The City of Falls Church had the distinct honor of being host to an energetic party of White House staffers assembled at the State Theater this Monday to celebrate the imminent departure from the U.S. presidency of their boss, U.S. President Joe Biden. A distinct honor, indeed.

It was a short visit, but so what. President Biden took to the stage at the State Theatre and spoke for just a minute, thanking the large turnout for their service not so much to him as to the nation, and urging them to continue on the career path of public service.

Well, Joe, you are more than welcome here anytime. The passing of our 37th President, Jimmy Carter, at age 100 last week brought to the world’s attention the kind of values and personal character that is exemplary of any human being, and especially of the President of the United States. It seems clear to us that our 46th President, Joe Biden, embodies many of the same qualities as his friend and colleague Carter, even though for Joe service took the form of half a century in the Washington D.C. political wars, whereas Carter came from a peanut farm, by way of the governorship of Georgia, to Washington.

The events of the last year have been difficult for President Biden, including his withdrawal as his Democratic Party’s nominee for re-election and the loss in November of his replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris. These events and the way they were covered by and large in the media and by the President’s adversaries clouded over what we believe history will bring into focus, which is nothing less than one of the most accomplished four year terms in the White House in the nation’s history.

We do not know, of course, what the White House, the nation, and the world are going to look like when Mr. Biden’s successor returns to the U.S. presidency next week. We shudder to think. But two things about what we are facing.

First, the new administration is set up for failure. The incredibly outsized ego of Donald Trump which, combined with all the trappings of advanced age that will surely bedevil him, will set him against his own presumptive allies. The town ain’t big enough for the egos of both Trump and Musk, and as we begin to see how that plays out in the early days of Trump’s new term, we will see harbingers of internal strife that will lead to many a policy or tactical misstep.

Second, while Trump stumbled through his first four years in the White House and spent most of the last four years since being chased down by law enforcement officials who finally pinned a guilty verdict on him for his many, many crimes, his adversaries and the nation as a whole, much less the entire free world, has learned a lot about how to contain him, and they most surely will.