CNN)Joe
Biden has already kept his first promise -- his approach to the presidency will be a top-to-bottom repudiation of the behavior, policies and obsessions of President Donald Trump. The President-elect is building his administration on old-fashioned notions that facts matter, that commanders-in-chief must project stability, that Cabinet officials need experience and expertise, that a fractured nation is governable and that the world wants the US to lead.
In restoring a more conventional version of the presidency, Biden is using his mandate to counter the political forces that led to Trump's rise and which still delivered more than 73 million votes to the President, albeit in a losing cause.
His Washington restoration is not without risk, and is already coming into conflict with Trump's blend of nihilistic conservatism that is likely to dictate the Republican Party's strategy even when he has left the Oval Office.
