THESE EIGHT DAYS in American politics spanned an eon. On July 13th an assassin’s bullet came an inch from killing Donald Trump, the former president, just days before the Republican Party formally nominated him as their candidate for the 2024 presidential election. On July 21st, Joe Biden, the incumbent president, announced that he would abandon his re-election bid less than one month before the Democratic Party convention was due to begin. The period began with the near-death of one candidate—and concluded with the end of his nemesis’s political career.

The announcement came not in a televised address from the dignified backdrop of the Oval Office—where Lyndon Johnson announced the end of his candidacy on March 31st 1968—but as a letter posted online. “While it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” he wrote.