We inaugurate a president on January 20, 2025, and if Joe Biden has his way, he'll hold the job at least till then. They'll be a parlous six months, and I look forward to them with dread and, I confess, a bit of excitement.
Mr Biden is a national embarrassment. He's probably no worse off than President Wilson in 1920-21 or President Roosevelt in 1944-45, but with this difference: everyone knows how diminished he is. And Kamala Harris is no Harry Truman!
As for Mr Trump, now doubled with J D Vance as his vice presdidential nominee and possible successor, the outlook seems bleak for Ukraine, Taiwan, and perhaps Israel, and indeed for America's place in the world. Twelve years of Presidents Trump and Vance, oh my!
But Trump is nothing if not mercurial. Who knows what reversals the future will bring? And Vance himself has been transformed from Never-Trumper to advocate in a very short time. And I rather enjoyed Hillbilly Elegy -- I too had a hardscrabble boyhood, and like Mr Vance I thought of myself as a hillbilly when I turned up at the state university, the first in my family to go to college, wide-eyed from Pine Hill Road in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.
Not for the first time, I'm reminded of that apocryphal Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times!" That does seem to be our destiny.
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