Joe Biden understands a vital and fundamental fact about our country, mightier than the presence of any one person, and rooted in the necessity of our understanding as a people.  “America,” he says, “is an idea.” The profound and ancient origin of our system of government reanimated by the Enlightenment rose in these particular conditions, in this vigorous western atmosphere, out of the wars our ancestors and brothers and sisters fought, debates waged, legal cases won, votes cast, class attendance sheets filled out, tests taken, marches weathered, speeches delivered, walls breached, and shifts of power attained.

Biden grasps the uniqueness of America in human history, and his insight, the product of education, experience, and a refinement of spirit central to republican government – even at this late stage of his political career – goes to the core of what makes him a special president.

Power for its own sake does not distinguish our country from another. We have made colossal errors of judgement in our exercise of power, resulting in the obvious abuse of power. From the beginning, the extraordinary and revolutionary proposition of our Declaration of Independent: “All men are created equal… endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” hypocritically and tragically failed to include all. Yet we endure as a people, not out of our approximation of a narrow or eccentric belief or the lionizing of any one individual or his appetites, but because of the enormity and power and thrill of the idea – that idea cherished by Biden and other Americans who understand the country as more than merely a strife of selfish individual interests. The idea itself takes shape over time in the greater refinement and execution of the rule of law, like classically reinvigorated sculpture within our public temples, parks, and streets. In our lifetime, we have blundered in our delivery of this idea, and yet we purposefully persist.

Ascertaining America, Biden said it very well years ago, in 2016, when he spoke on behalf of the presidential candidacy of his colleague, Hillary Clinton, at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. We are at our best when “We lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.” As president, as a world leader, and as the leader of NATO, Biden puts that belief into practice in a particularly powerful way, critically correcting American overreach characterized, for example, by the way we went to war in Iraq. In assembling, cohering, and leading NATO, Biden used the template of George Herbert Walker Bush in the exercise of American power, and not Bush’s son, a critical difference, and the template of Ronald Reagan.

“We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings,” President Reagan said in his 1982 address to British Parliament. “So states the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, among other things, guarantees free elections. …

“Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that’s now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated. …”

Reagan took the notion of idea and passionately expressed it as an ideal.

In a panic following Biden’s debate performance and continuing news coverage of the sitting President’s gaffes and freezes, prominent Democrats – among them Senators Michael Bennet of Colorado and Mark Warner of Virgina – want to go “in another direction.”

They speak urgently about the critical test in front of the country to defeat Donald Trump, an election denier, who encouraged a mob to march to the United States Capitol to extinguish the certification of the 2020 election, who used false claims to try to overturn the results of the presidential contest in Georgia, who threatens to punish NATO countries by giving KGB-formed dictator Vladimir Putin and Russia the green light to “do whatever the hell they want”, and who degrades the sacrifices made by WWII heroes, and men like the late Senator John McCain, imprisoned in Vietnam.  They fear the return to power of a whining demagogue, eager to embrace xenophobic white supremacists, whose withdrawal to a smaller, nativist corner of the world will place a greater economic burden on America, as we learned in the aftermath of the second Iraq War, not to mention minimize our country as a collective of people more interested in coddling a dictator than standing by those same ideals prized by Abe Lincoln and Reagan.

Understood.

But if they make a move, Democrats better understand the company Biden keeps, a company of individuals independent and tough, very tough, tough-minded (Barack “steel in his spine” Obama), with a keen understanding of the wise use of American power, as diversely opinionated as Hamilton and Jefferson, FDR – who resisted a madman emanating out of Europe – Truman, Reagan and Obama – people who know and knew and live and lived the idea of our country, which enables President Biden – an ordinary man, to borrow his words, tasked with doing extraordinary things, to chart our unique course in defense of liberty against tyranny. Even as he stutters to find the words, or freezes, at his worst – Biden through his actions shows his continuing dedication to an ideal rooted in the west, strengthened by alliance, and best expressed as America.