The crazy thing about what I’ve read in Michael Wolff’s searing book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” is that none of it is all that surprising. Not Donald Trump’s lack of intellectual curiosity. Not his horrific slurs about women. Not that aides consider him childlike and incompetent. Not his mountain of lies. Not his obsessive need for praise. Not that he is incapable of focusing on any real policy details.

We either knew or suspected much of this. But Wolff has nevertheless put names with damning quotes about Trump, and written a narrative that has the ring of truth to it, even if some of the minutiae may be questionable.

The book paints an ugly portrait of a man and his administration. It might be wickedly enjoyable if not so truly sad. Many of us have great respect for the office of the presidency -- a sort of reverence we have had since childhood. At a young age, I enjoyed reading presidential biographies written for grade-school kids, even if the publishers tended to deify some of these men and gloss over their flaws. Later, in my journalism career, I got to meet several men who have occupied the office.

I first met Jimmy Carter during his presidency in 1977 when I was invited to a White House news conference held specifically for college newspaper editors. I was editor-in-chief of The Crimson White at the University of Alabama, and needless to say, a trip to Washington, D.C., to participate in a presidential news conference was a heady experience for a college kid. (I wrote about this experience at the time for both the CW and The Tuscaloosa News.) Later, after Carter left office and while I was working for USA Today, I had the chance to interview him and Rosalynn on a number of occasions and was there when they opened his presidential library in Atlanta.

I also had the chance to meet Gerald Ford, the man Carter replaced as president. What I remember most from that conversation was that Ford told me he had spent a night at the Moon Winx Lodge back when he was a University of Michigan student and was in Tuscaloosa on a personal visit. Who would have ever thought that a future president of the United States ever slept at the Moon Winx?

I once interviewed Ronald Reagan before he became president and recall that he spent a great deal of time talking about his love of movies. I also had the opportunity to cover a couple of speeches he made during his presidency, and was on the floor of the Republican National Convention in New Orleans in 1988 when he delivered one of his final addresses as president. Four years later, in 1992, I was in Homestead, Florida at the scene of some of Hurricane Andrew’s worst devastation when President George H.W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush arrived to survey the damage.

I interviewed Bill Clinton for USA Today when he was governor of Arkansas. I later had beers with him and a friend one evening after a meeting of the now-defunct Southern Governors Association. Years later, following his eight years as president, he was the guest speaker at a private dinner in Arizona that I attended with Hearst magazine editors and publishers. He was a flawed man but a brilliant speaker.

What all of these men had in common, along with other modern presidents, including most certainly Barack Obama, was a sense that the nation came first, that the office they held was far more important than any of them. They all had their faults -- most notably Clinton, whose personal behavior was a serious problem that I won’t defend here.

But neither Clinton nor any of these men were mentally unfit to hold the office. They were all well-read, sharply focused, had experience in public service and usually made decisions only after carefully considering the consequences. Donald Trump is not anywhere close to being their equal, and America is paying the price for it.

 

Tuscaloosa resident Mark Mayfield is a former editor-in-chief of House Beautiful and Traditional Home magazines, and was a reporter for USA Today for 10 years. Readers can email him at markmayfield2017@gmail.com.