The presumptive Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, stood inside 40 Wall Street, a building that bears his name, flanked by his extremely expensive lawyers, and proceeded to complain mightily that life is not fair.

But what he really meant was that suddenly his life of glib stories and shady deals in service to boundless ambition and avarice had met a formidable obstacle.

He was in New York City to wrestle with two of the many court cases that dog him. In one involving hush money paid to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, the judge announced an April 15 trial date. This displeased Trump mightily because it would make his campaigning far more challenging. And that, to him, was unfair. In the case involving business fraud, a New York appeals court reduced the amount of his bond from nearly a half-billion dollars to $175 million. This pleased Trump slightly, but it was still unfair, in his view, because he’d rather be spending his money on getting himself elected president.

“I don’t know how you can have a trial that’s going on right in the middle of an election,” Trump complained. “Not fair. Not fair at all. It’s not fair at all.”

He said this in his usual way, with a plaintive whine in his voice, with his mouth spreading wide in a toothy grimace and then reshaping itself into a petulant circle of disbelief. His hands were moving in and out as if playing an invisible accordion. Occasionally, they swatted at an insect. Trump, a man privileged with an abundance of connections — both financial and political — could not stop bemoaning how wrong it was that, regardless of his behavior, he should be faced with any hurdles on the road toward the White House.

Trump’s baseless accusations and his flat-out lies are as essential to his public identity as are his tales of financial derring-do, his coarse language, his prejudices and his listing toward autocracy.

“I became president because of the brand,” he said.

But few things define this strongman from Queens like his feelings of being forever put upon by lawyers, the federal government, migrants, nasty women, obnoxious attorneys general and anyone else who causes him even the most modest inconvenience. In the context of the presidential campaign, any hindrance to his smooth sailing back into the Oval Office is an abomination. Yet, nowhere in the Constitution does it say that running for higher office should be easy.

The more powerful the position, the more difficult it should be to win. Elections should be free and fair, but running for office should be an obstacle course of problem-solving, emotional challenges, moral tests and creative thinking. It should be a marathon of patience, good-humor and good will. It should strain one’s tolerance for hard questions, stupid questions and the same questions asked over and over again. Every obstacle ought to be thrown into a person’s path, because a host of unknowns will face the ultimate winner.

The pathway to a position in which one can change lives through executive orders should be rocky and steep. It should summon a will akin to that needed to summit Mount Everest. Gaining the exquisite power to nominate Supreme Court justices — who will deal with matters of love, life, death and bodily autonomy — should require that a candidate sometimes feel helpless, flawed or afraid, because all too often that’s how plaintiffs feel by the time their case reaches the highest court. An easy road means struggles are merely hypothetical. A candidate needs to have felt a little pain, not one-percenter sorrows, but the kind that nicks the soul and lives on for generations. Trump curried favor with conservatives by loading up the Supreme Court with their preferred nominees. That was easy. The fact that the Supreme Court — heavy with Trump appointees — overturned Roe v. Wade even though a majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal, well, that’s unfair.

The idea of struggle shouldn’t be hypothetical; it shouldn’t be just another amicus brief or a bit of political dealmaking.

Trump laments that courts are forcing a trial when he’s trying to satisfy his ambition. He sounds a bit like a guy who has shown up at a stadium and can’t believe there’s a line for the men’s room. He can’t believe the inconvenience. He can’t believe that no one is clearing the way for him. He can’t believe that while the experience might be unusual, it’s hardly unfair. Some might even see it as sweet parity.

Trump’s legal problems are of his own making, whether he was encouraging an insurrection by falsely claiming that electoral victory was stolen from him, or he was operating his businesses with the reckless air of a monarch. He’s brought these election year burdens upon himself.

But other candidates have run for office with more searing troubles and sorrows over which they had no control. When Rick Santorum ran for president, his youngest child was struggling with a rare chromosomal disorder. That wasn’t fair. During John Edwards’s campaign, his wife Elizabeth’s cancer returned. That was unfair. John McCain campaigned bearing the wounds of a prisoner of war. That wasn’t fair. When Barack Obama ran for president, his family had to grapple with this country’s racism and its history of martyred Black leaders. That wasn’t fair either.

Trump is campaigning with the privileges of being a straight White man with financial resources, social capital and political connections. Despite a reputation for being a difficult client and shirking his bills, he has assembled a sprawling legal team that has been able to delay the start of trials, reduce his bond requirements and allow him all manner of leeway and dignity.

Trump has had it easy. He’s skated free using bankruptcy laws, loopholes and this country’s reliance on norms rather than laws. And there’s nothing fair about that.