What if Jimmy Carter had been a dimwitted madman?

No other alternate history would better illuminate what the next 1,404 days of President Donald Trump’s term have in store for us. But Carter was an intelligent, if politically bumbling (mis)manager, which is why comparisons between Trump and Carter, though compelling, don’t quite compute.

The chief popularizer of Trump-as-Carter analysis is leftist political scientist Corey Robin. In a fascinating essay earlier this year, he argued that Trump, like Carter, became president and will likely fail as president because the current order within his party is unwinding. Where Carter came to power before Democrats were prepared to make the transition from Ted Kennedy liberalism to Clintonian centrism, Trump is the avatar of ascendant, unabashed white nationalism, overtaking a sclerotic party still dominated by movement conservatives.

But differences mount from there, chief among them the fact that Trump is at bottom an unwitting agent of anyone who flatters him, until such time as they betray him. Where Carter’s bumbling technocracy fizzled out in a somewhat orderly way, Trump’s autocracy of dunces won’t necessarily conform to historical prologue.

There is an argument underway on the right over whether Trump is being led astray by his courtiers or is working in sync with them on an agenda that they lack the skill and public support to pass. We have no clear sense of what an erratic man like Trump will do if the agenda fails; and if he is by and large a poorly served dupe, we don’t know how he’ll react when he finally realizes it.