WASHINGTON — Joe Biden is a different man. Transformed at 78, he speaks soberly to the times that try our souls. The glibness is gone.

As the pandemic eases and the economy warms up, the president hits the right notes — concern and competence in a crisis presidency.

"Uncle Joe" has none of former President Barack Obama's show-stopping eloquence. That's fine.

As president, Biden is reaching for higher fruit than Obama ever did. He's ending the longest war. He's going big to bridge us together on the home front — in broadband, steel and concrete, railways, education, the grid and child care.

Call it infrastructure, reinvented. Our hurting country needs public works, jobs and investment to recover.

If Biden does raise the corporate tax rate to 28% to pay for the infrastructure package, that's a rare, fair and square win for the middle class.

That's fine, since Obama extended George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy. Fairness has gotten lost in the 21st century.

Speaking to the nation in a hushed House chamber, Biden derided the mob who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 as former President Donald Trump's last stand.

Biden framed the onslaught against the Electoral College count as the worst attack on democracy since the Civil War.

"Lives were lost. Extraordinary courage was summoned. The insurrection was an existential crisis, a test of whether our democracy could survive. And it did."

I was in that very chamber when the violent mob broke glass trying to get in while shots rang out.

Biden's words helped sew up scars for sane lawmakers (and journalists) who heard death knock on the chamber door: death to democracy.

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., is taking a brave stand against Trump's last stand.

Cheney, 54, greeted Biden cordially when he entered to deliver his speech. Both cherish Congress. Obama felt he was slumming with Congress.

(Cheney's father, Dick, was in the House before he became vice president and helped President George W. Bush start the lost wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bloodstained.)

Yet most Republicans roaming the Capitol reservation are virtually members of the Trump mob. Under useless House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, the party is in free fall.

The stark contrast between Trump's ruthlessness and Biden's kindness — it's like Trump's knee is off our shared neck. We can breathe.

Biden is practicing inclusion in building his team, not preaching it. Two close advisers, Chief of Staff Ron Klain and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, were with him since Senate days.

The morning after that address to Congress, returns were in. The new man in the White House is not the loquacious lightweight we knew in the Senate.

Biden spent 35 years representing the small state of Delaware, close enough that he could take the train home at the end of a day.

Everyone liked Joe, even Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., don't get me wrong. But he was never a legendary "giant of the Senate," a wise elder.

If Biden was legendary for anything in his Senate, it was his habit to talk on and on.

A young senator got weary of Biden's monologue in committee. Obama wrote a note to an aide: "Shoot. Me. Now."

Biden's worst days in office were the confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court.

Confronted with testimony of sexual harassment against Thomas, Chairman Biden first tried to squelch it. In nationally televised hearings, Biden loudly insisted Thomas had the benefit of the doubt.

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., a giant of the Senate, corrected the younger Biden: Benefit of the doubt goes to the country, not Thomas. Byrd declared he believed Anita Hill — her, not him.

Thomas squeaked by, 52-48, in a tragic debacle hard to forget. Archconservative Thomas still sits in sullen judgment upon us.

That's not fine. Painful, so 20th century, Joe. Let go.

Biden awed Senate friends at a rotunda ceremony for a fallen Capitol police officer.

Knowing loss, Biden spoke straight to the officer's children, saying that memories would first bring tears. "My prayer for you is that moment when a smile comes before the tear."

That brought tears to many eyes, a simple gift from someone who may join the rotunda greats.

Jamie Stiehm may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To read her weekly column and find out more about Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.