I got off easy being labeled merely a wacky, crazy, neurotic dope by Trump.)

This weekend was the Republican Party’s version of “Murder on the Orient Express:” a passel of lawmakers and other G.O.P. luminaries who have been insulted, belittled and politically undermined by Trump joining with lethal coordination to stick the knife in their indefensible nominee — death by a thousand cuts and defections.

But it will be hard for Republicans who waited this long to justify their cowardice in not distancing themselves sooner. The magnitude of the Republican Party’s “disgrace” is almost impossible to articulate, Steve Schmidt, who helped run John McCain’s campaign in 2008, said on “Meet the Press” today.

This year with Trump, he said, we have seen “these candidates who have repeatedly put their party ahead of their country, denying what is so obviously clear to anybody who’s watching about his complete and total, manifest unfitness for this office.”

As repulsive as the new tape is, with Trump giving Billy Bush his philosophy of pawing and pouncing, it is not a shocker.

Trump has always talked like a guy in a steam bath at the Sands Casino in Vegas in 1959. And he has always been surrounded by seamy enablers like Billy Bush, who insisted the poor soap opera actress meeting their bus give Trump a hug, even though Trump didn’t seem to want one any more than she did.

Trump’s defense, given to Robert Costa in Saturday’s Washington Post, sounded like it could have been a wintry Sinatra lament: “I’ve been here before, I’ll tell ya, in life. I understand life and how you make it through. You go through things. I’ve been through many. It’s called life. And it’s always interesting.” (In “That’s Life,” Sinatra sings, summing up Trump’s defiance: “I thought of quitting, baby, but my heart just ain’t gonna buy it.”)

Indeed, the braggart billionaire is blinking in shock that he is suddenly getting called on the carpet for the retrograde behavior he has exhibited his whole life – first as a real estate showboat, then as a TV star, and for the last year as a short-fingered vulgarian in over his head, trying – and failing – to morph into an even-keeled pol.

The Trumpster, as he calls himself, has always just been going for the roar of the crowd, first as a chauvinist pig with Howard Stern and then as an un-P.C. bigot with angry white voters. He always says he doesn’t see himself as a sexist or racist, not fathoming that you are what you say as you try to win the moment.

How on earth did we get to the ludicrous point where not one but two candy companies had to distance themselves from the Trump campaign? First Skittles, after Don Jr. crassly compared a bowl of Skittles to refugees, and then Tic Tacs, after Trump told Bush, as they went to promote a Trump cameo on “Days of Our Lives,” how he liked to pop some Tic Tacs before kissing women he found beautiful. (You know you’re in trouble as a groping Republican when Arnold Schwarzenegger distances himself.)

How on earth did we get to the preposterous place where Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire senator running for re-election, had to eat her own words calling the nominee of her party a role model?

In the end, Donald Trump’s legacy – aside from destroying the Republican Party, ensuring Hillary Clinton’s election and guaranteeing through his ego meltdowns that the first African-American president’s record is not erased by the first overtly racist candidate in modern times – may be hastening the coarsening of society. He presided over the merger of politics with social media, reality TV and wrestling extravaganzas.

Plus, he managed to change not one but two semantic policies of The New York Times. We began using the word “lie” about politicians who tell big fat whoppers. (If I could only tell you how many times I had to look up synonyms for “lie” when I was covering Dick Cheney’s heinous fictions justifying invading Iraq.)

And, in order to capture the creepy offense of the “Access Hollywood” open-mike tape, The Times felt it had to use some vulgarities for the first time in its 165-year history.

I have a message from my late dad for Donald J. Trump: As you make your Hail Mary pass tonight, when you think of diving into the gutter, say a Hail Mary.