One hundred days, too many of them filled with needless drama and gratuitous insult, and still I remember the first full one. Still it makes me cringe.

That was when Donald Trump visited and made remarks at the C.I.A. He had fences to mend with the American intelligence community, whose failure to fall fawningly in line with his nascent administration had prompted him to compare them to Nazis. He stood before a wall of stars that commemorated lives sacrificed for country.

And what message did he bring? What manner did he summon?

He lied, saying that the media had invented his feud with the agency. He lashed out at suggestions that his inaugural crowds hadn’t been the biggest and most orgiastic. To top it all off, he crowed about how often he’d claimed the cover of Time magazine, because who isn’t fascinated by that? Who doesn’t want a running tally? Whose heart doesn’t beat faster when Trump yet again ponders the glory of Trump?

He was president at that point. Vindicated. Inaugurated. He could decide to be big. But he chose to be small, and it was clear then, if it hadn’t been before, that there would be no pivot to dignity, which was either beyond his capabilities or outside his interests.