Trump is an editor's nightmare and a psychiatrist's dream. Amid all the coverage marking the first anniversary of his return to the White House, one story"which did not get the attention it deserved"stood out for me: a Times analysis of how much more the President has been talking and talking and talking. The findings? One million nine hundred and seventy-seven thousand six hundred and nine words in the Presidential appearances, as of January 20th"an increase of two hundred and forty-five per cent compared with the first year of Trump's first term in office, back in 2017.

There are many conclusions to be drawn from this astonishing statistic, including the obvious one, that our leader loves the sound of his own voice, and the slightly less obvious corollary that he has no one around him willing or able to tell him to shut up. It's also true that, in rambling on so much, Trump reveals just about everything one could ever want to know about him"his lack of discipline, his ignorance, his vanity, insecurity, and crudeness, and a mean streak that knows no limits. "It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely," Thomas Mann wrote a century ago ...