President Trump’s supporters often argue that his strength is business acumen, developed outside the discredited and dysfunctional political arena. They present him as a bold, instinctive deal-maker, able to look beyond conventional wisdom and find pragmatic solutions to intractable problems.

Think of the 2020 Abraham Accords. Under Trump’s auspices, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates agreed to establish normal diplomatic relations with Israel. Perhaps the great wheeler-dealer had started a new and positive phase in the region.

This image of a deal-maker is built on dubious foundations. Indeed, as Ukraine is discovering, to its cost, the president’s very notion of a “deal” can be hazy. Trump can be so fixated on reaching an agreement that any individual considerations can be thrown carelessly overboard. The flipside of Trump’s self-absorption is a lack of empathy, a vital quality for an effective negotiator.

Trump’s reputation stems from his 1987 business guide/memoir, “The Art of the Deal,” a bestseller that helped make him a household name. It is a sacred text for him, which he once named as his second favorite book after the Bible. But “The Art of the Deal,” both by its nature and what it represents, flatters to deceive.

The book carried Trump’s name and was attributed to “Donald J. Trump with Tony Schwartz.” Schwartz, a New York Magazine journalist, was hired to ghostwrite the book in 1985, an offer too lucrative to refuse. By 2019, he

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