It takes a rare skill to make a sizeable proportion of the world, west and east, feel a bit nostalgic about George W Bush.

But step forward Donald John Trump, the President who is to common courtesy what I am to hang gliding.

To describe his brief sojourn on our shores as a serial car crash hardly does justice to three days of insulting your host, interfering in her domestic policy, grandstanding in front of a diminutive 92-year-old monarch, and using a press conference to trash the press.

A man, in short, who gives boorishness a bad name.

Nevertheless there was a sizeable amount of comment in the media about the size and nature of the protests which greeted the 45th holder of what used to be, almost regardless of the incumbent, a prestigious office.

Many people suggested that it was unseemly and disrespectful to treat an honoured guest to a series of marches suggesting he ought to scurry back whence he came.

That’s not my view. It is legitimate to argue that the office of the presidency should not be disrespected.

But it is clear that there is nobody who has done more to disrespect and diminish that office than the man so bereft of sensitivity that he thinks it appropriate to be photographed in Winston Churchill’s armchair on the grounds that he is a modern equivalent.

Before his meeting with Vladimir Putin, Trump tweeted that there had been years of “American foolishness and stupidity” souring his country’s relationship with Russia and the previous USSR.

What kind of leader goes into a meeting with a man like the current Russian president badmouthing his own nation?

His preparation for that meeting consisted of two rounds of golf at Trump Turnberry – an edifice, like all his toys, branded with his own name and writ ever larger.

Meanwhile the investigation into the Trump campaign (and family) links to Russian intelligence gathers pace, whilst the more serious American journalists delve into the murky waters of his finances.

This week, as her husband did before her, Michelle Obama has been speaking at a charity dinner in Edinburgh.

This supremely bright, charismatic woman was greeted as the superstar she is. As a person who knows instinctively how to be empathetic with any audience she encounters.

The contrast with the great pretender could hardly be more marked.