Where is Gibbon When He's Needed?

U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, second in line for the presidency should the chief executive choke on a bagel, has said he will ask the keepers of the secrets not to pass them to Hillary Clinton when she is formally made the nominee of the Democratic Party. (Once a person is nominated, he/she gets all the inside information, including the buzz code for nuclear attacks. The nominee also gets Secret Service protection, but it's unlikely Trump or Clinton would be in danger--neither candidate is a black teenager driving a car with a defective tail light.)

But back to the thin-lipped Ryan's request: he would deny Clinton access to state secrets, but allow them to be handed to Trump? In any rational society, Trump wouldn't be given a key to the executive washroom.

Here's to Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who has said that a contest between Trump and Clinton has all the appeal of a dumpster fire. Or, remembering someone's comment--maybe Hunter S. Thompson's--during the Nixon-Humphrey campaign, this is a choice?

A continuing sludge of depressing news. The world has endured unlikely leaders before, but one begins to wonder--where is Edward Gibbon, chronicler of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"?

There is some hope. Trump has now coyly hinted--or as coyly as is possible for him--that if elected he might not serve. Could we extract the same promise from Hillary?