Heh, when he got to be first among equals, his chief advisor *was* one. :’D And how did that work out? He gave an impassioned harangue in favor of war with Sparta, and wound up dying of whatever the plague was (typhus?) during the siege in the early years of the war.
Thereafter the Athenians made significant progress, defeating the Spartans in a land battle near Pylos, resulting in a years-long truce. Instead of building on that victory by walling off their enemies and supporting helot uprisings against the Spartans, they decided to send a large expeditionary force to Sicily to conquer Syracuse, get their asses handed to them, and meanwhile carrying out sentences of death in ways reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. I don’t think drunkenness was confined to Pericles.
The Syracuse expedition is a fascinating story, but you are right it was a blunder for the ages. As we would say today, Pericles had a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.