An unpalatable choice for U.S. voters

In the wee hours of Nov. 9, 2016, a few minutes before 3 a.m., in the ballroom of a midtown Manhattan hotel, I watched Donald Trump take the stage as the victorious president-elect.

- ROSIE DIMANNO

U.S. President Joe Biden and Jill Biden in Raleigh, N.C., Friday, the day after Biden's poor debate performance. A frail Biden is preferable to Donald Trump, Rosie DiManno writes, but that it's come down to this is both unfathomable and catastrophic.

And thought to myself: America, what have you done? After Thursday's debate between the two men vying for the Oval Office come this November, I thought to myself: Joe, what have you done to America? In what may have been the most ghastly public performance since that tiger tried to eat Roy Horn-of Siegfried & Roy fame - during a Las Vegas show, Trump ate President Joe Biden's lunch.

Nowhere in evidence was the Biden who had delivered an inspirational oration in his State of the Union address in March. A formal speech with reactive bits off the cuff and an extemporaneous mano-a-mano are far different exercises. But surely Biden's cognitive ability and mental acuity hasn't declined this much in less than four months.

That was the takeaway, however, playing right into the wheelhouse of Republican scaremongering that Biden, at 81, is too old, too enfeebled, for the job of commander-inchief, in a world where the United States is still charged with the responsibility of maintaining global order.