The First Time Joe Dropped Out

So what will happen now as the White House has gone into denial mode about the president’s weak performance in last week’s debate with Trump? The debate produced no rational discourse on the major issues of our time, and it’s unlikely we will hear anything of substance through the remainder of the campaign if Biden chooses to stay in the race.

On that question, I turned the other day to Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes: The Way to the White House (1992), perhaps the best book on a presidential...