He’s old. He worked with Barack Obama. He’s generally seen as a decent guy.If you know more than that about Joe Biden, you know more than many voters.

As companies and organizations of all sorts have scrambled to institute a zero-tolerance policy on racism over the past few weeks, some of them have turned out to be more interested in signaling their good intentions than punishing actual culprits. This emphasis on appearing rather than being virtuous has already resulted in the mistreatment of innocent people—not all of them public figures or well-connected individuals with wealth to cushion their fall.

Many observers breathed a sigh of relief when Bill Barr was confirmed as attorney general. Here was a respected professional who had served in the post once before in an honorable administration. Now, just a year and a half later, what a disappointment he has proved. The man cannot be trusted.Think of the intentionally misleading account he gave of the Mueller report, at a time when the public and Congress had only Barr’s word to go by.

Sincerity is the key to every great Will Ferrell comedy. His classics, such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, are surreal satires of American arrogance. But they work because the title characters are earnest creations—buffoons invested with the genuine belief that what they’re doing is special.

The daunting logistics of holding an election during a pandemic were on display in Kentucky on Tuesday, as voters in the state’s primary made their way to just 170 polling places—down from 3,700 before the coronavirus arrived. Considering the logistical challenges of social distancing, record absentee-ballot requests, and uncertainties about whether officials could recruit sufficient poll workers, observers on the ground judged the election to be surprisingly well run.