Is it “smart” for Trump to nationalize 2018 into a test of Trumpism? First of all, some test. It works like this: If the outcome looks good for Trump, he takes the credit. If the outcome looks bad, he shifts the blame. With either outcome, he gets attention. Win-win. Where is the audacity? Where is the downside?

The downside, like the blame, gets shifted. In this case onto us. Onto the United States. There is no win-win for us. Trump is out to grow his image. And victory, setback, rancor and violence are all the same to him. The only defeat is to be ignored, to not be the center. And as his image gets larger, every other American value gets smaller. It’s almost as though there were a connection! How far are we from having a giant portrait of Trump hanging on the Capitol building facing the Mall (soon to be renamed The Trump Dynasty Plaza)? It, of course, would be as tacky as his painting of himself chillin’ with the other Republican presidents, like “Dogs Playing Poker.” Except you can be sure that there would be no other presidents seen in the big public portrait. It would be more like the painting of him that is called, in truly cult-of-personality style, “The Visionary,” but slightly updated to reflect his newly adopted Churchillian scowl, but with totalitarian characteristics.