Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent — Character and fitness matter because the office concentrates power and demands judgment under pressure that nobody can rehearse.

Both candidates have vulnerabilities and I’d resist the framing that one set is serious and the other is noise. Trump’s are extensively documented and frequently self-inflicted. Biden is seventy-seven and the questions about stamina over a full term, and about who actually shapes decisions in an administration built around him, are legitimate ones for a voter to ask.

What I’d caution against is the move from a legitimate question to a diagnosis. Neither of us is qualified to make one and the attempt discredits the question.

Policy still carries most of the weight for me. On execution and decisiveness I give Trump the edge despite the character noise, and I hold that view without much enthusiasm.

Dayton, Ohio Correspondent — Policy tells you the intended direction. Temperament and capacity tell you how decisions actually get made when the plan meets a Tuesday.

Trump’s temperament is chaotic and often counterproductive, and I’ve watched it cost him outcomes he wanted. Biden’s age raises practical questions about stamina and about command of his own administration.

For raw capacity to drive an agenda under pressure, Trump remains the more vigorous if volatile option, and I count that as a net positive in this specific comparison.

I’d add that in my experience the chaotic executive who gets results is usually getting them because somebody underneath him is very good, and that’s a fragile arrangement.

Orange County, California Correspondent — I want to put a category on the table that nobody here represents, which is the voter who’s with one candidate on policy and can’t get to him on temperament.

I’m a finance analyst. On regulation, on taxes, on the Court, and on the recognition that the competition with China is real, this administration has been closer to my assessment than the alternative. I’d expect a Biden administration to be worse for the things I evaluate professionally, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise to be comfortable.

And temperament is not a manners question. It’s an operating characteristic. In four years I’ve watched policy announced on a platform and reversed within a week, personnel turnover that would concern any board I’ve sat on, and allies and markets pricing in a discount for unpredictability. That discount is a real cost and it shows up in capital decisions.

So I’m cross-pressured and I’ll be cross-pressured in the booth. The honest answer to the question as asked is that fitness should weigh the same as it always does, which is heavily, and that this is the year a lot of people are discovering they never actually believed that.

Myrtle Beach Correspondent — Both of them have problems and the problems are different in kind, which makes them hard to weigh against each other.

I’d say what I said on the first question. The thing I want from a president is a voice that doesn’t have to be reinterpreted, and that’s a fitness consideration as much as it’s a temperament one. It’s most of why I’m voting the way I am.

Biden’s age is a fair question and his campaign has managed his appearances in a way that invites it. I don’t think the answer to that question is disqualifying. Other people will weigh it differently and I understand why.

Sheffield, Jamaica Correspondent — I have no vote in this and I’ll offer analysis rather than a preference, which I think is the appropriate posture for a foreign correspondent at an American table on an election night.

What strikes me is that this question is being asked in a way that assumes fitness is a property of the man. In most systems it is substantially a property of the arrangement around him. A prime minister who declines is managed by a cabinet and a party that can remove him in an afternoon. Your system concentrates the office in a person and then provides almost no mechanism short of an extraordinary one.

That is the structural observation. It means American voters are asked to make a judgment about an individual’s capacity over four years that no electorate can reliably make, and that both campaigns have an incentive to obscure.

I would say only that the concentration is the problem the question is describing, and that it will be the problem again in 2024 with different names.

Knoxville, Tennessee Correspondent — Policy first this year, because the year was a policy wreck. Schools, shops, streets, and a Court.

Character isn’t nothing and age isn’t nothing. Neither is a substitute for a classroom that opens.

Trump is a hard man to defend at a dinner table, and I’ve had to do it. He’s also the man who moved the judges and fought the padlock. Biden is easier at a dinner and older than the campaign’s account of him.

Same weight as always, which is enough to matter and not enough to erase a record. This year I’m not hiring manners as the product.

Tyler, Texas Correspondent — A shop hires the man who can keep the lights on rather than the man who’d be pleasant in the break room.

Character counts when it’s fraud or collapse. Noise isn’t collapse. Age counts when it’s collapse too, and what I see is a campaign managing appearances carefully enough that a voter is entitled to notice the management.

The policy differences on the Court and on the lock are larger than either. I weigh those larger.

If your household needed a saint you were shopping in the wrong century, and I’d say that about most of the men who have held the office.

Cheyenne, Wyoming Correspondent — Same weight as usual. Policy first when the policy is a school and a street. Character when it’s a crime. Age when it’s genuinely a decline.

I see more policy I want on one ticket and that’s Trump.

I won’t pretend the questions about the other man are nothing. They aren’t nothing. They’re smaller than the Court.

Long Island, New York Correspondent — This is the question where I won’t pretend, so let me be direct.

Temperament is a governing tool, not a matter of taste. Trump’s cost him compliance during a pandemic, cost him people inside his own building who were good at their jobs, and cost him a slice of the public that might have followed a steadier voice through the mask fight. Those are outcomes, not offenses against decorum.

Biden’s age is a problem his party has been less than candid about, and I’d say that to them.

I weight character and fitness a little heavier this cycle than I normally would, because the institutions are already brittle and a brittle institution plus a wrecking style is a worse combination than a conventional older Democrat and a Court I’m going to lose.

I know that sentence won’t be popular here. It’s still my sentence.

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