Weary American voters will end national nightmare 2.0

Moments after becoming president, Gerald Ford said, “Our long national nightmare is over.” Having served a quarter-century in Congress, he understood that presidents are to “take care” that laws produced by the first branch of government are “faithfully executed.” The nation in 1974 was eager for a collegial respite from the gladiatorial strife that had consumed the country during urban disorders and the Watergate stew of scandals.

Joe Biden’s election will end national nightmare 2.0, the nation’s second domestic debacle in two generations. Hell, Thomas Hobbes supposedly said, is truth seen too late, and in 2020 the nation, having seen it in the nick of time, will select for the Oval Office someone who, having served 36 years 16 blocks to the east, knows this: A complex nation cannot be governed well without the lubricating conciliations of a healthy legislative life.

Biden won the Democrats’ nomination by soundly defeating rivals who favored — or, pandering, said they favored — a number of niche fixations (e.g., abolishing ICE, defunding police).

Biden does not endorse Medicare for All: He understands, as some competitors for the nomination amazingly did not, that for several decades organized labor’s most important agenda has been negotiating employer-provided health care as untaxed compensation. He understands, as some progressives seem not to, that presidential elections are won not by pleasing the most intense faction but by assembling a temperate coalition.

Biden has not endorsed packing the Supreme Court: When Franklin Roosevelt, after carrying 46 of 48 states in 1936, tried that maneuver, the blowback in the 1938 congressional elections erased his liberal legislating majority in Congress, and coalitions of conservative (mostly Southern) Democrats and Republicans prevailed until President Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide produced a liberal congressional majority — briefly.

One of Biden’s closest confidants, who has an agreeable preference for anonymity, says that Biden was initially ambivalent about seeking the 2020 nomination, but “Charlottesville put him over the edge.” The confidant refers to the violence provoked by the August 2017 anti-Semitic demonstrators, and to Donald Trump’s assessment that there were “very fine people on both sides.”

The confidant calls Biden “a relief pitcher — he’s warming up in the bullpen right now,” preparing an administration with “a broad array of people.” The confidant recommends taking seriously Biden’s campaign’s slogan “Building Back Better.” The “Back” acknowledges the national desire for reassurance “that the world as they know it is recoverable.”

Trump apologists say that prior to COVID-19, all was well. “All” means only economic metrics: An American is supposedly interested only in consumption, to the exclusion of civic culture. And never mind a pre-pandemic $1 trillion deficit — at full employment.

Gerald Ford’s presidential modesty produced reports of something that was remarkable only because it was remarked upon: At breakfast, Ford popped his own English muffins into the presidential toaster. Forty-six years later, an exhausted nation is again eager for manifestations of presidential normality.