BIDEN IN THE BREACH.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: MIDDLE AMERICA by RUTH CONNIFF

Sitting in front of a crackling fire in the White House at the end of February, President Joe Biden explained to historian Heather Cox Richardson how he sees himself as a transitional leader, carrying forward the founding ideals of U.S. democracy in the face of authoritarianism's rise around the globe. As the interview took place, Russia was launching its invasion of Ukraine, giving more weight to Biden's words.

Democratically run countries have been in steady decline for the last couple of decades, observed Biden, who described a conversation he had with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in which Xi expressed his belief that democracies can't compete with autocracies in a rapidly changing world because "democracies require consensus and it's too hard to get consensus."

That is precisely the challenge Biden faces both at home and abroad. Authoritarianism is on the rise not just in Eastern Europe, but right here in the United States, where Republicans have pledged allegiance to Donald Trump's Big Lie, officially sanctioned the violent mob that broke into the U.S. Capitol in the misguided belief that the 2020 election was "stolen," fanned the flames of white nationalism, and are now busily passing state-level anti-voting laws to tilt elections in their favor by disqualifying the votes of low-income people and people of color.

Standing in the breach is Biden, articulating a pragmatic idealism and a long view of history that seems to be exactly what we need right now.

Let me stipulate that I was no Biden fan during the Democratic primaries in 2020 when he appeared to be the least progressive candidate in the field. I thought he lacked vision and energy, and I didn't like his cozy relationship with the banking industry, his biggest contributor, for whom he helped defeat consumer bankruptcy protections.

But as President, Biden has turned out to be a bulwark against the worst elements in our politics. He has pushed through an ambitious series of domestic spending bills on a scale not seen since the New Deal. He has rapidly built consensus among European nations to condemn Russia and impose stiff sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine, including cutting off Russian oil imports to the United States, while stopping short of triggering a nuclear war.

Biden made good on his promise to nominate a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court, choosing in Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson not just a powerful legal mind, but someone who would also be the first Justice to...