Most politicians are at least a little bit narcissistic, and that’s probably doubly true for the type whose ambition leads them to the Oval Office. It has to be tough to go from being the center of global attention to an ex-president, but former occupants of the White House have one thing going for them. Exhaustion.

The office will eat you up. Eisenhower almost died of a heart attack during his second term. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were completely spent by the time they voluntarily left office. Ronald Reagan was drifting into dementia. George W. Bush was totally discredited and eager to paint in his bathtub rather than take more slings and arrows.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama fared a little better, but both were aided by a pretty big distraction. In Clinton’s case, it was the political ambitions of his wife, while Obama had Trump to contend with. Perhaps the one-termers Ford, Carter, Poppy Bush and Trump had an advantage by virtue of not serving the full eight years.

The expectation is that former presidents will keep a low profile, and that’s usually the case. Trump doesn’t do low profile though, and he’s struggling. Frank Bruni of the New York Times explains:

“He’ll show up to anything. In recent weeks, Trump has popped into engagement parties and memorial services. A Mar-a-Lago member who recently attended a club gathering for a deceased friend was surprised when Trump sauntered in to deliver remarks and then hung around.”

Sounds to me like a man with an underfed appetite for attention. Sounds like a glutton yanked away from the buffet.

The transition would undoubtedly be easier for Trump if he still had his social media accounts, especially Twitter. Right now, he’s been stripped of his former ability to get attention at a moment’s notice. Given his personality traits, this is definitely more painful for him than it would be for other former presidents.

But his bigger problem is that he’s facing a lot of legal problems and his businesses are struggling. His businesses have always thrived on his ability to get attention. His best legal defense might be to win a series of mistrials, relying on having at least one die-hard supporter on any jury. He’d like to help that process along by using his voice to poison as many potential jurors as possible.

No doubt, he has reason to feel a bit panicked about his growing irrelevancy. Everything he wants and needs to do depends on people paying attention to him, and they’re simply not. That’s why he’s roaming around his Florida resort looking for memorial services to crash.

This makes it fairly easy to predict his plans. Left unmolested by the justice system, he will run for the White House again. A presidential candidacy will give him the attention he needs. Nothing else will.

If indictments do eventually come down, there won’t be many people in politics on either side of the aisle rooting for an acquittal. Both Republican and Democratic officeholders are enjoying the post-Trump quiet and Trump’s not the only ambitious person in the world.

But the quiet won’t last if he isn’t held accountable, so I hope that process begins soon.