I’m all for Senator McCain laying into President Trump. But let’s be honest about what’s going on here. On the one side, there’s the guy who manifestly knows nothing. On the other, there’s the guy who quite clearly has learned nothing.

Of the two, McCain makes the more favorable impression, especially when he deploys high-minded terms like ideals, obligations, and duty. It’s all vaguely Churchillian and that plays well in sophisticated quarters, especially when contrasted with Trump’s crude blustering.

Yet strip away the rhetoric and what we have are dueling forms of ignorance, with each party imprisoned by his own illusions. Trump thinks that having run the Trump Organization he can run the world. McCain thinks that running the world is what God or Providence summons the mystical enterprise known as America to do.