Milley's challenge: How do we stop presidents from committing nuclear genocide?

I agree with a lot in this piece by Tom Z. Collina of the Ploughshares Fund: 

Just after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Gen. Mark Milley faced an impossible choice: should he allow President Trump to retain sole authority to start nuclear war, or should he intervene to block such an order?  

Unfortunately, under existing policy the only way to safeguard the nuclear arsenal from an unstable president is not to elect one. Once in office, the president gains the absolute authority to start a nuclear war. Within minutes, the president can unleash hundreds of atomic bombs, or just one. He does not need a second opinion. The defense secretary has no say, and Congress has no role.

In retrospect, voters should never have entrusted Trump with the power to end the world. But do we really think any president should have this power? By now, it should be clear that no one person should have the unilateral power to end our civilization. Such unchecked authority is undemocratic, unnecessary and extremely dangerous.

But I'm skeptical of his proposed solution:

President Joe Biden needs to fix the system for himself and all future presidents.

First, Biden should announce he will share authority to use nuclear weapons first with a select group in Congress. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war, not the president. The first use of nuclear weapons is clearly an act of war.

Second, Biden should also declare that the United States will never start a nuclear war and would use the bomb only in retaliation.

Leaving aside whether the U.S. should declare a first-strike off-limits -- something that should happen, but I'm skeptical will -- Collina's fix basically involves the problem he identifies in the first place: It requires continuing to elect non-nutty presidents. That's far from guaranteed. 

Biden could announce that he'll share nuke authorities with Congress. Subsequent presidents could revoke that pledge, though -- and if they're anything like Trump, they probably will. The only real way to limit a president's power over nuclear war is for Congress to pass a law.  That hasn't happened yet, either, but perhaps Gen. Milley's experience will persuade enough members that it's time.

One small step to putting civilians back in charge at Defense

NYT reports that Lloyd J. Austin III, a retired Army general, is under consideration to lead the Department of Defense under Joe Biden. I'd prefer not -- not because of anything necessarily wrong about Austin (I know literally nothing about him) but because Trump tried to blur the whole distinction between civilian and military control of the military, which has been a pretty important principle of our democracy. That's how former General James Mattis became Trump's first secretary of defense, even though he required a waiver to do so. There are civilian Democrats with expertise in national security. Pick one of them.

Is Joe Biden 'no better' than Trump?

At The Week, Damon Linker discusses how the Trump campaign can use the sex assault charges against Joe Biden.

The Biden campaign's effort to portray itself as a moral reset from the debasement of the Trump years will run into this counter-message like a power sander. The Trump campaign will strip it away with a barrage of paid ads, prime-time cable news diatribes, and a hailstorm of tweets — all of it repeating the message (illustrated with clips from and about the Kavanaugh hearings) that Biden and his fellow Democrats are every bit the BS artists that Trump is, only they won't admit it. They'll lie about it, right to your face.
 To Democrats this prediction may sound implausible. 

There's no way that Trump, a man whose mendaciousness is well established and total, can possibly succeed in portraying Biden as more dishonest than he is. But he won't have to show that Biden is worse, just that he's no better.

Emphasis added.

One of our last dinners hosted before the quarantine was with a very old friend of mine -- smart, in a position of considerable community responsibility -- who didn't say how he voted. But he wasn't all that concerned by Trump. All the politicians were corrupt, dishonest and evil, he said. At least with Trump, there are no illusions.

It's troubling that Trump's appeal is rooted in cynicism. What's scarier is: That cynicism might not be entirely misplaced. 

A Biden versus Trump debate will get very ugly

I'm reading this Peter Beinart piece about the sex assault allegations against Joe Biden -- I'm neutral on whether they're true, but think the utmost effort should be made to try to find out if they're true -- and a thought occurs:

If there is a presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, it will probably end up with fierce, ugly dueling accusations of sexual assault between the two. 

Greatest country in the world.