#Biden should credit Trump on COVID vaccine and other commentary

From the right: Joe Should Credit Trump on Vax

Joe Biden pledged to unite the country and has “one simple way he could show he is serious: Give President Trump credit for the stunning success of Operation Warp Speed,” points out The Washington Post’s Marc A. Thiessen. Trump’s “decision to run the vaccine-development process in parallel rather than sequentially” facilitated record-breaking success. But instead of admitting that “for all of Trump’s flaws in managing the pandemic, he is also responsible for ending it,” Biden seems out to save “that credit for himself.” The new president can deliver on “his promise to reach out to his opponent’s supporters and bring Americans together” by resolving to “give credit where credit is due — and pledge to continue Operation Warp Speed.”

Urban beat: Lessons From Across the Hudson

“The story of New York City over the past few years has been one of ­increasingly harebrained opposition to new housing and office construction amid a debilitating housing shortage and worsening economic prospects,” grumbles Nolan Gray at City Journal. Yet right over the Hudson, the Jersey City “growth machine” has been securing “significant public improvements.” Last year, it built several times as much housing per capita as New York. Jersey City “doesn’t take growth for granted: Its leadership makes few apologies for attracting new investment” and using it to secure new schools, parks, libraries, infrastructure and apartments. Facing “fiscal collapse” and “crumbling infrastructure,” Gotham’s leaders “would do well to learn from their humble New Jersey neighbor.”

Capitol Hill vet: Dems’ Lame-Duck Dilemmas

It isn’t just that Congress is in a post-election lame-duck session now, with many members out the door in January, notes John Feehery at The Hill: Nancy Pelosi has said the new session will be her last as House speaker, and no one expects Joe Biden to run for re-election. “It makes sense for the Democrats to try to get as much as they can now in this lame-duck session of Congress, because it is hard to see how they can get anything more done once Joe Biden is sworn into office.” After all, Pelosi next year “will be dealing with the slimmest Democratic majority in more than a hundred years,” and many in her caucus “want revolution, not evolution.” Biden, meanwhile, will have a Cabinet full of people looking to succeed him: “The knives will be coming out pretty early. It should be kind of fun to watch, especially if you are a Republican.”

Campus beat: Northwestern vs. Free Inquiry

Northwestern University administrators proved themselves “clueless . . . about what academic freedom means and how to protect it,” thunders Charles Lipson at RealClearPolitics: They responded to public criticism of ex-lecturer Joseph Epstein’s Wall Street Journal column attacking non-MDs’ use of “Dr.,” including by Jill Biden, with a statement that, after “10 pro forma words of support for academic freedom,” turned “to the real goal: lacerating Epstein.” It announced it “strongly disagrees” with his supposedly “misogynistic views.” Universities should “remain silent on nearly all ­political issues” so as “to encourage students and faculty to express their views.” Condemn away as individuals, but not in any “official capacity.”

Foreign desk: Trump Is Right About Taiwan

America can’t afford “a third-term of a Barack Obama policy on the Western Pacific,” advise Patrick Mendis and Corey Lee Bell at The National ­Interest; better for the Biden team to follow the Trump example and understand “the weight that China places on the Taiwan issue.” Taiwan is key to America “retaining both its global standing and national interests in the ­Pacific region, and to heading off challenges elsewhere around the world”; letting China disrupt the balance of power would be “disastrous” for the whole “democratic world.” In reality, “Taiwan effectively needs to be ‘kept-in-play’ for both sides.” Biden must avoid any “U-turn based on naive hopes that goodwill can temper President Xi’s growing and increasingly impatient desire to pressure Taiwan into capitulation.” If he stays the course without Trump’s idiosyncratic obsessions, Biden can be “far more formidable than his predecessor.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board