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presidency by the people, and of the people by the
President. And a mutual recovery of respect for rea-
son over passion.
The FDR example is illuminating. Afflicted with
the polio virus in 1921, Roosevelt courageously
forced himself back into the arena. By the time he
sought the presidency in 1932, much of what was
familiar about America was in jeopardy. Testifying
before Congress in 1930, the radio priest Father
Charles Coughlin said, “I think by 1933, unless
something is done, you will see a revolution in
this country.” Writing of the unemployed in these
years, the historian William Manchester observed,
“Although millions were trapped in a great tragedy
for which there could plainly be no individual
responsibility, social workers repeatedly observed
that the jobless were suffering from feelings of guilt.
‘I haven’t had a steady job in more than two years,’
a man facing eviction told a New York Daily News
reporter in February 1932. ‘Sometimes I feel like a
murderer. What’s wrong with me, that I can’t protect
my children?’ ”
FDR brought his own hard-won sense of
empathy and resilience to the White House, as well
as a political sensibility best described as agile. He
was “a juggler,” he once remarked, never letting his
left hand know what his right hand was doing. He
articulated a governing vision, meanwhile, with
much to recommend it: “Say that civilization is
a tree which, as it grows, continually produces
rot and dead wood,” Roosevelt said. “The radical
says: ‘Cut it down.’ The conservative says: ‘Don’t
touch it.’ The liberal compromises: ‘Let’s prune,
so that we lose neither the old trunk nor the new
branches.’ This campaign is waged to teach the
country to march upon its appointed course, the
way of change, in an orderly march, avoiding alike
the revolution of radicalism and the revolution of
conservatism.”
This is likely to be the way of Biden too, as the
46th President maneuvers between an entrenched
right and an impatient left. Biden’s personal trage-
dies are well known: the loss of his wife and daugh-
ter in 1972; his brain aneurysms; the death of his
son Beau in 2015. A man tempered by loss is well
equipped to lead—and perhaps to help heal—a na-
tion experiencing widespread pain. If he can manage
that, Biden could offer fresh evidence in support of
Emerson’s adage that “there is properly no history;
only biography.”
Threats abound, of course. Diminishing
economic opportunity, continuing racial injustices
and the ebb and flow of nativism and isolationism
will challenge the next President day in and
day out. But Biden’s life experience gives him a
particular appreciation for the role of generosity
and calm amid the storms. From his Roman
Catholic ethos, he sees life as a covenant, and he
will try to at once preach and embody the idea—
which the Episcopalian FDR also did—that the
country and the world is a neighborhood, not a war-
torn wilderness.
Much of the fate of the next four years will be as
much on us as on him. The constitutional order de-
pends on the character of the leaders and of the led.
It depends too on enough of us believing in the ex-
periment in liberty enough that we’re willing to sac-
rifice some of our interests in order to maintain an
arena in which all of our interests can contend for
temporary dominion.
Our best Presidents—and best eras—weren’t any
more perfect than we are. Amid competing demands,
they gave common sense and reason a chance. They
knew history would judge them harshly if they be-
trayed the institutions they’d inherited. They cared
what we thought—they cared what we’d say of them.
I think Joe Biden cares about that too. That’s good
news for the rest of us.
Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer and
historian
^
The sun sets over the Washington Monument
on Nov. 7, the night Biden addressed the
nation as President-elect
LORENZO MELONI—MAGNUM PHOTOS FOR TIME
