In the Curtiss-Wright Export case, the Supreme Court declared the president the “sole organ” of the nation in foreign affairs, noting the importance of speaking with one voice when dealing with other nations. The formulation, and authoritative expression, of US foreign policy is supposed to come from the president.

Yet over and over again, Biden has been undercut by subordinates who basically said, “Pay no attention to the old man in the Oval Office.”

This won’t do. Either Biden is president, or he is not. If he’s president, then policy should come from him, and it’s the job of subordinates to make that policy work. If they’re doing otherwise, they’re engaged in a sort of coup against the duly elected commander in chief. That presents a serious problem.

If Biden is, instead, a dotard whose pronouncements on foreign affairs should be ignored in favor of the presumably more measured statements of unelected White House apparatchiks, then the office of president is effectively vacant. And that presents serious problems of its own.