Biden’s insider knowledge may be hidden superpower

Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived in the White House Wednesday thanks to two unappreciated assets: He is 78 years old, and he has been a politician for more than 50 years. Those qualifications may be his hidden superpowers.

Decades as a Washington insider aren’t something politicians normally boast about these days, but Biden has turned that logic on its head.

After four years of a presidency that made many Americans yearn for a respite from chaos, the Democrat promised a return to normality. He made “boring” sound beautiful.

He’s not the most talented politician to reach the Oval Office. He doesn’t have the show business talent of Ronald Reagan, the cunning of Bill Clinton or the intellectual firepower of Barack Obama. To borrow a line from another of his predecessors, he’s a Ford, not a Lincoln.

But that may be what the country needs.

Thanks to more than a half-century in politics — he won a seat on a county council in Delaware in 1970 — he may be the most experienced president ever elected.

He has never managed anything bigger than a Senate staff, but he has served the longest presidential apprenticeship in modern history, including eight years as Obama’s vice president. Lyndon B. Johnson had 26 years in politics before he became president; George H.W. Bush had 22. Trump, of course, had zero.

As presidential transitions go, it has been a model of efficiency.

So far, Biden’s nominations have produced almost no drama (to borrow an Obamaism). The only significant exception is Neera Tanden, his nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget, who has drawn GOP opposition for the sin of saying rude things about the opposition party during the campaign.

That’s a contrast with Obama’s rockier start. His top economic nominees, Timothy F. Geithner and Lawrence Summers, came under fire from progressive Democrats as being too close to Wall Street. Two of his other picks, Tom Daschle and Bill Richardson, had to withdraw their nominations (over unpaid taxes and allegations of corruption, respectively).

Biden’s rollout of his presidency’s first proposals has been professional as well: wellcrafted speeches, detailed fact sheets, numbers that added up. For reporters who covered the Trump White House, that has been a welcome change.

If there has been a surprise, it is this: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden agenda has become far more ambitious than when he began his campaign in 2019.

His proposal for an economic rescue plan adds up to $1.9 trillion, and it includes not only relief checks and unemployment insurance, but a $15 minimum wage, housing reform and a plan to cut child poverty in half.

That’s more than twice as big as the recovery plan Obama proposed amid the Great Recession in 2009 — and it’s only “a down payment,” Biden said.

Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, has said that decision reflects a lesson his team learned then: When you head into negotiations with Congress, aim high. “We need to go big. We need to be bold,” Klain said in a video interview with my pal Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post.

Of course, an ambitious and smooth launch is only a start. For Biden’s presidency to succeed, he needs to accomplish three things: End the pandemic. Revive the economy. Hold his fractious party together.

Still, improbable as it sounds, this politician of modest talents and limited eloquence may have exactly the gifts he needs to succeed — just as when he won the election in November. If his transition is any sign, he has already made a good start.