At the core of the crisis now gripping American politics is a scary truth: neither candidate is treating the presidency seriously.
Right at this most existential of moments, a reductive new flippancy abounds.
American voters are experiencing an unprecedented exercise in stereo gaslighting where what they can plainly see, is flat-out denied.
On one side sits a twice-impeached 78-year-old habitual liar who hopes to radically alter government and consolidate power in his own hands. Aided by a tame Supreme Court he successfully stacked, his return threatens American democracy itself.
On the other side sits an older incumbent who insists he alone can save America. Already in palpable decline, he would be 82 before starting another four-year term.
This is the dismal choice America voters face in filling the most powerful office in the world. A post whose awesome responsibilities and accoutrements are familiar internationally - the Oval Office, Air Force One and the emergency satchel.
This "nuclear football" accompanies the commander-in-chief at all times ensuring immediate access to the "black book" of military strike arrangements and missile launch options.
For all this, the presidency is now just personal. Ambition before nation. Each man has his party by the throat.
Donald Trump has turned the GOP into a cult, purging establishment conservatives while rewarding spiteful sycophants and conspiracists.
On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden controls the machinery so tightly that even detractors accept that whether he remains the candidate is entirely in his gift.
These ironies aren't just epic, they're tragic. Within his party, Biden deployed the exclusive status of his office to close out alternatives who would counter Trump. Yet with general voters, his glaring public inadequacies mean any incumbency advantage has long-since evaporated.
Despite what should be fatal character flaws, Trump thus emerges as the knowable four-year bet for exasperated Americans who might rush to a reliable alternative, were there one. Basic prerequisites for the presidency - honesty and competence - have been cast aside.
Madelaine Albright's "indispensable nation" has succumbed to the belligerent insistence of two old men that each alone is uniquely indispensable.
George Clooney's intervention should be more pivotal because he revealed the President's presidential debate confusion was not an isolated event. "...the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe "big F-ing deal" Biden of 2010," Clooney penned in the New York Times.
"He wasn't even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."
Given the stakes, media scrutiny of Biden has been way too cautious. During a post-debate interview, the ABC's George Stephanopoulos pushed the President to undertake cognitive testing.
Biden rejected that saying he was "running the world" then citing two phone calls he'd just had including one with "the new Prime Minister of England". Not Britain, mind you, England. Why did Stephanopoulos not respond, "oh yes and what is his name?"
After all, the White House had arranged the interview specifically to showcase Biden's sharpness - his undiminished ability to recall detail and to switch easily from one topic to another.
Among the more infuriating things for those watching on, is that this was all so predictable.
Think back three years to when AUKUS was announced in September of 2021. Scott Morrison's detractors chuckled as his expense when Biden thanked Boris Johnson and "er... that fella from down-under". This lapse was part of a pattern.
Democrats have deluded themselves that it wasn't. Aides have been making special arrangements to work around his cognitive slowing. Among them has been the avoidance of media conferences and the use of autocues (teleprompters) to ensure the President could follow a script rather than extemporise.
Even at Friday's rather soft "big-boy press conference", Biden's opening remarks were woodenly read from an autocue. Immediately he was off-script, mistakes crept in, referring to Kamala Harris as "vice-president Trump". At the conclusion of the NATO summit, he had introduced Volodymyr Zelenskyy as "President Putin".
No wonder he eschews press conferences. At the same point of his chaotic presidency, even Trump, who famously despised the White House press corp, had held 64 media conferences, Obama had led 72, and George W Bush, 82. Biden has held 37.
The deep frustration many feel at the asymmetric public focus on Biden's shortcomings is understandable, but misplaced.
While it is true that the President's slip-lapse errors pale against Trump's lies and mendacity, it is precisely because of the risk of a second Trump term that public belief in Biden's stamina and mental capacities matter. This is about who can win.
Trump should be easily dispatched. But right now he is favoured to prevail due to plummeting confidence in his opponent's ability to see it through.
Pretending Biden's decline is not a problem is precisely how things drifted to this point. Picture another poor debate-like performance just weeks from election day.
Biden used to show common sense. He had offered himself for president in 2020 as an antidote to Trump and as a "bridge" to the next generation of Democratic leaders.
Not anymore. In the most consequential of contests, he and Trump agree on one thing at least, they both want Joe to recontest.
It's another of those maddening epic-tragic ironies.
- Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast.
