Biden’s agonising debate performance doesn’t change the reality of this election

If the president is not politically viable, the stakes of this election not only remain, but are even higher than ever

Post-debate, Joe Biden soldiers on. He flies to fundraisers. He campaigns. He is overcoming another obstacle in the pattern of his story, his self-image up from underestimation. But if Biden is not politically viable, the stakes not only remain but are even higher than ever. Picture: Gerald Herbert/AP

I saw western civilisation pass before my eyes as Joe Biden drowned.

“Putin is waiting for Trump,” John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has said. When the presidential debate turned to foreign policy, the former president made an apparently startling revelation. He implied that he had a previously unknown conversation with Vladimir Putin before his invasion of Ukraine, perhaps in late 2021 or early 2022.