The search for an antidote to the poison in the body politic that is Donald Trump has come to Florida. The Democratic presidential primary is at hand.

Fortunately for me as a center-right conservative in self-imposed exile from the Trump GOP, I did not have to hold my nose and cast a vote difficult to defend on any grounds other than my antipathy for Trump. I was able in good conscience to vote for a man eminently qualified to be president of the United States, liberal enough to hold the Democratic base and moderate enough to appeal to independents and anti-Trump Republicans come November. I refer, of course, to Joe Biden.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a primary election night rally March 3 in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) [ MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ | AP ]

It is easy to overlook the depth and breadth of Biden’s résumé. No president has had more legislative experience than his 36 years in the Senate. And a president who by long practice knows how to get things done on Capitol Hill would be a godsend to a nation wearied by the current ineptitude in the White House and the chronic dysfunction in the Congress.

Biden’s eight years as vice president puts him on a par with George Bush père and Richard Nixon in executive branch experience. As the point man for Barack Obama on many important issues, that experience is extensive, eclectic and recent. He is known and respected at home and abroad. If foreign heads of government laugh in President Biden’s presence, it will be to his face because he told a joke, not behind his back because he is a joke.

Character is Biden’s trump card, pun intended . He is a thoroughly decent man: honest, loyal, and grounded, a good husband, father and friend. And unlike Trump, he is not compelled by malignant narcissism and rampant insecurities to want to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening, as Alice Roosevelt Longworth said of her father, Teddy.

Affable, witty and engaging, nobody dislikes Joe Biden. He is open minded, empathetic and a listener, all traits critical to a president attempting to unify and heal a nation riven by tribalism. Twice touched by tragedy, first by the deaths of a wife and daughter in a car crash and later by the loss of a beloved son to cancer, it is easy to picture a President Biden giving Ronald Reagan’s Challenger speech to comfort a grieving nation but hard to imagine him bragging about crowd size when visiting the scene of a tragedy.

Then there is Biden’s demeanor. His calmness is reassuring, the lack of bug-eyed anger refreshing. In this context, it has become a common occurrence during the campaign for a voter or a journalist to question Biden about the alleged lack of passion in his campaign, the unspoken premise of the question being that passion is a positive rather than a problem.

I beg to differ. The quasi-religious, my-way-or-the-highway zeal of both the far right and the far left inhibits dialogue between political adversaries, precludes compromise on anything and threatens the cohesion of the country. We are caught between the rock of the passionate reactionary populism of Donald Trump and his MAGA myrmidons and the hard place of the passionate revolutionary populism of Bernie Sanders and his Bernie Bros. A pox on both their houses, I say.

What is wanting is not passion but a cool hand, not self-righteousness but the Right Stuff. When I think of Biden in this moment of crisis, I think of the three words that built the British Empire on hundreds of lonely battlefields around the world: “Steady, men. Steady.”

Biden is not perfect. At 77 years old, he has a senior moment now and again. His verbal gaffes are legend. And there are votes in Congress he regrets and policies he supported that he now rejects. But these are the inevitable artifacts of a large life on which anyone would be proud to hang their hat. They are in no way disqualifying.

Widely experienced. Thoroughly decent. Ideologically moderate. If Joe Biden is not a man for all seasons, he is certainly the man of this hour.

Mac Stipanovich was chief of staff to former Gov. Bob Martinez and a long-time Republican strategist and lobbyist. He has since registered as no party affiliation and as a Democrat, and his voter registration now varies with the election cycle.