Twenty minutes elapsed in Donald Trump’s acceptance speech when his worst instincts took charge…his tired litany of complaints, namecalling and accusations are dead dogs that will not bark.

Now, several weeks later, the shuffler-in-chief is an irrelevant observer of the 2024 campaign. With Willy Brown’s ex-squeeze having ascended to nominee, one might have expected Mr. Trump to stow the bombast, the name-calling and histrionics. Initially humbled by his narrow escape, he appeared chastened. Nope.

If anything, the by grace-of-God failed assassin’s target doubled down on the histrionics…even going so far as to mount the third rail of campaigning and bring race into the milieu. It’s axiomatic that when an opponent is digging a hole, one stands quietly by and merely offers to hand out shovels. The winning strategy is mournful silence with occasional objective, non-caustic observations detailing policy failures, economic decline, the immigration mess, foreign threats, the Green New Deal and so on. Such a demeanor would dignify Mr. Trump and pull uncommitted and moderate voters into his camp.

Nope…AGAIN!

Mr. Trump rather chose to dig furiously, sinking his rhetoric to the depths of Biden/Harris policy follies. An invigorated media will relentlessly flog the Trump missteps, fanning the hysteria with inevitable new gaffes — more Putin adoration, Mr. Vance’s embrace of bizarre fiscal policy, the off-putting fantasies of Project 2025 and the curious absence of the First Daughter and her husband, both central players in the 2016 victory.

The world is in uneasy times — an expanding Israel/Iran square-off in the Middle East, China more closely aligned ever with the Kremlin’s shirtless runt, and the bellicosity of Kim with his finger on the missile trigger, Maduro stealing another election — the list seems endless. But hey! We got a couple of hostages back from Li’l Val by trading the usual offal. The other hostages held by the Ayatollah’s puppets in Gaza aren’t convenient for the discussion.

Other matters of import aren’t either. For instance: A grid to support “all the manufacturing jobs” that a new D administration will create, employment that drove the markets down in early August and a Fed unable to recognize opportunity for interest rate easing. Add in a lame exiting President whose final gasp is getting even with the Supreme Court which deep-sixed most of the Ds pet policies — vote-buying disguised as debt forgiveness for over-educated and under-employed college grads, Roe v. Wade returned to the states and an end to the Voting Rights Act, among others.

It will take a monstrous effort for Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance to produce a campaign equal in its ineptitude to the dreadful three-and-a-half year record of Biden/Harris. The humility and quiet reflection by Mr. Trump in the hours after Butler, Pennsylvania were like the dove returning to Noah’s Ark. The choice was there, and Mr. Trump made it — regrettably he dumped the dove and chose an albatross, a la The Ancient Mariner…more tiresome rants, exaggerations and bragging hung around the necks of his supporters.

It’s a race to the bottom — Trump and Vance and the spectre of “dictator for a day” on one side facing off against the living Hell of Kamala Harris cackling with Tim Walz by her side fashioning the U.S. into the “best” of Minneapolis and San Francisco. That, my friends, is one helluv-an albatross!

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Post script: What does each campaign mean to the fundamental wellbeing of the citizenry? Personally? Economically? Personal safety? National Security? With past as prelude —

The D ticket stands for open borders, financial giveaways, muddled foreign policy (of which both Harris and Walz have zero credentials), staggering inflation/high prices, business hostility, ever-increasing regulation and lax prosecution of lawbreakers. Intense focus and advocacy for reproductive rights, reinstating racial preferences, climate change initiatives and reconfiguring/restricting the Supreme Court.

The R ticket advocates building a border wall, no student debt forgiveness, strong-arming NATO and the UN while pursuing rapprochement with Putin, XI and Kim Jong-il, tariffs which equate to a consumption tax (the opposite of free trade), domestic resource development, rescinding regulations, modest restrictions on abortion leaving regulation to individual states, zero racial preferences, exiting the Paris Climate Accords and no changes to the Supreme Court and its makeup.

Neither of these has a whiff of outreach to the other side, essentially, consensus be damned. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 25 by definition is a “my way or the highway” prescription. The Anerican public has voiced its desire for accomodation, and, its wish for any candidates who could pull that off –in the words of Scarlett O’Hara, “Tomorrow is another day.”