The simplistic notion that my friend’s friends must be my friends, and their enemies my enemies too, has often been held on to and practised by leaders or aspiring leaders of nations. Problem is, it almost always comes back to bite.

Saddam Hussein was embraced by some because he went to war with a West-hating Iran.  That Bin Laden chap was hailed as a “hero” because he took on the dreaded Soviet Union. Mr Trump was warmly introduced to the political platform almost entirely because of his dislike for Mr Obama.

So Mr Romney, when you tell the world how mad and bad Trump is and will be, many observers are probably wondering why it took you so long to find that out.  You along with some in your party gave him a platform simply because he intensely disliked someone you wanted out of the way – or was it more like out of your way? You all simplistically decided your enemy’s enemy had to be your friend and so you embraced him. Unbelievably, this was side-by-side with trying to convince people you had the wisdom and judgement to become leader of what I have no doubt, and certainly am glad, is the most powerful nation in the world.

The saga of the party member that the party now dreads would probably not be happening if, out of some desperation or misaligned focus on what matters, a discredited method for choosing allies and identifying foes had not been used by those who now seek to tell their membership that the friend they engaged to help fight Obama is actually a very bad person. Even worse, folks are getting told this with what seems an unbelievable hope that people’s memories are incapable of going back as little as four years. Mr Romney would probably have sounded more convincing if he had preluded his tirade with a reference to and acceptance of responsibility for his part in anointing Trump as a credible political figure. Please don’t tell us you were naïve enough to think a shared platform and publicly declared and accepted endorsements with the potential leader of the free world, which you were at the time, was happening without expectation of rewards – or did you?

A quick hop around my mother continent and a look at some other places gives examples of politicians’ desperate survival instincts getting them into bed with certain military commanders in order to get their friends or their enemies’ enemies in charge and supposedly boost their own security.  In the process, they put in the directors’ chairs people whose only training was to be actors on the stage.  Actors were now directing too; but with styles totally not suited to or inappropriate for the theatres they did so in. From Ghana to Sierra, Uganda to Pakistan – those military mad men were either friends, friends of friends or enemies of enemies.  Yes, manoeuvring inspired by thinking not dissimilar to the ones that led to granting Trump a political importance he probably wouldn’t had were used and, as with Trump, enjoyment of a place at the top table transitioned into wanting to be at the top of that table. In places saved from such stupidity, even dramatic developments didn’t get armies that had not been made to think institutions were more about persons holding offices rather than the offices the persons held. So while Pakistan’s military tended to jump in every time the wind blew, two assassinations of Prime Ministers and India’s didn’t noticeably flinch.

I remember having to do a presentation on tactical victories that did not deliver strategic victories. The examples are many – wars effectively won but with outcomes that were far from what the victors wanted or expected. The Suez Crisis stands as one of the best examples of this phenomenon with the defeat of President Nasser making him more adored, more respected and more powerful in the Arab world than he had ever been. Unfortunately for Mr Romney and the Republican Party, Mr Trump was employed in the bid for the simple tactical victory that would have been the defeat of Barack Obama. The obsession with the idea that Obama should be a “one term president” was born in the late hours of 4^th November 2008, dominated the proceedings and behaviours of legislatures for the next four years, and probably climaxed somewhere during the 2012 primaries. Mr Obama did get the second term and the Grand Old Party’s current and increasing discomfort can be said to be confirmation that a misguided search for a tactical victory didn’t simply fail, it created a more serious failure at the strategic level.

The examples and lessons of people and nations creating their own problems through simple follies are many. For me, look to the industry that first gave us Ronald Reagan, the former actor Republican politician many now reference in a bid to stop Mr Trump the GOP flag bearer, and you’ll see a lesson there. Hollywood, mainly through Frankenstein was probably trying to teach us that creating monsters is much easy than controlling them.