PD Editorial: Joe Biden is the right person to heal the nation

Donald Trump has proven to be the president we feared when he was elected four years ago: divisive, impulsive, self-reverential and, ultimately, ineffective.

Trump has twisted his office for personal gain, billing taxpayers millions for stays at his resorts and extorting the leader of Ukraine to interfere in this year’s election, bringing about a well-deserved impeachment. He prefers taunts and tweets to negotiation and compromise. His contempt for U.S. allies, denial of climate change and sympathy for white supremacists will harm America for years to come.

Trump must be held accountable for bungling the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in lost lives and an economic collapse unlike any since the Great Depression.

His unfounded claims of mail-ballot fraud and refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power are beyond irresponsible.

But our purpose isn’t to tell you why Trump shouldn’t be reelected. His unfitness for office is self-evident.

Joe Biden is the antidote the United States needs after this poisonous presidency. Biden is the antithesis of Trump: polite, empathetic, a man who believes in government and puts other people ahead of himself.

Biden won’t mock people or suggest they inject bleach or drink disinfectant, but he offers more than mature leadership after four chaotic years. He brings a deep reservoir of contacts and experience from 36 years in the Senate and eight as Barack Obama’s vice president.

As a senator, he built a reputation as a coalition-builder more interested in delivering results than scoring cheap partisan points. As vice president, he was the Obama administration’s point man on stimulus legislation that helped stabilize the economy during the Great Recession.

Biden is inclusive. On same-sex marriage, a recognition of human dignity and a landmark expansion of civil rights, Obama followed Biden’s lead. His running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, is the first woman of color on a national ticket.

Trump tries to paint Biden as a closet socialist, but the smear doesn’t stick. Biden’s track record is as transparent as Trump’s financial records are opaque. He is a moderate, not because he seeks out the mushy middle on difficult issues, but because he instinctively seeks common ground among competing interests.

A Biden administration, with the help of a Democratic Congress, could put Americans back to work upgrading crumbling highways and other infrastructure and finally deliver comprehensive immigration reform.

President Biden would rejoin global efforts to control climate change, and he would try to build on the Affordable Care Act instead of pressing in court to have the law, which delivered historic gains in health coverage, overturned.

With Biden, California would gain an ally in its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and safeguard millions of people from fires and rising seas.

Biden’s searing life experiences — the loss of his wife and infant daughter in a car accident and his son to cancer — imbue him with compassion for others that Trump has never displayed. And where Trump collects enemies, Biden’s friends and admirers span the political spectrum.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, once called him “as good a man as God ever created,” and his supporters include a long list of GOP national security professionals.

Biden may be a transitional figure, as he has acknowledged. At 77, he would be the oldest man ever inaugurated as president, taking that distinction away from Trump. But after four years of Trumpian bedlam, America needs a president committed to progress and national unity. Joe Biden is the right man for the moment.

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