Trump isn't another Hitler or Mussolini. Of course not.

But he might well be another Nixon.

Kamala Harris is now calling Donald Trump a fascist. She bases this assertion on Trump’s desire to maximize presidential power.

But almost all presidents seek as much power as they can get. Certainly, that’s been the case with the Democratic president who preceded Trump and the one who followed him. I’m pretty sure it will be the case if Kamala Harris wins this election.

So no, Trump is not another Hitler or Mussolini. However, I fear he’s another Nixon.

Richard Nixon was never as nasty a campaigner as Trump is. However, as a candidate for the House and then the Senate, he came across as vicious by the standards of the time.

At least in part for this reason, he was despised by Democrats from the beginning. And at least in part for that reason, he developed, and never got over, his strong dislike for Democrats.

Nixon’s defeat in the 1960 presidential election didn’t help. Although he took the high road at the time, his suspicion that the Democrats stole this election must have reinforced his animosity.

When he ran for president in 1968, Nixon’s team presented him as “the new Nixon.” This was supposed to be a kinder, gentler incarnation. But behind the scenes, the new Nixon was a tougher, dirtier version of the old one.

Nixon surrounded himself with tough-talking guys. Charles Colson, who boasted he would “walk over my own grandmother” to ensure Nixon’s reelection, epitomized this breed. Their legacy is scandal — most notably Watergate — defeat, and in some cases imprisonment.

Stewart Alsop, a renowned columnist of the time, wrote a piece for Newsweek about Watergate called “The Crazy-Brave and the Phony-Tough.” It is summarized here. Alsop stated:

My theory derives from the peculiar relationship between two minority categories of the human race -- the crazy-brave and the phony-tough. Most people who have been in a war, and a lot of people who haven't, have come across specimens of both breeds.

The crazy-brave, who are a lot rarer than the phony-tough, are always doing crazy things that ought to get them killed, or at least maimed, but nothing ever seems to happen to them. They also exercise a kind of hex or double whammy on the phony-tough, and they keep getting the phony-tough into terrible trouble.

Alsop argued that Nixon’s key advisers were phony-tough. When they encountered a genuinely tough (but crazy-brave) guy, G. Gordon Liddy, they couldn’t say no to him. In Alsop’s words:

Nixonian phony-toughs were scared sick of the crazy-brave Liddy and kept trying to get rid of him. . . but no one had quite the guts to fire him . . . [or even] to tell him to his face to forget about his wild schemes.

Or to throw him out of his office, as then-attorney John Mitchell testified he should have done, but didn’t.

Trump, like Nixon, has been nasty since the day he formally entered politics. Like Nixon, he came quickly to be despised by Democrats and the media. As a result, he had to spend much of his administration fending off ridiculous claims from Dems and the media that he was a Russian collaborator. Why wouldn’t he despise them back?

And like Nixon, but with less justification, Trump feels aggrieved over an unsuccessful presidential race.

During his first term, Trump’s main advisers were neither crazy-brave nor phony-tough. Trump fell out with many of them. Some, like Gen. Kelly, are backing Kamala Harris.

It’s natural, then, that Trump intends to surround himself with a more loyal team if he gets a second term. And it’s understandable that Trump wants his team to be tough.

In fact, toughness seems to be a major theme of Trump’s second-term plans — maybe even an obsession. Consider this Washington Post article about Mike Davis, a key Trump adviser on law and the courts. The Post quotes Trump as saying of Davis, “This guy is tough as hell, We want him in a very high capacity.”

According to the article, both Davis’ friends and foes consider him someone who “breaks the china.” For Trump, that’s a virtue.

Davis backs Trump’s position that the Federalist Society, which he relied on to help pick judges during his first term, is too soft. Leonard Leo is the left’s bête noire and no reasonable person’s idea of a softy. But he’s not hard-edged enough for Trump.

Davis appears on podcasts with fellow tough-talkers Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, during which he seems to delight in making outrageous statements — e.g., “I’m going to be Trump’s viceroy of D.C. because I don’t like democracy.; I want more authoritory powers.” We shouldn’t take this kind of statement literally, but perhaps we should take it seriously.

I don’t know who within Trump’s current inner circle is “crazy brave” and who is “phony tough.” I have to think that Steve Bannon, a former Naval officer who is currently in prison for refusing a congressional subpoena, falls into the first category. Beyond that, I have no opinion except that in my day, at least, the toughest kids in the school usually weren’t the ones who talked the toughest.

My fear, in any case, is that with toughness and loyalty now such gold-standard traits in Trump World, it will be difficult for anyone on Trump’s team to say “no” to schemes hatched by the “crazy-brave.” If so, the results aren’t likely to be pretty — either for the country or, ultimately, for the phony-toughs.

It’s not that all or even most of Trump’s key advisers will have genuine authoritarian tendencies. The first-term pattern of advisers who convince Trump they’re kindred spirits but who, when push-comes-to-shove don’t like crazy-brave schemes, will persist — if for no other reason than fear of being indicted one day.

But this time around, will anyone of importance have the guts to advise Trump to back off? I fear not, now that “toughness” seems to be such a litmus test. As Alsop might put it, this time the crazy-brave will dominate the phony-tough. This time, Steve Bannon-style advisers are far less likely than before to be shown the door.

The day Richard Nixon left the White House for good, he told his well-wishers: “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.” That insight and belated self-awareness would serve Trump, his team better, and our country better in a second term than an obsession with toughness.