The following was republished with permission from Armas.
The coup d’état against President Biden illuminates the themes exposited in the essay on Sen. J.D. Vance’s thought and rhetoric, to which I refer the reader. Coup terminology in this case is not overwrought: a sitting president of the United States has had his political future terminated, which means his political present is ended as well. Absent potential there is no power, and therefore no purpose. The logical corollary to the immediate end of his campaign therefore ought to be the immediate end of his presidency.
By the bye, this is Vance’s view as well.
If Joe Biden ends his reelection campaign, how can he justify remaining President?
Not running for reelection would be a clear admission that President Trump was right all along about Biden not being mentally fit enough to serve as Commander-in-Chief.
There is no middle ground.
— JD Vance (@JDVance1) July 21, 2024 The Managerial Husk
The managerial theory is that the discontinued president may persist in office, fully vested with its prerogatives, by virtue of the nature of the office. This is of course totally fictitious: Joseph R. Biden at midafternoon Sunday lost the ability to do nearly every meaningful thing intrinsic to the presidency, including real cooperation with the legislative branch, persuading the nation to make war, and representation of the whole American people in government. What’s left is a headless apparatus, dominated but not led — ruled but not governed — by the thousands of functionaries of the administrative state. It is a
