There’s a lesson about the relative blunders of free and unfree societies. The West’s managerial and democratic elite, of which Mr. Biden is a peerless example, may be feckless and short-sighted, and yet their societies go from strength to strength and don’t commit colossal errors (e.g., famines that kill tens of millions). We may one day conclude as much even about the relative merits of the U.S. and Chinese approaches to the Covid pandemic.

Recall that the U.S. also pursued wars that came to be seen as failures. But here’s the point: They were affordable failures. Indeed, our wars could drag on inconclusively because they were so far below the threshold of what the U.S. could sustain economically and politically.

The Chinese are assumed to be carefully husbanding the lessons of Mr. Putin’s Ukraine debacle as they get ready to anoint Xi Jinping with president-for-life status, but they are missing the most important lesson. Western societies insist on changing their leaders every few years, and it makes them strong and resilient in a way no authoritarian society is. This points to the true unpatriotism of a Putin or a Xi. Their central job, as they see it, is to deny their societies the blessing of regular, orderly and lawful succession of power from one set of hands to another.