◼ Donald Trump’s speech to the Republican convention started strong. He said he wanted to be president of all Americans, a rhetorical note that politicians often sound but he has generally not. He then moved to an extended reflection—the right words, and not ones that are commonly used about his speeches—about the recent attempt on his life, which left him convinced that Providence had spared him. Then, unfortunately, he began to ramble, just with lower energy than usual. At presstime, he was still talking. A missed opportunity, unless he is baiting President Biden to stay in.

◼ Donald Trump tapped Ohio senator J. D. Vance as his running mate. The choice wasn’t a surprise and completed a shockingly rapid political ascent for the 39-year-old Vance, who has gone from an outspoken Never Trump author to joining Trump on a national ticket in eight short years. A former Marine, the author of the best seller Hillbilly Elegy, and a success in the world of venture capital, Vance is smart and sure-footed. More fundamentally, he is a MAGA pick for an increasingly MAGA party. In 2016, Trump believed it necessary to reach out and reassure the Reagan GOP by choosing Mike Pence. Now he appears to feel that no such gesture is necessary. His team believes that Vance can help in the blue-wall states, but it’s doubtful that he’s going to win voters whom Trump wasn’t already going to win himself. Vance’s skepticism of markets and trade and U.S. engagement abroad would make America less wealthy and secure. Vance has now climbed the greasy pole of Republican politics in the Trump era. This is quite the political achievement, although as Pence found out, it can be treacherous up there.

◼ The 20-year-old would-be assassin had an easy 150-yard shot—he regularly fired at a 200-yard rifle range—and he managed to injure two spectators and kill Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old volunteer fire chief who dove to protect his family, and to clip the right ear of his intended target, former president Donald Trump. A turn of the head spared Trump his life, and the country an abyss of rage and recrimination. That’s not to say conspiracy theorists were idle, from leftists saying that Trump staged it all to get that fist-pump photo to MAGA fans declaring that it was a hit ordered by President Biden himself. They ignore the first rule of disaster, which is not to look for malice until one has exhausted that most fruitful of all causes, incompetence. The Secret Service, which dispatched the killer, has blamed his near-success on everything from the pitch of the roof on which he stood (too dangerous to stake out) to failures on the part of the local police with whom they worked. The House has promised to investigate; in the meantime, Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle must pay for the debacle with her job. Trump’s defiant gesture joins the reactions of Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan to their own with presidential and post-presidential death. They are not the same: Jackson showed wrath (he caned his assailant and blamed a senator for putting him up to it). TR showed magnanimity and courage (he asked the crowd not to lynch his shooter and gave a planned speech). Reagan tried to lighten the mood (“I hope you are all Republicans”). What lesson will Trump draw? The shooting reminds us that we are a bellicose people. We should reflect on our tongues, and our hearts. We won’t.

◼ “Better than the debate” is an exceptionally low bar to clear, but the president cleared it in his big interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt, just barely. When Holt said to Biden that, in the debate, he “appeared to be confused,” the president snapped, “Lester, look, why don’t you guys ever talk about the 18—the 28 lies he told? Where—where are you on this? Why doesn’t the press ever talk about that?” as if NBC had been a staunch defender of Donald Trump. Biden also referred to U.S. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle as “him”; insisted that his recent comment that “it’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye” wasn’t so bad because he didn’t say “crosshairs”; said “I don’t think—I may have. I don’t think so,” when asked whether he had talked to Barack Obama since the debate; insisted, “My mental acuity’s been pretty damn good”; said he wasn’t interested in having another debate before the one scheduled for September; and closed the interview by grumbling at Holt, “Sometimes come and talk to me about what we should be talking about, the issues!” Perhaps Biden is lucky that in a busy news cycle featuring Trump’s near-assassination and the start of the Republican National Convention, his cranky, mumbling performance didn’t get much attention.

◼ Court-packing is a menace, no matter how it comes dressed. The Washington Post reported that Biden previewed for the Congressional Progressive Caucus a coming “major initiative on limiting the [Supreme] Court.” “Limiting” is the key word. The plan, which the Post dubs “judicial reform,” is said to include “legislation to establish term limits for the justices and an enforceable ethics code.” The constitutionality of either is dubious. Everyone knows that this is all about breaking the Court’s conservative majority and changing its rulings, possibly by forcing Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts off the Court. As Alexander Hamilton wrote, “the complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution,” and “nothing will contribute so much” to this as “the permanent tenure of judicial offices.” Biden once knew better, railing that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1937 Court-packing plan showed that he was “corrupted by power.” Roosevelt wasn’t the only one so afflicted.