In the event of warning of an incoming ICBM, the President will have 3-7 minutes to decide whether to launch in response, the fate of the planet in the balance. As this (terrifying and forensically unforgiving) book makes clear, the authority is his and his alone. Is EITHER candidate up to that?
I ask because the discussion of the last 72 hours has been almost entirely in terms of horserace, tactics, and the electoral calculus, along with meta-critique of the media’s coverage of same. But the stakes of the job are very, very real. (This one eventuality being their distilled essence.)
It’s possible to think the media’s coverage of Biden has been a shitshow all around AND think that he is no longer in a place to do this job. And to do so apart from the question of the election itself.
