As we learned while Trump was in the White House, having “almost no inner monologue” is not a trait that one can switch on or off at will. If one is liable to do it at a political rally or party confab or press conference, one is liable to do it during a crisis, too. That the United States has its second president in a row who is unable to avoid saying whatever comes into his head should not be celebrated or indulged. It is embarrassing, and it should be regarded as such.

I do not doubt that Tom Nichols finds Joe Biden’s “from the heart” and “impolitic but true” behavior as “endearing” as he found Donald Trump’s “from the heart” and “impolitic but true” behavior repellant. But this should not blind us to the fact that Joe Biden’s candidacy was cast as an end to such antics, not as a mere redirection of them. The case for Biden was not that he would “regularly engage” in gaffes in ways that the other half of the country preferred, but that he was an experienced and disciplined statesman who wouldn’t engage in gaffes at all. Clearly, this was not true, and that a majority preferred Biden to Trump when given a binary choice does not change that fact.