Joe Biden Has Problems. The World Has Solutions.

The worst thing that President-elect Joe Biden can do right now is to spend any more time with election lawyers. The irritations of President Donald Trump’s unseemly rearguard action are already fading away. The challenge of governing the country will only grow. The ugly truth is that the new president’s inheritance is a much tougher one than most of Biden’s supporters realize — on two counts.

First, as Covid-19 has revealed in painful detail, the U.S. is falling behind much of the world, not just in health care but also in most of the functions of government. Second, little of this falling behind is really Trump’s fault. The disruptive child being dragged out of the White House is more a symptom of what ails the U.S. than a cause. Merely removing him will not solve much.

From this perspective, Biden should do what other great U.S. presidents have done when their country has started to fall behind: Look abroad and copy what works.

For all the talk about American exceptionalism, the best American leaders have never been ashamed of learning from abroad, especially in times of trouble. The founding fathers carefully studied the world’s most successful political systems, particularly those of Britain, France and ancient Rome. James Madison pored over comparative constitutions while at Princeton, while John Adams and Thomas Jefferson drew on their experience as envoys to France.

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