The burning question that historians will pose is why this president who has achieved so much and has been so unjustly assaulted by perversions of the justice system and unprofessional press biases is now in what appears to be an uphill struggle for reelection. The foibles of his often overly bombastic and even self adulatory personality do not alone explain this.

In running against the system that he said had substantially broken down, Donald Trump has revealed just how badly it has broken down; the FBI and the intelligence agencies were politically corrupted for the first time in the history of the country. The media has reduced itself to an almost subterranean level of dishonesty. The public is clearly having difficulty seeing the issues distinctly. It is not just high office but the right of Americans to be confident the system works as it should and as it was intended to do that are at stake.

Improbable as it often seems, and whatever his failings, in this election Donald Trump is the candidate of honesty, competence, and legality. A Biden victory would be a crushing defeat for all of these traditional American ideals.