If you attend enough political speeches, you can sense their tempo, and guess when they are moving towards their conclusion. And if you cover enough conventions and political rallies, you develop tactics for getting in and out of the arena or your row.

In Milwaukee last month, former President Donald Trump told the story of getting shot by a would-be assassin. Then he issued a call for optimism and unity, thanked his family, and praised his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH). Next he spoke briefly on the central themes of the convention — make America wealthy again, make America safe again, and make America strong again.

At that moment, I was surprised and impressed with Trump. I wasn’t naive enough to believe he was a changed man, but a small part of me thought, “Wow, he’s saying sane and relevant things. If he continues to run this way, he will be hard to beat.”

That moment, sitting in a lower row in the upper level, so that I would be surrounded by Trump supporters, was probably Trump’s peak moment. And nearly every step down from the peak has been a deliberate choice by Trump himself.

As I sensed this fine acceptance speech arcing toward a climax, I extricated myself from my row so that I could perch near the exit of the upper level.

A few minutes later, though, I realized that this wasn’t going where I thought it was. I had thought Trump was winding down a 30-minute speech. Instead he was just getting started on his regular rally speech — and that’s an hour long.

So I left.

Outside of the arena, I took in a couple of songs from a string orchestra on the corner of Highland Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. After the second number, a police officer looked up at a TV visible in a store window and said, “He’s still talking.” As I passed a cabbie on my walk across Milwaukee, I heard the former president’s familiar ramblings in his new slightly muted tone.

In the end Trump gave the longest acceptance speech in convention history.

For a brief moment there, about 20 or 30 minutes into his speech, it seemed that we might be seeing a new Trump.

“A new Trump,” of course, is a punchline and has been a punchline since before the man was even sworn in. It’s the flip side of “the walls are closing in.” It expresses a desperate hope that something about Trump may change — even though nothing ever changes.

In those first 30 minutes, Republicans and observers had two reasons to believe they were looking at a new Trump this time. Most obviously, he had been shot and narrowly escaped assassination. Such experiences can change a man.

Also, Trump, in the first debate with President Joe Biden, showed unprecedented self-restraint. Biden was destroying Biden, and Trump just stood by and let it happen — without getting in the way.

That shocking display of self-control in the debate, combined with the sheer shock of getting shot and Trump’s softened demeanor in recounting the attempt, gave folks one last chance to think Trump was different.

But recall that the debate came with time limits, which constrained Trump. His convention speech, in contrast, did not come with time limits.

Also, recall that the average television watcher or journalist saw the acceptance speech as its own unique thing, while Trump saw it as simply a higher-profile Trump rally.

Did Trump hurt himself with his 90-minute rambler? Not really. But he revealed that he is his same old self who will continue to get in his own way.

Since then, and especially since Democrats subbed Kamala Harris in for Biden, Trump has continued to be his own worst enemy. Harris is taking the Biden 2020 approach of hiding in the basement and basking in media adulation, and Trump is attacking Georgia’s popular two-term Republican governor, adjudicating Harris’s blackness, parroting online theories about Biden’s devious plans to usurp Harris, and more.

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Republicans could have nominated a normal conservative, and they would have had the upper hand. Instead, they nominated an incontinent narcissist who is acting the way you would expect him to act if he wanted to lose.

Summing it up perfectly is this image that was floating around the internet last week, whose source I don’t know: