Finished with his wild oats, he winds up marrying the head cheerleader, a young woman of some intelligence but—alas—little wisdom who mistakes money and privilege for success and comfort. He usually sell insurance, or cars, or he may wind up as the coach of the high school football team.

The smallest systems of greed and corruption throw up at least one such buffoon in every generation. (If you grew up in a small town, you remember such guy.) The largest systems throw them up by the thousand, by the ten thousand.

Is it any wonder that such a one now and then, with a lot of help from daddy’s friends winds up president? At ease with himself and the world (what difficulty has he ever had that one way or another didn’t work itself out?), he loafs and lopes along, a youngish Gabby Hayes in Dockers, Archie's Jughead always just half a step behind, a latter-day Sancho Panza tooling along in a Mustang Cobra, ready to do the bidding of any wealthy Don who offers him a job.

The privileged and the faux privileged of course recognize him as one of their own and approve and accept his shenanigans in exchange for that easy grin and his fragile but convincing confidence that it’ll all work out in the end.

Not only that. Many of the unprivileged for whom the world is ever a dark and threatening place see such a man, when he one way or another winds up in a position of leadership, as a leader of convincing carefreeness and reassurance (What? Me worry?). His thoughtless nonchalance is powerfully appealing: the world is NOT all bad, people CAN be happy. His only too obvious stupidity removes any last hint of threat or doubt that might arise from occasional glimpses of his money and the vaster stacks of gold behind him.

We’ve had his like thrust upon us several times in the distant past, William McKinley (out of Mark Hanna) being the shining example.

Recently we’ve had two more.

One was a genuine fake, who grew up poor and in Hollywood learned how to mimic this gold-plated aw-shuck-ness to perfection.

The other is the real thing, the beguiling simpleton who wakes up every day in buffoon heaven, richer and with more servants than any king in history ever had, center of attention in any room he walks into anywhere in the world, object of obsequious obeisance by other world leaders. No puny virtual-reality war games for him, he gets to have his hand on the joystick of Real War.

And through it all is that beguiling grin, the cute smirk, that announces to the clever rich and the benumbed unrich: it’s all gonna be O.K. because, look, guys, I’m having FUN! Come with me, the best is yet to be, and let’s all have fun together.

It’s the frat president, the Club Med rec director, the sunny Texas-Yankee yin to Willy Loman’s stormy and despairing American yang.