“She’s a transformational wife,” Alex Castellanos, the Republican strategist, told me. “She’s the wife who makes the candidate think he is destiny’s gift to mankind, born to greater things.”

While a trophy wife is admired by her man, the admiring eyes of a Transformational Wife are there to propel her man to the next level. And when a woman who wants to be a Transformational Wife merges with a man who calls himself a Transformational Figure, you can expect a narcissistic blastoff.

Castellanos weaves the common tale of a “great but frustrated” man: “The first wife, and often the second, do not grasp his brilliance or grandeur. The starter wives try to confine him in their small world. But his drive to fulfill his gargantuan potential is too powerful. He rebelliously breaks conventions.

“Then he finds the muse who sees him as he sees himself. He is a man of history and belongs to something larger. She agrees that his rejections have been the fault of the audience. They cannot stare into a light so bright. She directs and channels him, saying, ‘This is what you have to do to achieve your destiny.’