One of the leading criticisms of Donald Trump was that, given his verbal diarrhea and the fact that he wasn’t a professional politician, his loose lips and freewheeling, no-filter style were dangerous when it came to the most powerful office in the world. After all, diplomacy is, like romance, a game of signals and clues — only a misunderstanding won’t just leave you with a sense of embarrassment and regret but potentially bombing and mass murder as well.

During the Trump years, a never-ending stream of articles complained about his “norm-busting” tendency to say things he wasn’t supposed to, from revealing a political ally’s personal phone number to serially revealing government secrets, all the way to lobbing schoolyard taunts and threats at a nuclear-armed dictator he was feuding with. The promise of Joe Biden was that, even if he failed to actually do anything about the conditions that led to Trump’s rise, we would at least have an experienced, mature, and careful adult in charge.

This didn’t really square with what anyone knew about Biden’s history, but this was what was sold. The shift from Trump to Biden would be “day and night, black and white,” one veteran diplomat assured the public. “There will be message control and discipline.”