There has always been something faintly Old Testament about the way we Americans pick our presidents. Remember the first election of the 21st century when, by a 2-to-1 margin in national polls, voters found the country to be “headed in the right direction” and the then-term-limited President Bill Clinton was given a favorable job rating by 65 percent of his fellow citizens. Yet the electorate was not happy; voters were disappointed and disillusioned by the president’s adulterous sexual relationship with a college-age White House intern — and the lies that followed. The Republican nominee to succeed Clinton, George W. Bush, had a solemn pledge to restore “dignity to the Oval Office,” which had immediate appeal to voters. It can be said that Bill Clinton “begot” George W. Bush.

That’s the way it works in presidential politics. Voters go looking for in the new candidates what had been missing in the incumbent who, in performance, judgment or leadership, just disappointed us. Recall the back-to-back presidencies of Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Republican Richard Nixon; both men had served in the U.S. House, the Senate and as vice president. It’s hard to imagine two chief executives more qualified by experience. And what was the end result? LBJ sent half a million Americans into a war in Vietnam, and Richard Nixon orchestrated from the Oval Office a criminal break-in of Democratic Party headquarters and then compounded that offence with a criminal cover-up involving payoffs and perjury. Because Johnson and, to a far greater degree, Nixon had given experience a bad name, Jimmy Carter, an-out-of-office, former one-term governor of Georgia, could offer himself credibly to the 1980 electorate as the pristine outsider, unsullied and unstained by a long career in Washington. Nixon begot Carter, and Carter, an honest man who once in office seemed, unfortunately, to change his mind often, made possible, if not inevitable, the election of the ideological leader of the nation’s then-decidedly minority party, Ronald Reagan, who hadn’t changed his mind since at least 1964.

Reagan left office after two terms with a 65 percent job approval rating, so the fight was on as to who was the most deserving heir, a tussle won by the Gipper’s VP, George H.W. Bush, who won Reagan’s third term in 1988. Carter begot Reagan and Reagan begot George H.W. Bush. Which brings us all the way back to Bill Clinton, whose ability to convince voters that, in the midst of an economic recession, he “felt your pain” worked when George H.W. Bush, at a grocery store checkout counter, was befuddled by the electronic price scanner. Bush begot Clinton, and then, voters, Clinton begot Bush. How about 2020, you ask? Well, when voters were asked who was more honest, voters named Joe Biden over Donald Trump by 53 percent to 35 percent. Who was the better role model? Trump 28 percent; Biden 54 percent. Who will bring the country together? Trump 30 percent; Biden 50 percent. Americans value compassion and decency and kindness. That was apparent recently when Republican Bob Dole was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. Joe Biden did what Joe Biden has always done: He visited the sick. He spent time with an old friend on his way to Mass at Holy Trinity in Georgetown. We got what we were looking for when we chose Biden. It may be said that Trump begot Biden.

Mark Shields is a nationally syndicated author.