Look. I'm trying to play nice here.

The only thing that amazes me more than the propensity of our child president to stretch the truth (often far past the point of breaking), demonstrate a degree of cluelessness about our Constitution, or system, and our way of life which I frankly would not have been possible in a person even remotely interested in politics or had even visited America much, and spin embarrassing and even utterly disastrous news into glorious triumphs is the capacity of partisan Republicans to rationalize everything he does and says into normality and even reasonableness.

Nevertheless, I even though I don't necessarily reach the same conclusions he does about what Mr. Trump does, I admire Ben Shapiro's characterization of himself as "sometimes Trump." Can't claim that label myself; the guy is never mature enough or psychologically stable enough or even competent enough to be president. But I do honor what I understand Shapiro to mean by the term, and I try to emulate him in modeling it.

On the rare occasions when I catch Donald Trump doing something right, I try to give him credit for it.

Yesterday he did something which might or might not have been right, but I thought I'd give POTUS a shout-out for it. After calling off a military strike against Iran in retaliation for their shooting down an American drone in international airspace (apparently as part of an ongoing effort to frustrate American attempts to document the Islamic Republic's piratical efforts to interfere with international shipping through the Straits of Hormuz), the president explained that such a response would be disproportionate to the provocation.

Whoa. First, he implicitly admits error for his blustery and very public response to the Iranian provocation. Donald Trump does not admit being wrong. Ever. Not even implicitly.

And then, the recent American president least associated with a concern about whether something (especially a response to perceived provocation) is "proportionate" uses precisely proportionality as an explanation for a wildly uncharacteristic display of restraint.

It might be too much at this point in Mr. Trump's presidency or even in his life to hope that this is a sign of growth. At least we can hope. But in any case, he deserves credit for his handling not so much of the incident as of himself. He has a great deal of trouble with that, and when he does such a conspicuously good job of it he deserves applause.