Who can lead a post-coronavirus America?

When America wakes up from its enforced hibernation sometime later this year, will Joe Biden and the Democrats look like the team that can manage a transformed post-coronavirus country most effectively?

The Democrats will resume campaigning with a discordant but perhaps beneficial mix of candidate and base. They have a genially reassuring, 77-year-old former vice president standing atop a party whose progressive ideas for health care and guaranteed income fit the nation’s needs better now than they perhaps seemed to even a month ago. Did the Democrats stumble into the right combination of old and new?

But here’s a caution for the Democrats about coronavirus politics. Americans want calm and competence, but they also want decisive leadership. When people are scared (and the fear factor is just beginning), they want to know that their families will be safe. I’ve seen that phenomenon in war-ravaged countries around the world: Frightened people seek the protection of the strongest militia in town.

The Democrats certainly can be the haven of sanity and expertise in this storm. They’ve got those soft subjects covered. But do they have the toughness to power America through a political landscape that’s very different from what it looked like on Super Tuesday, which already seems a lifetime ago? This strong leadership style, the kind that can effectively manage a war economy, is what the Democrats need to sharpen during the hiatus.

Biden has coasted toward the nomination, propelled initially by the enthusiasm of African American voters, and then most everyone else in the party, because he appeared to have the right stuff — namely a seeming ability to beat President Trump. But a nagging question remained as Biden disappeared into lockdown in Delaware: Is this garrulous white-haired gent perhaps out of sync with a hyper-anxious nation in quarantine? Or is his Irish-grandpa manner just what the country needs?