When Joe Biden ran for President in 2020, the cynical response was...
...that he had spent 44 years in Washington--38 in the Senate--and supposedly nothing to show for it.
Of course, that's patently untrue. He sponsored many successful bills, sat on important committees, and served as Vice President for 8 years. That's hardly "nothing."
But even that aside, I think the most recent episode regarding the debt limit blows that cynical talking point out the water. That 44 years of experience was hardly nothing. In fact, in the end, it meant everything.
The man simply knows how to get things done in DC. Period.
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He didn't just sit "on important committees", he served as CHAIR of both the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committees (during those various times when (D)s were the majority in the Senate). 
To have good government, elect good people.
That Joe Biden answered the call to lead in emergency is actually a rhyme of history:
Thwarting the rise of a demagogue was one of the primary motivations behind the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
... Washington described to Lafayette how he had recently been compelled out of retirement by an urgent risk to the United States. "Anarchy and confusion" were threatening the security of the American people and the rule of constitutional law. ... political chaos of those years created fertile ground for exploitation "by some aspiring demagogue who will not consult the interest of his country so much as his own ambitious views." ...
In the surviving records of the speeches ... the word "demagogue" was used 21 times by the framers ...
"Demagogues are the great pests of our government and have occasioned most of our distresses, ... "pretended patriots," unprincipled politicians who steer the people toward "baneful measures" through "false reports." ...
https://www.vanderbilt.edu/unity/2021/04/07/civics-101-keep-demagogues-out-of-democracy/
Of course, our founders' underlying and overriding concern was with the electorate. Thank goodness for their sakes that they couldn't possibly foresee the combination of modern populist movements and the internet -- and the crowds of aspiring charismatic "reform" leaders promising safe and glorious futures tailored to every anxious taste.
They would have approved our election of Joe, though.
Mahalo, Tommy
