THIS IS WHY LEADERS SHOULDN'T SURROUND THEMSELVES WITH FLATTERERS

I ain't no student of ancient culture, as Fred Schneider of the B-52s once said, so I'm not sure if this is true:

An auriga (plural aurigae) was a slave who drove vehicles in the Roman circuses....

It has also been speculated that this name was given to the slave who held a laurel crown, during Roman Triumphs, over the head of the dux, standing at his back but continuously whispering in his ears "Memento Mori" ("remember you are mortal") to prevent the celebrated commander from losing his sense of proportion in the excesses of the celebrations.

We know that no one plays this role in Donald Trump's life. In fact, it's the opposite: He's regularly treated to flattery sessions at which Cabinet members compete with one another to see who can be the most excessive in their praise for him.

A president who acknowledges the fact that some people doubt his brilliance might start a war of choice and declare victory prematurely, but he'll probably recognize that he needs to create an aura of triumph. So on May 1, 2003, a few months into the Iraq War, President George W. Bush donned a flight suit, boarded a Navy jet, and landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier before delivering a victory speech before a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner. It's now understood that Bush was merely a passenger in that jet, though he claimed he wasn't, as CNN reported at the time:

Bush said he did take a turn at piloting the craft.

"Yes, I flew it. Yeah, of course, I liked it," said Bush, who was an F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard after graduating from Yale University in 1968.

The speech is now seen as a debacle, but at the time, it worked.

Compare Trump's speech. Zeteo reports:

... if you are the US commander in chief, and you’re one month into a major war that you launched, the one communications job you have is to be able to go on live TV and project calm, confidence, and reasonably high energy to the American people, when you’re telling them how well the war is going.

On Wednesday night – April Fools’ Day, funnily enough – President Trump couldn’t even be bothered to do that. (He’s a former reality TV star; he is supposed to be good at doing TV.) Setting aside for a moment the typically incoherent jumble that pervaded his televised address, the American president delivered a jarringly listless, elderly-seeming speech that did little to inspire confidence – including in his own ranks.

In his own ranks? Really? Apparently so:

During and after his address, an array of Trump advisers, administration officials, allies on Capitol Hill, and rich Mar-a-Lago buddies gave Zeteo their snap reviews of Trump’s message and delivery. (Yes, they asked for the cloak of anonymity, so as to not piss off God King Donald.) Virtually across the board, the president was panned by his own people, with some denigrating the speech as pointless, and others reiterating how much senior members of the administration never wanted this to happen in the first place.

One Trump administration official said the following on Wednesday night: “It reminded me of listening to Joe Biden speak.”

In Trumplandia, that is perhaps the worst possible thing you could say about anyone, much less the sitting president and leader of the GOP.

At times while watching the speech, I thought that Trump is now so addicted to those Cabinet praise sessions that he decided to conduct an auto-praise session, on live TV. He said:

Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks. Our enemies are losing and America, as it has been for five years under my presidency, is winning, and now winning bigger than ever before.

Before discussing this current situation, I also want to thank our troops for the masterful job they did in taking the country of Venezuela in a matter of minutes. That hit was quick, lethal, violent and respected by everyone all over the world....

Our armed forces have been extraordinary. There’s never been anything like it militarily. Everyone is talking about it....

The United States has never been better prepared economically to confront this threat. You all know that. We built the strongest economy in history. We’re going through it right now, the strongest in history. And one year we’ve taken a dead and crippled country. I hate to say that, but we were a dead and crippled country after the last administration and made it the hottest country anywhere in the world by far....

But he said the war would go on for two to three weeks, and he demanded that other nations reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Global markets flipped out. There's a partial recovery now, but it's Iran's doing, not Trump's:

Stocks clawed back earlier losses to turn positive on Thursday as investors continued to monitor the Iran war and rising oil prices....

The three major indexes ripped higher after Iranian state media said that the Middle Eastern country is working with Oman on a protocol for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

A toll, presumably. That's worse than the pre-war status quo.

Also, maybe it was a mistake for Trump not only to promise two or three weeks more war, but to lecture his critics on how long other wars were:

It’s very important that we keep this conflict in perspective. American involvement in World War I lasted one year, seven months and five days. World War II lasted for three years, eight months and 25 days. The Korean War lasted for three years, one month and two days. The Vietnam War lasted for 19 years, five months and 29 days. Iraq went on for eight years, eight months and 28 days. We are in this military operation, so powerful, so brilliant against one of the most powerful countries for 32 days.

Shut up and eat your quagmire, America, Trump seemed to be saying. This could take a while. No, that didn't inspire confidence.