The number will still be zero when president #45 is sworn in. Precedents and barriers change: We now have a non-white president, and sooner or later we’ll have a Madam rather than a Mister President. But not the precedent of putting people with some relevant experience in the job. Everyone knows this, probably including Trump himself. Being Leader of the Free World might look easy: “If that guy can do it, how hard could it be?” In fact dealing with legislators, budgets, foreign leaders, the press, a fickle citizenry, and an endless flow of life-and-death decisions is nearly an impossible job, all the more so for someone who would come to it as a 70-year-old rookie.

2) Anyone who has seen previous elections knows that Trump is this cycle’s Herman Cain, who had at least served as the Omaha Federal Reserve Board chairman (and who for a while was the highest-polling GOP candidate), or its Michelle Bachmann, who had of course been elected to Congress, or its Al Sharpton. Everyone knows, for certain, that he will fade as the novelty of his histrionic act gets old and as Republican voters begin to think about actually winning. If you doubt this, tell me how much you’ll bet on Trump, and we’ll have a deal.

We know what will happen—that Trump will drop out—even though we don’t know exactly when. We know too that each day spent covering his alleged “campaign” means a day of lost time for the Republicans in choosing their real candidate and developing their themes.

The reaction to Trump’s noxious anti-Mexican comments—positive reaction from some voters who send him “Dittos,” as they once did to Rush Limbaugh, but won’t actually vote for him, negative from all those cutting ties with him—says something about today’s politics of race and immigration and thus is worth mentioning. But any story based on the premise that Trump has any chance of becoming the nominee, let alone the president, is a disservice to the reader. Bob Garfield of On the Media explained this weekend why that goes double for polls showing Trump “in the lead.”

Practicing what I preach, this will be my final mention of Trump until whatever happens in the first GOP debate next month.

3) Given point #1, about Trump’s complete absence of any sort of public-service experience, and given also his “some, I assume, are good people” smear of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, the most delicious put-down of Trump came from long-shot Democratic candidate (and my longtime friend) Jim Webb.

Webb and Trump were both born in 1946. They both graduated from college in 1968, Webb from the Naval Academy, Trump from Wharton/Penn. (That same spring, Bill Clinton was graduating from Georgetown and George W. Bush from Yale.) As is well known, after graduation Webb and Trump went very different ways. Webb went as a Marine officer to Vietnam, where he was badly wounded and highly decorated. Trump joined his father’s real estate firm to begin his career.