Vain, verbose, muddle-headed, ignorant, boorish, morose, opinionated, excitable, scatter-brained, loud-mouthed, meddlesome...all adjectives used at one time or another to describe Kaiser Wilhelm II, the "Kaiser Bill" of fame of the Great War, or World War I as we came to call it after an even greater war (in terms of its extent and destructiveness) came along.
I was asked recently what Roman Emperor the current president of our Glorious Republic most resembled. I found this required a certain amount of thought. None of the great monsters who ruled Rome seemed appropriate; Caligula, Nero for example. One of the most ridiculous of emperors came to mind--Elagablus, I mean--almost immediately, but his oddities were different than those of the present occupant of the White House. The Empire had many bad emperors, bad for various reasons, but I was hard pressed to think of one who is a match.
The fact is, we have a more recent figure in history who matches this president quite well. Wilhelm, or "Willy" as his many relatives in similar positions of power throughout Europe would call him, was most of all a nuisance. But as a ruler of a nation, an autocrat, his influence was vast. He was a nuisance in internal affairs, a nuisance in foreign affairs. His ministers did his best to limit his influence, to control his sudden and sometimes inexplicable intrusions into careful plans and negotiations, but to no avail. He somehow managed to insert himself in a matter and send it spinning into chaos. He insulted, he repulsed, he badgered. A colossal and offensive know-it-all, he offended fellow heads of state with words of advice.
His state visits to other nations were stressful to those involved. Nobody knew quite what he would do or say. He was made an honorary admiral of the British Royal Navy and apparently took this kindness so seriously he thought it appropriate to express his opinion regarding its operations to those who were actual members of that branch of the British military. He hounded the poor Tsar unmercifully, always telling him what to do. He exasperated his grandmother, Queen Victoria. His cousin Edward, who became King of England, thought him malicious.
It seems that as war approached he wanted peace. He managed, though, to assure war came by his fecklessness and his remarkable ability to take inconsistent positions and stances, generally motivated by whoever it was he happened to speak with last. Once at war, as might be expected, he was eager for victory, and so became the bane of his generals' existence. A paranoid, he felt that he and Germany were constantly under appreciated and threatened by all other nations, with the possible exception of Austria, which he merely looked down on.
It appears he actually had some good traits. He may have lived well enough as an eccentric country gentlemen in other circumstances, as it seems he did after he abdicated at the war's end. But he was a loose cannon as leader of a powerful nation in a war far too full of cannon of other kinds.
Which brings us, however unwillingly, to the present. The similarities between these two peculiar men seem evident to me. But the times are certainly different. And while Willy's advisers did what they could to control and discourage him from capering too wildly about the world stage, our president's advisers, such as they are, seem incapable of controlling him nor do they seem to want to discourage him. Neither do most members of the Republican Party who seem content to be complicit with him in many matters. Except, of course, where the money with which they retain their positions is concerned, and it may be that his antics with tariffs and economic policy may finally bring the various shills who make up the Congress to do what's required to stifle him.
It's a very odd thing, that such a man should be where he is, and it makes one concerned regarding the fate of God's favorite country. One prefers one's villains to be intelligent, cultivated, knowledgeable if immoral and unworthy. The devil is a gentleman, so it's said. A small, mean, petty, ignorant and venal man makes a most annoying bad guy. Even an embarrassing one.
