The author expresses his discontent with Trump and Biden, citing concerns about their policies and past decisions, and advocates for a No Labels candidate as a viable alternative in the 2024 election. However, the text relies heavily on an appeal to authority and a questionable analogy about the current political climate, while presenting limited argument for why a No Labels candidate would be better than the two major party candidates.

1. appeal to authority • The author relies on the authority of Robert Gates to support his claim about Biden's unsound judgments without providing supporting evidence.

    "Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates long ago indicted [Biden's] decades of unsound national security judgments."

The author gives no examples of Gates' particular concerns over Biden and why those concerns should be deemed reasonable.

Though later in the essay the author gives concrete examples of more recent national security decisions by Biden that may invite criticism, they are not related to the era being referred to in the Gates reference. Therefore, invoking Gates' opinion has nothing but Gates' authoritative position as Obama's Defense Secretary backing it up. It would have been stronger if the author had demonstrated why he believes Gates' opinion makes sense, rather than implying that it should be accepted merely because of Gates' former position.

2. questionable analogy • The author suggests that if either Biden or Trump is elected in 2024, the polarization of America will increase and move toward a scenario analogous to pre-Civil War tensions:

The Biden-Trump specter now depressing the American electorate and further dividing the country has invoked comparisons to the pre-Civil War period. Beyond our shores, America being pitted against itself invites exploitation by enemies of the U.S.-led international order.

This is a highly questionable analogy given the dramatic differences between the political climate today and that of the mid-1800s. One large disanalogy is that, today, we do not have a largely geographical divide that separates two very different economies, one of which is highly dependent on an exploited resource (slavery) that the other side largely condemns.

The main thrust of this analogy seems to be an appeal to fear, namely that our enemies will somehow exploit the resulting scenario. There may be a legitimate potential concern here, but something other than the Civil War analogy would need to be offered in order to substantiate that fear.