Hillary Clinton is just 'normal' bad. Donald Trump is civilization-imperiling bad.

Donald Trump must never be president. His temperament renders him fundamentally unqualified to serve as the head of the executive branch and commander in chief of the armed forces.

This has been obvious for a long time. But it's become indisputable since Trump clinched his party's nomination and began careening from one crisis to the next, each of them caused by his incapacity to exercise rudimentary self-discipline. Most alarming of all, Trump's erratic character has extended to his treatment of foreign policy. America's role in NATO, Russia's actions in Eastern Europe, rules for the use of nuclear weapons — on all of these crucially important topics Trump has demonstrated recklessness far beyond what should be considered acceptable for anyone seeking what is by far the most powerful job in the world.

Given his undeniable instability, you'd figure he'd be on track to lose in a landslide. That this might not be the outcome is primarily a function of one singular fact: Trump is running against Hillary Clinton.

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For millions of voters, Clinton's faults rival Trump's — making the election a close call between equally unsuitable options.

Let me put it as bluntly as I can: This is nonsense. There simply is no comparison between a prospective Clinton presidency and the destabilizing threat posed by Trump.

Clinton has a long track record of questionable judgment. She voted to authorize the Iraq war. As secretary of state, she led the charge to persuade President Obama to intervene militarily in Libya and depose Moammar Gadhafi — a policy that left behind a failed state that's become a haven for ISIS and other Islamist groups. She's long favored more aggressive intervention in the Syrian civil war to depose Bashar al-Assad (without clearly stating which of the many factions fighting in that war we should back as an alternative source of order once he's gone).

And then there is the little matter of Clinton's rogue email server, the FBI director's subsequent rebuke, and Clinton's own bizarrely upbeat spin on the whole episode, in which she untruthfully described her own numerous untrue statements as "truthful."

Any other candidate running against any other opponent would likely have seen her campaign upended by an event like James Comey's press conference ("extremely careless") and congressional testimony about the email server. But Clinton has survived, despite the many scandals that follow her and her husband around like the cloud of filth that trails Pig-Pen from Peanuts.

There's a very good reason why Hillary has managed to take a very solid lead in the 2016 race, despite these scandals: She's running against someone indisputably worse.

Nothing Clinton has done comes close to rivaling Trump for sheer lunacy and wild-eyed irresponsibility. That's because her faults are those of ordinary political ambition run amuck and the ordinary Washington consensus gone unchallenged.

The key word is ordinary: Clinton is like countless strivers in the country's political establishment, only a little more so. She wants power, in part to do good deeds as she construes them, and in part to satisfy her personal craving for influence and prestige. And she's perfectly willing to cut corners and bend the rules in modest ways when it will make her life and her ascent through the establishment a little easier and a little less pain free. That's the only way to explain her otherwise inexplicable decision to set up a private, largely unprotected email server in her house while serving as secretary of state: It was convenient. That's all. Nothing more sinister or even more interesting than that.

As for her questionable judgment calls about foreign policy: Washington is filled with politicians and policy analysts in both parties who make precisely the same kind of bad calls, opting over and over again for military intervention when presented with a sub-optimal situation unfolding in a strategically vital part of the world. I consider this a very bad habit that very much needs to be broken. Hillary Clinton is not the person to do it. On the contrary, a Clinton presidency is likely to stumble into even more counter-productive foreign military conflicts.

That's unfortunate. But it's exceedingly unlikely to produce a civilization-imperiling catastrophe — which is more than I can say for a Trump presidency. With Clinton we at least know what we're getting — and what ideas will guide and limit her decision-making in the Oval Office and the Situation Room. With Trump, we have no idea at all. That is truly terrifying.

Trump might bow out of NATO. Or begin treating the alliance like a protection racket in which member states are required to pay monetary tribute to the United States in return for defense. Or give a green light for Vladimir Putin to invade the Baltics. Or threaten adversarial countries and terrorist organizations with nuclear annihilation.

Would he follow through? There's no way to know. I doubt Trump would even know before issuing the threats or promises. Maybe it would depend upon his mood. Trump's modus operandi is to prefer complete freedom of movement. He bristles at any insinuation of constraint on his actions — be it institutional, traditional, habitual, ideological, or even strategic. If you're governed by a god among men, possessing perfect information, knowledge, and wisdom, with a perfectly dispassionate temperament, this would be a perfect form of government. But with Trump in the role? God help us all.

With Hillary Clinton, we might end up with a good, middling, or bad president. We can't know that ahead of time. But what we can know is that, in the broader sense, she would be a normal president. Just like all the other ones before her.

Donald Trump would be anything but normal. And that's frightening.