Elections

A Enrique Lynch, un optimista lúcido, in memoriam.Una semana atrás, la humanidad tenía un futuro oscuro. O más, y peor: nadie veía futuro. Solo una mancha ominosa. ¿Han visto esas tormentas tropicales donde el cielo se llena de nubes gordas, omnipotentes? La sombra de Donald Trump era peor.Pero llegó Joe Biden —y la inteligente y carismática Kamala Harris— y en un día, el 7 de noviembre de 2020, descubrimos que podía haber una promesa esperando por nosotros: Biden fue declarado presidente electo. Tan potente fue que aunque el presidente en funciones de Estados Unidos no reconoce su derrota, el mundo parece sentir que el ahogo se ha acabado al menos un instante.El triunfo de Biden nos ha dado una ficción orientadora: la idea de que, en las peores circunstancias, creer, organizarse, movilizarse puede llegar a producir una suerte de milagro. Al menos hoy tenemos la creencia —y en este caso la fe parece una elección razonada— de que podemos intentarlo y que otros lo intentarán. ¿El mundo ha cambiado, entonces? El ambiente ha cambiado. Los desafíos son los mismos. Tenemos delante una plétora de obstáculos que nos harán fallar.Pero hay un comienzo: volvemos a confiar. Sobre todo, en la razón.Como sucede con las catástrofes y las epifanías, supongo que todos recordaremos dónde estábamos cuando nos enteramos de que era el principio del fin de la presidencia de Trump. Mi vuelo de Dallas a Ciudad de México estaba a punto de despegar cuando entró una alerta a mi teléfono y a otras varias decenas: pasajeros que aplaudían, algunos grititos de alegría (modosos, cuidadosos). Yo pensé de inmediato en mis hijos.Alguna de las tantas formas de la alegría ha vuelto. Y, sobre todo, la intensa sensación de que hay una luz al final del túnel. Hemos recuperado la percepción —menor, débil y tal vez inalcanzable— de que no todo está dicho y que podemos construir un futuro mejor.Lo he hablado con una decena de colegas, amigos y analistas en una visita exprés a México: la misma gente que en Zoom tenía rostro de desasosiego está ahora con una plenitud casi adolescente que resulta increíble, y me incluyo: hacía tiempo que las sonrisas no tapizaban una cara entera.Así fracasemos en conseguir lo que busquemos, hemos reubicado el carro en una senda con posibilidades. Un par de décadas atrás leí una entrevista donde Primo Levi hablaba sobre la esperanza, retomando ideas de su novela Si ahora no, ¿cuándo? Dice Levi: “Puedes estar seguro de que el mundo se dirige a la destrucción, pero es una buena idea, algo moral, comportarse como si todavía hubiera esperanza”. Y sigue: “La esperanza es tan contagiosa como la desesperación: tu esperanza, o tu muestra de esperanza, es un regalo que puedes darle a tu prójimo e incluso puede ayudar a prevenir o retrasar la destrucción de su mundo”.En estos días nos esperanzó el anuncio del hallazgo de una vacuna altamente efectiva contra el coronavirus. La totalidad de la noticia sonaba a justicia poética para una época de oscurantismo, sin épica: desarrollada en la Alemania de Angela Merkel por una pareja de científicos, un inmigrante y una hija de inmigrantes. Una suma perfecta: un país desdeñado por Trump, una mujer —una mujer, Donald— como epítome del liderazgo responsable que él es incapaz de encarnar; científicos —¡científicos!—; hijos de inmigrantes contra los que, con seguridad, el peor inquilino de la Casa Blanca hubiera sido inclemente.Ahora bien, Joe Biden no es un héroe; no es un revolucionario que dará vuelta el mundo, pero su plan nos devuelve a una senda razonable. Biden pretende despolarizar y reconciliar a Estados Unidos con el mundo; recuperar el paso en el combate al cambio climático regresando a la conversación global; defender los derechos humanos y la democracia contra el avance de las autocracias y los populismos autoritarios; reforzar la cooperación regional y mundial para mejorar el comercio en plena crisis y favorecer un sistema internacional de instituciones que atiendan los desafíos presentes y futuros.Los desafíos no dejarán de ser enormes y, por supuesto, no hay victoria garantizada —en absoluto––. Habrá errores reprochables y retrocesos inaceptables. Nos aguarda una colección de imposibles. La pandemia estira la lista de fatalidades; la crisis económica demandará volver a discutir paradigmas (y posiblemente no suceda); las fracturas sociales, culturales —civiles— no serán desmontadas por decreto. La pobreza se extenderá; millones están sin trabajo; la política del odio no se irá sin resistencia. Fallaremos en numerosos otros campos. Tendremos resultados buenos y malos. Nos defraudaremos y enojaremos.Pero hoy sabemos que hay margen para la tolerancia, la civilidad, el diálogo. Se ha abierto un hueco en la oscuridad cerrada que nos envolvió, decía Levi, quien estuvo preso en Auschwitz y sobrevivió.Tengo dos hijos, no quiero un mundo peor para ellos, y así era el futuro con Trump. Tendremos que meter el dedo en el agujero abierto, en esa brecha en la oscuridad, hasta crear un paso. Nos tomará cada día de los años por venir.Diego Fonseca es colaborador regular de The New York Times y director del Institute for Socratic Dialogue de Barcelona. Voyeur, su nuevo libro de perfiles, se publicará este mes en España. More

Most of the election-disaster scenarios that journalists and campaign lawyers prepared for don’t seem to have come to pass. True, President Trump and many Republicans are giving the appearance of contesting the election, perhaps to placate Trump’s ego. But so far nothing has emerged that would lead to the Supreme Court getting involved, state legislatures haven’t tried to appoint their own electors and the popular vote and Electoral College tally aligned.But while we were worrying about an election crisis, we may be unprepared for the crisis of governance that Joe Biden will face after he is inaugurated as president on Jan. 20.It’s not just the likelihood that the Senate will remain controlled narrowly by Republicans — and so prevent ambitious legislation on climate change, economic stimulus or health care.There’s much more to governing than legislative initiatives. And unlike previous Democratic presidents, with low expectations for legislative breakthroughs, Mr. Biden could hit the ground running with the day-to-day work of administrative governance, and also unlike predecessors such as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, he and his core staff have the experience in the executive branch that others needed years to acquire.But they may have to reassemble a broken government before they can begin to use it for good.The Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis together have revealed the limits of our capacity to respond to crises that demand basic coordination and resources, limits made far worse by members of the Trump administration but not solely their fault.In personnel and regulatory rules, the core of the day-to-day business of governing, the next president is likely to encounter a minefield of Trump-era changes; a bureaucracy that’s lost much of its experienced middle tier; and hundreds of officials who have passed the Trump-loyalty tests reportedly organized by the White House personnel director, Johnny McEntee, or cabinet officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who asked Mr. Trump to fire his agency’s inspector general in May.The Trump administration has moved aggressively to alter regulations affecting the environment, workplace health and safety, education policy and programs like Medicaid. This newspaper has documented the completion or advancement of rollbacks of more than 100 environmental rules, some of which went even beyond the wish lists of the companies that will benefit. The Economic Policy Institute found 50 actions that would limit workers’ rights.Some changes made by executive order can be reversed quickly by the same method, but most will require lengthy rule-making periods of their own, with time for public comment and possible legal challenges.With Democratic control of the Senate, the Biden administration would have been able to use an obscure process, the Congressional Review Act, to reverse regulations finalized late this year, just as Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans used it 16 times to reverse regulations from President Barack Obama’s administration. Instead, the Trump administration has two and a half months to jam through even more rules changes.All these regulatory changes, and the complexity of reversing them, will be like sand in the gears in the implementation of any action on climate, student loans or health care, as well as to the ordinary functioning of government. And they will make enacting an effective medical, economic and social response to the pandemic even more challenging.The Trump administration’s shocking sabotage of the census adds another complication that will ripple through the management of the more than 130 federal programs, including Medicaid and food stamps, that use census data to allocate funds.Steve Bannon and other acolytes of Mr. Trump denounced the “administrative state” as if it were a permanent and unchanging feature, but Mr. Trump has effectively used the administrative state to dismantle itself, beginning quickly to drive out experienced midlevel lawyers, scientists and analysts, even devising tactics like moving whole offices far from Washington. Throughout the federal government, political loyalists so inexperienced they have not yet completed college have been installed in key positions. Many are likely to try to “burrow in,” converting political appointments to protected Civil Service positions.Officials below the cabinet level — with titles such as director of the Bureau of Land Management, or assistant secretary for postsecondary education — will be as important as the higher-profile positions, and filling them quickly (or replacing unqualified people who hold those positions now) with experienced people familiar with the agencies should be a priority.But Mitch McConnell’s Senate can grind this process to a halt, too, even if it confirms many of Mr. Biden’s top-level nominees.There are still constructive efforts to prepare for governance in 2021, including by the very nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transitions. Perhaps the most comprehensive catalog of actions a Democratic president could take without support in Congress is the “Day 1 Agenda,” published by the liberal magazine The American Prospect in 2019. It includes ambitious steps to strengthen antitrust enforcement and forgive student loan debt.But the basic challenge of claiming control of the executive branch and carrying out a public health and economic response to the pandemic requires far more than a day to be ready.Mr. Biden and his team might also not realize how much has changed, and how many of the basic structures of daily governance have been broken. One value of democratic norms is that they create expectations that allow smooth transitions across administrations or within them. As those norms have been broken in the Trump years, so have those expectations.People’s direct experience of government and the services and security it provides, or fails to provide, shapes our sense of ourselves as citizens in a democracy as much as, or more than, elections and legislation. Much will depend on the Biden administration’s preparation for what it finds when it finally takes the keys to the White House.Mark Schmitt (@mschmitt9) is the director of the political reform program at the research organization New America.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

President Trump has been endlessly mocked for his reality-show stunts and attacked for his willful disregard for the facts (to choose one example of many, the hundreds of times we were “rounding the bend” on the coronavirus).But what most critics have missed is that the disconnect from reality is a feature, not a bug. It is not a flaw to be corrected, because without it, Mr. Trump would never have become president in the first place. And even now, in the dying moments of his presidency, every accusation of voter fraud, no matter how implausible, seems to him preferable to the fact of defeat.A former reality TV star, Mr. Trump filled the White House with media personalities (often, like John Bolton, the former national security adviser, someone the president saw on Fox) and ran the administration almost like a TV series, shaped by the beats — conflict, crisis, resolution, as with parts of the North Korean diplomacy — and even common settings (the use of the White House itself as a political campaign prop) of conventional narrative stories.Over and over again, Mr. Trump has striven to produce a vision of political events plausible enough to be absorbing, but without the drab and pain of reality. The problems of a typical president were political in nature; for Mr. Trump, though, they seemed like technical problems of storytelling.A key was to create deeply immersive story lines without allowing them to crash against the limits of reality. He was often successful, convincing his followers that they were living in a new country — even when very little of substance had actually been accomplished. His executive orders, for example — like one that pledged to protect people with pre-existing medical conditions — were often less acts of government than narrative tricks.About a year ago, during a rally in Minneapolis, Mr. Trump addressed his followers with wistful eagerness, recalling the night of his 2016 victory: “That was one of the greatest nights in the history of television.” It was one of the most revealing moments of his years in the White House: His presidency, it seemed, was not an event in the political history of the country, but an event in the history of television.What Mr. Trump promised was the power to create imaginary worlds and the freedom to unleash a selfish and extravagant fantasy life, free of the constraints of political correctness or even good manners, the limits imposed by climate change and the international rules tying America to the ground. This extreme form of freedom — call it hyperfreedom — appealed to Greenwich, Conn., financiers no less than to West Virginia coal miners. It was also, as we found out in the election, attractive to some minorities.In the traditional way to think about freedom, we want to limit or even eliminate obstacles to individual choice, but ultimately we must deal with reality. Mr. Trump’s example is to take it an extra step: Why not be free from reality as well? Indeed, this may be the ultimate goal of contemporary America: a society that is pure fantasy life, free from reality.Covid-19 is perhaps the best lens through which to view Mr. Trump’s hyperfreedom — and its limits. Mr. Trump seemed to take the pandemic’s arrival on American shores as a personal insult. If only he could wish it away, re-election would be assured. He tried: the questions about its seriousness and lethality; the outdoor and indoor rallies and gatherings (sometimes, as with the announcement of Amy Coney Barrett as his Supreme Court nominee, both on the same day); the refusal to model simple public health tactics like masks; the drumbeat of assurances that it would soon pass.The illusion started to buckle under the relentless attack of this physical threat. Even then, even when Mr. Trump tested positive, the reality-TV impulses never stopped: the videos from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center; the successful return to the White House, pulling away the mask and standing strong; and the heroic return to the campaign trail.But the virus had a hard logic of its own and would not disappear. With a winter wave approaching, Mr. Trump was vulnerable.What Joe Biden seemed to understand before everyone else was that the fantasy was about to collapse, and voters weren’t ready for an alternative liberal fiction. The main binary in American politics now may not be between left and right, but between fiction and reality. At some point, fictions must be revealed as no more than fictions — and they must be switched off.In this view, Mr. Biden is the kill switch. He promised to remove Mr. Trump and switch the channel to something less risky.After the election, a verdict is being widely shared: Mr. Trump may leave, but Trumpism is here to stay. This may be true, but it won’t be in the way people think.What survived the election was not Trumpism as a policy platform but the fantasy politics of the last four years. Those are as powerful and addictive as ever, but they will look very different once the current executive producer has left the job.The return to reality is but one stage in developing new fantasies. It is a way to wipe clean the canvas before departing again in search of new adventures. The search could well be resumed on the left, where there are also many powerful instincts to fight against the limits imposed by reality.Sooner rather than later, Trumpism is bound to return.Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno), a senior adviser at Flint Global and fellow at the Hudson Institute, is the author, most recently, of “History Has Begun: The Birth of a New America.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Joe Biden has named Ron Klain, who served as the “Ebola tsar” during the Obama administration, as his chief of staff.Klain, 59, has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump’s pandemic response. He first worked with Biden in the 1980s.In a statement sharing the news, the president-elect praised Klain’s “deep, varied experience”.“Ron has been invaluable to me over the many years that we have worked together, including as we rescued the American economy from one of the worst downturns in our history in 2009 and later overcame a daunting public health emergency in 2014,” said Biden. “His deep, varied experience and capacity to work with people all across the political spectrum is precisely what I need in a White House chief of staff as we confront this moment of crisis and bring our country together again.”Klain said: “It’s the honor of a lifetime to serve President-elect Biden in this role, and I am humbled by his confidence.”Klain has had a long career in government. He served as the chief of staff to the former vice-president Al Gore, and the staff director of the Senate Democratic leadership committee. He has worked with several Democratic presidential campaigns, including Biden’s 1988 and 2008 presidential campaigns. He was also the lead Democratic lawyer for Gore during the 2000 presidential election recount.From 2008 to 2011, he served as then-vice-president Biden’s chief of staff and helped oversee the $787bn stimulus package that Barack Obama signed in response to the Great Recession.Klain’s experience in a global health pandemic and a recession have been cited as among his top qualifications to help Biden in this moment. The president-elect made the coronavirus pandemic and the economic recession it has triggered central to his presidential campaign, promising to help lead Americans out of the crisis.When Klain was named the Ebola response coordinator in 2014, his appointment was initially criticized because he lacked public health experience. The Obama administration at the time noted he was chosen for his “extensive management experience”.Among those to congratulate Klain was Elizabeth Warren, the progressive Massachusetts senator who ran against Biden in the 2020 primaries. Warren said Klain is a “superb choice for chief of staff. He understands the magnitude of the health and economic crisis and he has the experience to lead this next administration through it.” Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, members of the so-called “squad” of progressive congresswoman, also offered congratulations.Waleed Shahid, the communications director for the progressive political action committee Justice Democrats, said Klain “understands the Democratic ​party has moved in a more progressive direction”.Progressives and moderates came together to help elect Joe Biden. But post-election, the two camps have already begun to spar over the party’s future, with progressives saying that Biden should embrace more ambitious policy on the climate crisis, policing and healthcare. More

Democratic senator Bernie Sanders says members of the Republican party are afraid to stand up to Donald Trump as he continues his refusal to concede the result of last week’s presidential election. Speaking on CNN, Sanders said his Senate colleagues on the Republican side are not ‘idiots’, but there’s an intimidation factor from Trump that is preventing members from speaking up. ‘They understand Trump has lost,’ Sanders said. ‘But one of the other things we should all be nervous about and fearful about is the degree to which Trump intimidates and scares the hell out of Republican members of Congress. They are afraid to stand up to him’
Trump under growing pressure to accept election defeat – US politics live More

We’ve been through a lot these last few days, people. Decades from now, some of you are going to have to answer your grandchildren when they ask you about the Time of the Two Presidents.Donald Trump’s resistance to the idea that he lost the election isn’t a surprise. This is a man, former star of a phony-reality TV show, who almost never admits he’s lost/failed/come in second at anything. Who knows what new adventures we’ll have before Inauguration Day? I’m hoping he’ll refuse to leave his room and security agents will end up carrying him out of the White House in a blanket.Which blanket would then be shredded into little bitty tufts of cloth and sold to benefit Trump’s Official Election Defense Fund. Or perhaps its successor, the Make Mar-a-Lago Great Again Crusade.Meanwhile, if you had to pick one seminal moment in the Trump resistance, it really ought to be Rudy Giuliani’s press conference announcing the president would not concede. So many reasons this gets top billing. Not the least was that Giuliani’s prime witness, introduced to back up claims of voter fraud, turned out to be a convicted sex offender.Like many of the witnesses Trump’s team was mobilizing, Daryl Brooks seemed to have a vague mission in election oversight — he said he “wanted to go to the polls to watch.” There were definitely a lot of Republicans who, like Brooks, felt they hadn’t been allowed to get close enough to the action and suspected something was being hidden.But experts searching high and low failed to find any evidence of the kind of serious, widespread irregularities that might call the results into question. Instead, the public got … Giuliani. Who held his press conference at a place called Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia. This seemed to give Trump the pleasant impression the event was in the swank Four Seasons Hotel, instead of a humble gardening service store near a crematory and a sex shop.Rudy emphasized that Brooks was just the first of what were going to be “many, many witnesses” of election fraud. Inquiring minds wanted to know why, in that case, he chose to lead off with a guy who served jail time for exposing himself to two girls, owed a great deal of money in overdue child support payments and, if known at all in his home state, New Jersey, it is as one of those guys who keeps running for offices he’s never going to win in a million years.The whole Trump resistance has a nutty flavor. The family is sending out emails assuring supporters that victory is around the corner, just so long as a check is in the mail. “We’ve found ballots in drainage ditches,” warned Eric Trump, who reminded his readers that the Official Election Defense Fund was open for donations.We’re just two weeks from Thanksgiving and I know you all have a lot of priorities. Tell me which you would rather invest your money in:A. Charities that give food for the poor.B. Outdoor heaters so you can, maybe, have a safe little party for friends and family.C. Trump Official Election Defense Fund.We may be going into a very weird and freaky holiday season. The current leader of The Most Powerful Nation on the Globe is refusing to acknowledge, let alone offer any help, to President-elect Joe Biden. Instead, Trump was busy pushing out top officials in the Defense Department. Hey — do you remember all the times you talked over the last year about what would happen if Trump lost and refused to go away? Everybody agreed that the military would never allow that kind of coup d’état, right? The guys from … the Defense Department.No reason to get panicky here. But the way Trump’s minions are standing behind his rebellion is pretty disgusting. The head of the General Services Administration isn’t working with the incoming Biden folk, leaving them unable — among many, many other things — to process financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest forms for their nominees.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, given the chance to encourage his staff to help Biden, predicted “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”Secretary Pompeo, do you really think this is a good plan? We know you want to hang onto the Trump supporters in case you run for the Senate — or, what the hell, go off and become a pathologically wealthy lobbyist/consultant. But really, do you want to be known as the guy who out-Rudied Rudy?And Attorney General Bill Barr is just encouraging his boss’s monomania, calling for his own Justice Department to investigate “substantial allegations” of voter fraud. The official in charge of such investigations quit in response.Hey, we’ve got a real competition underway here. Who’s the most irresponsible member of the Trump orbit? Besides, obviously, Himself.Attorney General Bill BarrSecretary of State Mike PompeoEmily Murphy, the head of the General Services AdministrationMike Pence, on general principlesRudy GiulianiSend me your pick in the comments below. Winners to be announced before the turkey and stuffing are ready.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the popular vote by more than five million — and his margin is expected to grow as states finish counting. Still, results so far show that President Trump’s support remained strong in most of the counties that voted for him in 2016. Here’s how. How Trump counties shifted by […] More

Joe Biden is the next president of the United States, and his predecessor is not handling his election loss well. In what may be the least surprising development of his term in office, President Trump has spent several days now falsely claiming widespread voter fraud and other nefarious behavior. Yes, counting the votes was vital, but now that the results are clear; it is time to move on.Perhaps the second least surprising development? Many Republican leaders are indulging Mr. Trump’s tantrum.There is a sycophancy spectrum. Some Republicans are going all in on the president’s conspiratorial rantings, spreading them like fertilizer on a field. Others are trying to have it both ways: not actively parroting his lies yet passively tolerating his disinformation campaign. As the rationalization seems to go: He’s on his way out. What’s the harm in letting him vent for a few days more?Where to begin?Even if this display of defiance is largely, or wholly, performative, it is dangerous. While there is little evidence of coordinated violence so far, urging his supporters to view the race as stolen — and, by extension, Joe Biden’s presidency as illegitimate — could all too easily incite someone to seek retribution, resulting in tragedy. It is also corrosive. Cynically undermining Mr. Biden’s future presidency could do lasting harm to an already divided nation.There is more targeted, more concrete damage being done as well. Mr. Biden will solidly carry the Electoral College. Barring some dramatic, unforeseen development, he will be sworn into office on Jan. 20. It is in the interest of the entire nation — a nation already struggling with a tangle of crises — for that transfer of power to go as smoothly as possible.A presidential transition is a monumental undertaking. As the advisory board of the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition noted on Sunday, “To build an effective government ready to address the urgent needs of our great country, the new president will have to recruit 4,000 political appointees, including 1,250 who require Senate confirmation; prepare a $4.7 trillion budget; implement a strong policy agenda; and assume leadership of a work force of two million civilian employees and two million active duty and reserve troops.”“While there will be legal disputes requiring adjudication,” the board observed, “the outcome is sufficiently clear that the transition process must now begin.”Some of that necessary work is going forward despite Mr. Trump’s foot-dragging. Mr. Biden’s teams are deep into staffing decisions and are firming up plans for his first days in office. Executive orders are being drawn up. A coronavirus advisory team has been assembled. Briefings are being conducted.When it sees fit, the campaign can begin announcing nominees — a process often done in batches, starting a few weeks after the election — which enables the Senate to start preparing for hearings. “Best practice generally dictates having White House positions filled by Thanksgiving, and the most important Cabinet positions ready to announce between Thanksgiving and Christmas,” according to the transition center’s website.That said, crucial elements of the transition cannot proceed without official clearance by the General Services Administration, the obscure agency that oversees the basic functioning of federal agencies, including the presidential transition. A green light from the agency frees up the office space and money necessary to kick the transition into high gear. It also triggers certain meetings and procedures and allows incoming officials to access classified information and computer systems.Typically, such authorization is granted within hours of the presidential race being called. As of this writing, the authorization has yet to occur. As The Times noted on Monday, this is blocking Mr. Biden’s teams “from moving into government offices, including secure facilities where they can discuss classified information. The teams cannot meet with their counterparts in agencies or begin background checks of top cabinet nominees that require top-secret access.”All of this has serious implications for national security. In the chaotic aftermath of the 2000 election, in which the outcome really was unclear, the transition process was delayed. This “hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting, clearing, and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees,” concluded the 9/11 Commission, which analyzed the circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In its report, the commission stressed the need going forward to get incoming officials settled quickly to “minimize as much as possible the disruption of national security policymaking.”The White House has also yet to follow the commission’s recommendation to swiftly provide the president-elect “with a classified, compartmented list that catalogs specific, operational threats to national security; major military or cover operations; and pending decisions on the possible use of force,” according to The Washington Post.So not only is Mr. Trump trying to monopolize the nation’s attention and keep the spotlight off Mr. Biden and the reasons he was elected, but the current commander in chief’s acting out is creating a worrisome opportunity for America’s foreign adversaries to exploit.On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Biden projected an air of unruffled certainty. “The fact that they’re not willing to acknowledge we won at this point, is not of much consequence in our planning and what we’re able to do between now and Jan. 20,” he said.It is Mr. Biden’s job to steady the nation. That is what elected leaders are supposed to do. But make no mistake: Mr. Trump is once more putting his own interests above the good of the American people. That so many Republican officials continue to enable him is the fitting coda to his presidency.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More