THE PUBLIC LIFE OF WALTER MITTY:

Trump's daydream of rushing into a school during a mass shooting, so at odds with his admitted squeamishness, "was equal parts hilarious and human," wrote Washington Post columnist Daniel Drezner. "The truth is that we all want to be the hero of our own story. If something bad is going down, we like to imagine doing the right thing.... For Trump to try to envision himself--and, it should be noted, others in the room--as heroes is about as normal a human response as I've seen from Trump."

What sets Trump apart is not that he's a hero in his own mind, but that he's a public fantasist, given to loudly extolling embellished or entirely imagined achievements. Earlier this year, ahead of his first presidential physical, Trump said, "I was always the best athlete, people don't know that. But I was successful at everything I ever did and then I run for president, first time--first time, not three times, not six times. I ran for president first time and lo and behold, I win. And then people say, 'Oh, is he a smart person?' I'm smarter than all of them put together, but they can't admit it." 

The best athlete, always successful, the smartest person, a hero who would charge unarmed at a mass shooter. In seeing himself in these terms, Trump recalls Walter Mitty, the nebbish lead character of James Thurber's classic 1942 story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," who keeps escaping from the everyday drudgeries by imagining himself as a brain surgeon, wartime pilot, and other heroic pursuits. The difference between Trump and Mitty is that the fictional character kept his reveries private, while the president constantly blurts them out. 

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