Choosing a president under a state of siege

... We are almost certainly facing a choice in November between Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden. So, it’s time to ask: Which of these men is more likely to approximate our greatest 20th-century crisis president?

Offering both faith and facts are essential. “The people of the United States have not failed,” Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address. “In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. ... They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.”

He understood, too, that we need a leadership grounded in reality, especially in wartime. “Your Government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst, without flinching or losing heart,” Roosevelt told the nation in 1942. That same winter, he leveled with us, saying, “The news is going to get worse and worse before it begins to get better. The American people must be prepared for it and they must get it straight from the shoulder.”

Presidents must give it to us straight. Those who get in trouble — Johnson and Vietnam, Nixon and Watergate — think they can sugarcoat the truth or deny reality outright. I fear Trump and the coronavirus pandemic have now joined that dispiriting list of presidential failures, and we are only beginning to count the wages of misleading the people.

... Biden is no Roosevelt — no one is or may ever fully be — but he can lead us in an ethos informed by the lessons of history and of hope. Trump has not and cannot.

In 1933, a friend told Roosevelt that he might well be remembered as the greatest of presidents if he succeeded in defeating the Depression, but that he would go down as the worst if he failed. “If I fail,” Roosevelt replied, “I shall be the last one.” Donald Trump won’t be the last American president. But history — ancient and recent — tells us that, come November, we ought to make Joe Biden the next one.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/20/presidents-must-give-it-us-straight-thats-why-we-should-elect-joe-biden/