@cstross@wandering.shop @lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org @MissConstrue@mefi.social @ParadeGrotesque@mastodon.sdf.org @androcat@toot.cat You're right, his time with HUAC and the McCarthy goons was indeed an early sign. OTOH, he was "just fitting in" with the McCarthy goons. "Just fitting in" so he could be a member of the elite was, I think, paramount for Nixon. He *could* have been great, had he kept better company and been under the influence of better people. That's both (a) a moral weakness on his part to be so easily persuaded to do what the VIPs did, and (b) a diagnosis of American society that the Republican VIPs were so bad. Trump isn't even anywhere near that league. He fails on a much more pathetic level, and did not have the seeds of greatness in the first place.