Will Trump's greatest success be destroying the Trump name?

It's a big call, but President Donald Trump's first foray overseas marked the point where the world stopped marvelling at how the emperor had no clothes and started pointing and laughing at his junk. 

Remember all those hopeful editorials after his election win predicting that he'd grow into the office and show some degree of presidential dignity, revealing that the persona of the attention-seeking bully in the ill-fitting suit and comedy haircut was a disguise adopted by a shrewd and decisive political savant?

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In retrospect, those pieces turned out to be somewhat optimistic, for his first week-and-a-bit abroad to meet with other leaders could not have been more unpresidential.

It started with the announcement of his arms deal with Saudi Arabia – and sure, the nation has a history of funnelling arms and money to extremist and terrorist groups, but at least they share a similar interior design aesthetic with the US President which can be summed up as "gaudy '80s dictator chic". 

But that was just an appetiser for the meal he was about to make with his National Buffoon's European Vacation. 

Watching French President Emmanuel Macron echo Canada's Justin Trudeau in overcoming Trump's cartoonishly third-rate '70s management textbook power handshake should have been the most embarrassing moment, were it not the shot of Trump beaming obliviously beside the Pope while Francis glowers at the camera, seemingly calling on all his divine powers to fight the urge to have God do some classic Old Testament smiting. 

That was followed by the sight of him shoving Montenegro's President Dusko Markevic out of the way to get to the front of the NATO summit photo like an over-eager beauty pageant contestant.

And, of course, there was the sight of Melania Trump yet again refusing to allow him to touch her. 

And now he's back home where he can kick back and relax with the ongoing investigating into his sacking of FBI director James Comey. And his comically silly Twitter rants about fake news. And, you know, literally everything else he says or does. 

And you know who should be the most worried – aside from pretty much everyone on the planet? His children, who are about to become pariahs.

The Trump Hotel in New York has already closed its restaurant for lack of clientele and is struggling to attract people willing to pay to sleep within its walls – although the President's Mar-A-Lago resort has just jacked up its membership fees, since it now offers bonus al fresco international strategy meetings to its guests. 

In a country where political power is wrapped up in dynastic families and where surnames like Kennedy, Eisenhower, Clinton and Bush open doors at the merest utterance, Lord of the Rings-style, Trump is doing all he can to ensure that his children will spend the rest of their lives paying for their father's current behaviour.

Of course, the Trump family name is actually Drumpf. It's not entirely clear when it was anglicised, but it does appear that Friedrich Drumpf came to America and became "Fred Trump", father of Fred C Trump, who was the father of Donald.

The Nixon offspring largely dodged this particular bullet by being able to marry into better surnames (including Eisenhower in the case of Susan), but they also had the advantage that the world considered Richard Nixon to be a criminal, not an idiot. Despised he may have been, but he wasn't a figure of ridicule. 

And make no mistake, for a man who could yet eliminate all human life on the planet, Trump isn't garnering respect. Even members of his own party are actively working against him on the grounds that his policy ideas are laughably bad. Impeachment is being openly discussed in the US media. And he's been in power for four months. 

In any case, look out for the best-selling Sins of the Father: One daughter's search for independence by Ivanka Drumpf in about 15 years' time. Assuming we all last that long.