Four more years. Have those words ever elicited less excitement? Have 48 months ever loomed as a more unnerving slog through domestic political strife and rising global insecurity? Has a nation ever peered more anxiously into a future under the leadership of a man far along the path of cognitive decline from which no one has ever returned?
Normally the prospect of an incumbent’s re-election is a rallying moment, a chance to remind supporters why you’re there in the first place, an opportunity to offer the nation that curious but compelling combination of continuity and renewal. It should be a moment for hope for at least half the country. This time around four more years sounds like a parole board’s answer to a prisoner’s appeal.
