In the sprawling New Yorker profile of Joe Biden that appeared earlier this month, an unnamed Barack Obama administration official dropped an assessment of the presidential campaign that will resonate with liberals everywhere: “This country needs to just chill the fuck out and have a boring President.”

Indeed, four years in the Trump gyre, suspended in a state of nonstop emergency, having a conventional, moderately competent president for America is probably a matter of survival. Donald Trump’s disastrous management of the COVID-19 pandemic, his denial of climate change, and his rank bigotry and inability to govern coherently all pose a deep threat to the American project.

The idea of a “boring” president is one antidote to this: a president who engages in facts, not conspiracy, and operates from the minimal position that decent, intelligent people should staff federal bureaucracies to ensure they function. Biden, a moderate Democrat who occasionally lurches left, would do this, and for that alone he is worth voting for in the fall.