Given that, Biden should not take a definitive stance that this measure, and this alone, is the way to approach Supreme Court reform. He needs to run on the issues of his choosing, not Trump’s, or embrace at his peril the latest enthusiasm of progressives whose political wisdom is so uncannily awful.

In short, Biden’s description of “where I stand” need not be a definitive up or down on expanding the court.

Nor should it be. Politics aside, the constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe told me, it would be injudicious to oversimplify the crucial and multifaceted issue of reforming the Court in the transient heat of this campaign. The ultimate answer, Tribe continues, depends on the legal and political context facing Biden should he become president—whereupon various proposals, including term limits, may deserve more studied consideration.

That’s when he should choose and, until elected, what he should say. There are times, whether in politics or policy, when temporizing equals wisdom. This is one—Joe Biden has a country to save.