Sophocles put it in four words the Chorus never had to repeat: “Pride breeds the tyrant.” Twenty-five centuries later, two men who believe themselves the smartest people ever to occupy their offices are proving the old Greeks right in real time, on two different continents, on two different election clocks — and both are running out of road.

Start with the arithmetic of vanity. Donald Trump has called his own brainpower “off the charts” so many times it has become a campaign liturgy, the sequel to his 2018 boast of being a “very stable genius.” Genius, in Trump’s flowery language, apparently means picking a fight with the Strait of Hormuz in an election year. But a strait does not care about approval ratings. It does not care about campaign schedules. It does not care about the fragile ego of a man who needs a war to look like triumph. And triumph is exactly what he needs before 3 November, when American voters go to the polls in the most consequential midterms of his second term.

The generic ballot has Democrats up roughly four points, a durable lead that has held since spring and represents a six-point swing since he took office. The House, by most forecasts, is his to lose. The Senate map still favors Republicans on paper. But “on paper” is where Pyrrhus won, too. After his costly victory over the Romans, he remarked, “One more such victory and we are undone.” We remember how that campaign ended for him — a victory so expensive it wrecked the very army that won it.

Trump already knows what a courtroom looks like from the wrong side of the bench. He is a convicted felon, thirty-four counts of falsifying business records, a jury’s unanimous verdict in Manhattan.

Trump already knows what a courtroom looks like from the wrong side of the bench. He is a convicted felon, thirty-four counts of falsifying business records, a jury’s unanimous verdict in Manhattan.

The sentence he actually got was delivered ten days before his second inauguration: an unconditional........

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