It is Europe’s 9/11.

But Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, aiming to bomb its democracy and its independence out of existence, is still more than that.

The aggression confronts the continent – and Washington – with even more painful and difficult questions than Al Qaeda’s attack on the twin towers in New York. How the Western allies answer them could have a deeper, and more long-lasting impact than the “war on terror.”

There is one fundamental similarity. Russia’s attack has been quite literally a wake-up call: a frightening confrontation with a threat, and an uncompromising adversary, whose existence was known, but left complacently, even willfully, unattended for years.

But the adversary this time is incomparably stronger than Al Qaeda. Indeed European leaders have been making Russia stronger: For years they have been doing business with Mr. Putin, buying 40% of Europe’s gas supplies from him.

Until the tanks thundered into Ukraine Feb. 24, those leaders had convinced themselves that, far from constituting a security risk, this was a form of interdependence that would make a Russian attack on a European democracy simply unthinkable. This led them to pare back their military preparedness for what has now happened.

All of that has now changed.

The force with which the new reality is jolting Europe may be difficult to grasp for Americans.

One reason is geography: the scenes of carnage – and of Ukraine’s David-and-Goliath resistance – are playing out in the heart of Europe, a few hours’ flight from Berlin, Paris, or London.

Axel Heimken/dpa/AP

German sailors wave farewell to a reconnaissance vessel leaving the port of Eckernfoerde to reinforce NATO's northern flank, Feb. 26, 2022, in the wake of Russia's attack on Ukraine.

But it’s also about history, echoing two of the darkest periods in Europe’s recent past. One is the Cold War, during which the Soviet Union used its military might to quash any tremor of reform by rolling tanks into Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, and by forcing martial law on Poland in 1981.

The other echo recalls Nazi Germany’s campaign of aggression and genocide. It is lost on few Europeans, even those too young to have experienced World War II themselves, that the last time such a fearsome foreign military force advanced on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was when the German army attacked in 1941.

For now, we are in the immediate post-9/11 moment, as Europe’s governments and people share a sense of shock, sadness, and anger.

There is unity, too. In the 27-nation European Union, even countries which have traditionally been reluctant to take political or economic issue with Mr. Putin have backed unprecedentedly harsh economic sanctions. Within NATO, even an initially skittish Germany has backed beefing up troop numbers in member states nearest Ukraine, and rushing more defensive weapons to Ukraine.

Still, having ruled out direct intervention, NATO knows that Ukraine’s short-term fate will rest with the valiant, though hugely outmatched, Ukrainians.

And more difficult policy questions lie ahead, as they did after 9/11. Not just how to respond to the immediate attack, nor even how to exert the heaviest possible cost on the attacker. They are about how to prevent Mr. Putin from going further, or from using his attack on Ukraine to cow other nearby states.

Such steps will mean more sacrifices for European citizens at a time when rising energy prices, and inflation, are already hitting families hard.

Any effective, longer-term response will mean action on two fronts – military and economic.

Yves Herman/Reuters

European Council President Charles Michel, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hold a joint news conference on Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Brussels, Feb. 24, 2022.

Since the end of the Cold War, Europe has been reveling in a “peace dividend,” scaling down expenditure on conventional military forces in favor of smaller-scale anti-terror operations or policing missions. Until the Ukraine invasion, NATO seemed to have lost its original, Cold War mission without having found a coherent alternative.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump wondered what NATO was for, especially when so few European states were ready to increase their military spending. French President Emmanuel Macron, a few years back, described the alliance as “brain dead.”

Now, there’s not just talk among European capitals about stepping up military spending to the 2% of gross domestic product they have long promised; there are real signs of action. With tens of thousands of anti-Putin protesters on Berlin’s streets, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced plans Feb. 27 to spend some $112 billion to bring German defense outlays up to the NATO minimum. Europe and Germany, he told an emergency session of parliament, had entered “a new era.”

And for the first time, the EU agreed to spend $500 million on defensive weaponry for Ukraine.

An even greater challenge, however, will lie in freeing Europe from its energy dependence on Russia, thus denying Moscow – whose economy is heavily dependent on energy exports – a major source of revenue.

In the short term, that may prove impossible. Europe’s reliance on Russian imports is simply too great, and the likely price spike from seeking alternative sources would be huge.

Yet here, too, there are signs of incipient change. Germany has now commissioned a pair of terminals to handle shipments of liquefied natural gas as a move to begin diversifying its energy supplies.

Sergei Grits/AP

People line up to withdraw their money from an ATM in Mariupol, Ukraine, Feb. 24, 2022, before the town came under heavy Russian attack. Russia's invasion has badly disrupted Ukrainian financial services.

The EU is also planning to unveil new policy targets this week to boost its energy independence. Measures are expected to include an increase in natural gas storage ahead of next winter, and a plan to cut Europe’s consumption of fossil fuels by 40 percent by 2030.

Those plans will cost taxpayers money. The open question is whether ordinary Europeans’ anger at Mr. Putin’s invasion will be sufficient to sustain a willingness to make the economic sacrifices such responses will require.

The immediate outrage over the invasion is not in doubt. Nor is widespread admiration for the Ukrainians’ resistance. And there is another sentiment abroad, which suggests that the shift in mood could indeed prove enduring: raw astonishment, and a sense that Europe has arrived at a watershed moment.

That feeling has been unmistakable on the faces and in the words of demonstrators, young and old, in cities across the continent.

And in a question asked again and again: How can this be happening? In Europe. In 2022?

Leon Neal/AP

Jens Stoltenberg, secretary-general of NATO, speaks during a joint press conference, after talks regarding the invasion in Ukraine, in Tallinn, Estonia, March 1, 2022. NATO is deploying thousands of troops in Eastern Europe to prevent “spillover fighting” and “any misunderstanding that we are not ready to protect and defend all allies,” Mr. Stoltenberg said.

As Russian forces invaded Ukraine last week to discourage the former Soviet republic – and any other countries that might be watching – from joining NATO, the Western alliance’s leaders redoubled their efforts to avert inadvertent hostilities that could lead to World War III.

Accomplishing this goal involves a tricky balancing act of showing the resolve to counter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression while also trying to tamp down tensions following his veiled threats to use nuclear force against nations that “interfere” with his offensive.

Western leaders are endeavoring to do this through a combination of “tripwire” troops and clear messaging: Even as they announced a historic deployment of forces to Eastern Europe, NATO leaders assured Mr. Putin they will not venture onto Ukrainian soil. 

Alliance soldiers arriving at the easternmost border of NATO territory are being given access to deconfliction channels and technology designed to keep them from getting into accidental dust-ups. The goal is to avoid having to invoke Article 5, in which NATO allies are duty-bound to come to one another’s defense.

Preventing “spillover”

Avoiding accidental NATO-Russia run-ins starts with underscoring allied red lines, so that Mr. Putin doesn’t get any ideas about venturing farther west than Ukraine.

To put an exclamation mark on their vow that the alliance will defend “every inch” of its territory, roughly 14,000 U.S. troops are deploying to Eastern Europe on what’s known in Pentagon parlance as an “assure and deter” mission. Some will serve in the NATO Response Force, which is being mobilized for the first time in alliance history.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

They will be led by a NATO group called the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force. The troops will be bolstered by a host of high-tech weapons, including half a dozen U.S. F-35 stealth fighter jets bound for Estonia, Lithuania, and Romania, which will host two each.

The goal of these forces is not to engage with Russian troops – as defense officials have repeatedly emphasized – but to prevent “spillover fighting” and “any misunderstanding that we are not ready to protect and defend all allies,” as NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg put it last week.

At the same time, NATO commanders have reached out to Russian forces to “do everything we can to ensure deconfliction,” Mr. Stoltenberg said.

One particular risk of miscommunication lies on the Black Sea, where NATO and Russian naval forces are operating.

There, the small, nearly uninhabited Snake Island, home to a Ukrainian military base recently attacked by Russian ships, offers a case study in complexity, says Iulia-Sabina Joja, director of the Frontier Europe Initiative at the Middle East Institute.

The island was the subject of a border dispute between Ukraine and Romania. International courts ruled in Ukraine’s favor, but much of the maritime area around the island remains the territory of Romania, a NATO member. The issue illustrates “how risky and close these possible confrontations could be,” says Ms. Joja, who formerly served at NATO and as an adviser to the Romanian president.

It doesn’t help that Russia has engaged in GPS “spoofing” in the Black Sea, subtly changing ships’ navigation coordinates. Russia can also jam GPS receivers. To counter these contingencies, U.S. Space Command said last week that its units are working with U.S. European Command in the region on technological backstops.

Showing restraint

In all of this, the telegraphing of the Western alliance’s intent is critical to avoid any misinterpretation of its troop movements by Mr. Putin – and by the troops themselves.

An illustration of just how the Pentagon is doing this came at a press briefing hours after the invasion began, when a dogged reporter asked repeatedly if troops in Poland could potentially be drawn into fighting in Ukraine. “They’re not going to be accidentally drawn into Ukraine,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said, with emphasis as much for international as for domestic consumption.

Andreas Gebert/reuters

U.S. troops stand in formation at the Albrecht Duerer Airport in Nuremberg, Germany, March 1, 2022. Some 14,000 American soldiers are being deployed to Eastern Europe on what’s known in Pentagon parlance as an “assure and deter” mission.

It is a point Pentagon officials have stressed nonstop, and a clear indication of command to the ranks. It also reinforces expectations NATO leaders have for its troops on the border. This is particularly important given that many of them are young and from countries where historic enmity toward Russia could encourage rash behavior that runs the risk of escalation.

On this front, so far, so good, says Elisabeth Braw, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a former senior fellow at the Royal United Service Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London. Polish troops have been barraged with disarmed rockets, blinded with lasers, and even pelted with rocks by soldiers across the border in Belarus, a Russian ally.

“How can you accurately assess whether what’s coming your way is live fire or empty shot when you’re a young Polish soldier?” she adds. “But they’ve shown incredible restraint, and clearly that’s their intent.”

A boost to defense spending

Beyond military miscalculations leading to accidental war, the miscommunication challenge in the months and years to come will involve identifying how NATO failed to discourage Mr. Putin from invading Ukraine in the first place – and how now to prevent tragic loss of life.

Some advocate for a return to old defense postures as the new way ahead. “I was wrong in my forecast that Putin would not launch an invasion,” says AEI’s Frederick Kagan, an architect of the surge in Iraq and long a barometer for hawkish thinking.

Tech. Sgt. Jacob Albers/U.S. Air Force/AP

U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles from the 336th Fighter Squadron taxi after completing a NATO mission out of Lask Air Base, Poland, Feb. 28, 2022. The telegraphing of allied intent is critical to avoid any misinterpretation of its troop movements by Russia – and by the troops themselves.

Since the end of the Cold War, NATO’s boundary “has been like a solid wall that no one will cross because the consequences of doing that are so clear.” Mr. Putin’s actions in Ukraine “should eliminate any thought in our minds about what we think Putin will and won’t do.” They should also dramatically boost military budgets for the democratically minded, he adds.

And that’s precisely what’s happening now. “In a very dramatic and tragic way this [war in Ukraine] has changed the equation” in Europe. “Those who were sitting on the sidelines, or who had adopted a wait-and-see approach” toward Moscow, are now increasing defense spending and mobilizing troops, notes Ian Lesser, vice president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Indeed, the NATO allies may yet impose penalties on Mr. Putin that ultimately prove he’s the one who has miscalculated, he says. “The net result of all this will be a lot more NATO capability facing Russia in the years ahead,” Dr. Lesser adds. “I’m not sure that’s what Putin anticipated.”

In the wake of an invasion that has shaken the globe, the diaspora of Ukrainians from Winnipeg to Warsaw has taken to the streets to denounce a war they say is unprovoked. But another side of their fierce resistance is spiritual – ringing in choruses, sermons, and prayers inside Byzantine-style Ukrainian Orthodox churches and cathedrals around the globe.

After centuries in the sway of Moscow – from nationalist czars to atheist politburos – Orthodox Christians of Ukrainian descent are fighting not just a political battle but for spiritual sovereignty from Russia’s arm of the Orthodox church. These are struggles of identity that date to the 17th century and threaten Vladimir Putin’s sense of Russia’s place in the world.

“Darkness will never break the soul of our nation. If the Russian empire is darkness, I will call the Ukrainian nation the sparkle of light,” sermonized the Rev. Jarslaw Buciora in the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in the heart of Toronto on the Sunday of the Last Judgment – and the first Sunday since Mr. Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

A few minutes later, as the choir sang, a blustery snowfall broke and, for just a few moments, light shined through the richly adorned cathedral.

Voice breaking at times, Mr. Buciora delivered a two-and-a-half-hour Ukrainian and English liturgical rebuke of Russia that echoed the complex, centuries-old entanglements of religious passion and cultural identities in the Christian Orthodoxy shared by Russia and Ukraine.

The Orthodox Church of Ukraine, supported by the diaspora in North America, broke free from Moscow in 2019 – winning official recognition from the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, based in Istanbul. And Ukrainian diaspora communities here in the West say they refuse to let that victory be undone by the invasion of their homeland.

Alexander Thompson/The Christian Science Monitor

A woman crosses herself during a service at St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Boston on Feb. 27, 2022. Services throughout the Ukrainian Orthodox diaspora were full after the Feb. 24 Russian invasion.

Independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, says Mr. Buciora in an interview, was like “somebody put the body on the soul, as if the people got the second part of their life back. Even though we were enslaved by the Russians over the last three centuries, we never lost our faith in God. Because you can put down the body, you can destroy the physical element, but you will never destroy the spiritual element inside of you. That’s exactly who we are.”

The Orthodox churches in Ukraine had been under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church since 1686. The fight for an autocephalous, or independent, church is a long and divisive history and so theologically labyrinthine that scholars disagree on major points. And even parishioners, themselves, don’t always fully understand them.  

But the Orthodox independence movement gained force in Ukraine after the fall of the officially atheist Soviet Union and, once again, after Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. When Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko was elected that year, he saw an opportunity to appeal to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, for autocephaly, which was finally granted in 2019.

Church as political leverage

It was a huge event in the Orthodox world – and a major blow to Mr. Putin, who claims his own post-Soviet Orthodox religious awakening after his family narrowly escaped a fire at their dacha.  

The issue has been more complex inside Ukraine than within the North American diaspora. By and large, the Orthodox diaspora in Canada and the U.S. identifies with an independent Ukrainian church, rather than the church that remained loyal to Moscow, and takes some credit for its new independence. When autocephaly was granted, Ukrainian Orthodox bishops from Canada and the U.S. were consulted – bolstering Mr. Putin’s claim that the independence movement was Western-backed.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Many Orthodox Ukrainians in the diaspora identify with 2019 official recognition of independence given to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. "It's our dream, our hope. We waited many centuries for this," says the Rev. Vitaliy Pavlykivskiy, the priest at All Saints Ukrainian Orthodox Church in New York City, shown here with his wife after a Sunday service Feb. 27.

As a consequence of the autocephaly, Mr. Putin cut off all ties with Constantinople, a move that has split the Orthodox world over who has primacy to grant independence and where allegiances lie politically, says Frank Sysyn, a Toronto-based religious historian at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta.

“Putin’s battle for dominance in Ukraine is also what he would view as a spiritual struggle,” Dr. Sysyn says. “Putin has had to search for an ideology to replace communism for Moscow to be the center of what he calls the ‘Russian world,’ all the people who speak Russian or used to be part of the Russian Empire, and for him they should be part of this fortress that’s going to oppose the West and take over the Orthodox world.

“He argues the reason that Ukraine cannot be separate from Russia is they are one nation, one people, and should have one religion and one faith.”

Canada has one of the largest shares of the Ukrainian diaspora in the world, with 1.3 million people of Ukrainian descent, according to census figures. The U.S. Census Bureau identifies over 1 million people of Ukrainian descent in the U.S. And while the Ukrainian diaspora identifies primarily as Orthodox and Ukrainian Greek Catholic, which had its roots in western Ukraine, Mr. Putin invoked the Orthodox faith as one justification for invasion.

“Masters in our own home”

Nearly every pew in St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Boston was occupied on Sunday, many congregants dressed in blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukrainian flag.  

“Whenever we have a crisis … we have extra people here. They need that anchor during times of tragedy, in times of extra stress. They need that comfort,” says Jane Yavarow, president of the parish. Hymns from St. Andrew’s choir rang through the edifice until the very end, when their voices rose in a national song. Quietly, the congregation joined them.

Alexander Thompson/The Christian Science Monitor

The Rev. Roman Tarnavsky of St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Boston swings a censer during the service on Feb. 27, 2022. The church was full, and many congregants dressed in blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

Ukrainian Orthodox churches outside Ukraine were not granted autocephaly; they remain under Constantinople. But most align and identify with the independence movement in Ukraine. 

“It’s our dream, our hope. We waited many centuries for this,” says the Rev. Vitaliy Pavlykivskiy of All Saints Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Manhattan, translated from Ukrainian to English by a church member after Sunday service Feb. 27. 

And the issue is not just an obscure religious matter that happens behind closed doors, but part of the consciousness of average churchgoers like Alexander Dubok, who says his family members in Ukraine are struggling, but hopeful, and “very, very defiant.”

He adds: “We pray for the forces, for the army, for the reserve folks who are volunteering, including my brother.”

Though he’s been living in the U.S. for 26 years, he says the 2019 recognition of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine “means a lot.” Convening with his faith community has been a balm during this difficult week. “Faith is our tool, our weapon – in a good way,” he says.

In Ukraine, the issue of autocephaly has been more fraught. Ukraine is an overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian nation, with nearly 8 in 10 identifying as Orthodox, according to Pew Research figures. (A significant minority are Ukrainian Catholics, while there are also Protestants, Muslims, and Jews, including current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.)

But there is a significant – and complex – split in the Orthodox community of Ukraine. The Russian church, known officially as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, with its many adherents from diverse backgrounds, remained in Ukraine after 2019 and its churches actually outnumber those of the independent Ukrainian church by about 12,000 to 7,000, according to estimates Dr. Sysyn cites.

Yet in surveys on questions of identity, not parish affiliation, many more Ukrainians will say they recognize the national leadership as the highest authority. The grassroots faithful don’t necessarily view their parish as a reflection of politics on either the Russian or Ukrainian divide – it’s simply their parish. 

The invasion of Ukraine could be a catalyst for more Ukrainians to break with the Russian church, hopes Mr. Pavlykivskiy. And that would backfire for Russia. 

The Russian Orthodox Church has always viewed Kyiv as a “mother city,” after Prince Volodymyr, a warrior ruler of Kyivan Rus, the “cradle” of Russian civilization – brought Christianity to what is now Ukraine in the 10th century. 

Claiming historical justifications for war in a Feb. 21 speech, Mr. Putin alleged that Kyiv was preparing “the destruction” of the Russian-backed Orthodox church in Ukraine – a Western attempt to betray Ukraine’s true, Russian, identity. But even that Russian-backed church’s leader has since compared the invasion to “the sin of Cain.”  

The autocephaly issue is viewed on both sides as a reflection of the bigger struggle for Ukrainian independence that goes well beyond a distinct political or theological moment.

Sara Miller Llana/The Christian Science Monitor

A solidarity march for Ukraine in Toronto attracted thousands, including Toronto Mayor John Tory (in blue mask) and Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland (right) who walked at the front of the protest alongside Ukrainian priests, as a steady mass behind waved Ukrainian flags and anti-Putin signs and chanted "Stand with Ukraine."

“By pursuing relentlessly the path of independence, this was clearly a way for the church to remove any semblance of subordination to Moscow. It was really, in a certain sense, a firm and final rejection of Russian Orthodox governance,” says the Rev. Nicholas Denysenko, Emil and Elfriede Jochum professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana. “It was Ukrainians claiming their own Orthodox life, but it was also in a certain sense experienced and interpreted by Russians as an affront.”

At the end of the liturgy St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral, Mr. Buciora tells the congregants about a march in Toronto that afternoon. It attracted thousands, including Toronto Mayor John Tory and Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who walked at the front of the protest alongside Ukrainian priests, as a steady mass behind waved Ukrainian flags and anti-Putin signs and chanted “Stand with Ukraine.”

But before, Mr. Buciora calls on the members of the church to head to downtown and join thousands of demonstrators supporting Ukraine. “If not us then who?” he asks the faithful. “If not now, then when?”

• Sarah Matusek reported from New York City, and Alexander Thompson from Boston. 

Jeff Dean/AP

J.D. Vance (left), a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio, embraces GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene at a rally in Mason, Ohio, Jan. 30, 2022. Mr. Vance speaks frequently about an American dream that's become out of reach for most in a country that's been "plundered" by elites.

When J.D. Vance announced his run for Senate in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, last July, he vowed to fight in Washington on behalf of Ohioans who “look to the future more with frustration and fear than with hope and optimism.”

A Marine turned venture capitalist, whose bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” detailed his scrappy Appalachian upbringing, Mr. Vance talked about an American dream that’s become out of reach for most. He spent much of the speech in the trenches of resentment, excoriating the elites who “have plundered this country.”   

“They seem to want to take our love of country away from us,” he said.

Such rhetoric has become standard fare in an era of partisan strife in which both sides seem drawn to prophecies of decline. The doom and gloom is framed differently by Democrats and Republicans, but they share certain touchstones, including a loss of faith in upward social mobility and a precarious vision of the future – particularly if the other side is in charge.

On the left, the racist sins of the past and stubborn persistence of structural inequities, coupled with worries of climate catastrophe to come, cast a dark shadow. On the right, rapid demographic and cultural change and the waning influence of Judeo-Christian values has led to a lost “American” identity. Both sides say the economic deck is stacked against average citizens; both look out onto a world in which the U.S. is no longer as respected or feared. 

The COVID-19 pandemic and now the security crisis unfolding in Europe have only further dampened the mood. As President Joe Biden prepares to address the nation in tonight’s State of the Union, it’s hard to imagine him making the case, as former President Barack Obama did in a 2016 Howard University commencement address, that the best time in human history to be born – regardless of race, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation – is now. 

Politics is cyclical, and America has certainly been through dark periods before – from the Great Depression to the “malaise” of the 1970s to the financial crisis of 2008. Still, what sets this era apart is how few political leaders are proffering optimism as a way through it. Where previous eras were often buoyed by an underlying faith in America’s goodness and the promise of a brighter future, today that national confidence seems seriously shaken. 

Rhetoric of previous presidents – from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama – featured different ideological beliefs, “but the narrative components [were] pretty similar,” says Robert Rowland, a professor of communications at the University of Kansas. “In the great arc of American history, the positive emotions have always ruled. And narratives about the American dream have been crucial.” 

Longing for the past

That seemed to change, Professor Rowland says, with Donald Trump’s presidency. President Trump’s vision of the future stood out for being in many ways a revival of a golden past, invoked in his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.” He connected with the GOP base not by declaring “Morning in America,” as President Reagan famously did in 1984, but by voicing visceral anger at the “American carnage” all around. 

“Negative emotions are at the core of his message,” says Professor Rowland, author of “The Rhetoric of Donald Trump: Nationalist Populism and American Democracy.”

Notably, President Biden’s pitch during the 2020 campaign also seemed to rely implicitly on a vision of the past, as he promised voters he would restore the country to a kind of pre-Trump normalcy.

Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle/AP

Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally, Jan. 29, 2022, in Conroe, Texas. His vision of the future is in many ways a revival of a golden past, invoked in his 2016 campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.” During that campaign, he connected with the GOP base not by declaring “Morning in America,” as President Ronald Reagan famously did in 1984, but by voicing visceral anger at the “American carnage” all around.

Messages of doom and anxiety about the future have become a turnout strategy for both parties, who now routinely tell their voters that America itself could end if the other side wins the next election. For Democrats, it’s democracy that’s at stake; for Republicans, it’s freedom.

Negative partisanship – where voters are more motivated by fear of the opposing party than love of their own – has replaced appeals to common values and goals, says Frank Luntz, a veteran Republican strategist.

“There was a time when Americans saw the best in people. Now, it’s only the worst,” Mr. Luntz says via email.

Making electoral contests so existential actually distracts from tackling long-term challenges, notes Yuval Levin, director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “We’re stuck in this, ‘are we going to make it through the next few years?’” way of thinking, he says. “We exaggerate the dangers we face, almost as a way of avoiding talking about the future.”

This myopia mirrors the horizon of many leaders in Washington who are in their 70s and 80s, a boomer generation that still holds power. It may also reflect a nation whose overall population is aging – with seniors on track to outnumber children for the first time ever sometime in the next decade, and young people, also for the first time, expected to earn less than their parents. Given these trend lines, any promises that the country’s best days lie ahead might well ring hollow.

“The country feels itself to be elderly in a way that’s unusual for the United States,” says Mr. Levin. “We have a sense that there was a moment when the future happened here, and America was everything – and that moment has passed.”

A glass half empty

To be sure, the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have created a sense of instability and fogged up the future. Still, the politics of pessimism, of a glass half empty and springing a leak, were present even before the current crises. 

A Pew survey in 2018 found that many Americans saw their country as one in which economic inequality, national indebtedness, and political dysfunction were likely to increase by 2050. Half of respondents said children born today would have a worse standard of living in 2050; only 1 in 5 believed the average family would be better off in the future. 

Nor did they see a superpower standing tall. Six in 10 said the U.S. would be less important in the world in 2050, compared with 31% who said it would be more important. 

To many on the right, that sense of an unraveling global order has been mirrored by a breakdown of political hierarchies and a cohesive identity at home. 

The 2020 census confirmed what experts have long predicted: The U.S. is on track to become sometime in the next few decades a country in which whites will be a minority. This is already true for under-18s, where no racial or ethnic group has a majority. The census revealed a white population in absolute decline due to deaths and low birth rates, though a rise in people identifying as mixed-race was also a factor. Between 2010 and 2020, the share of the white population fell from 64% to 58%, a historic low.

AP/File

Workers on an assembly line at a General Motors plant in Euclid, Ohio, put finishing touches on Fisher Body metal station wagons, Aug. 10, 1950. Many on both the right and the left look back at the 1950s as an era of relative economic fairness, in which unionized workers could afford the kind of middle-class lifestyle that seems out of reach today.

“We’re not at a moment of stasis in this country. We’re at a moment of religious and demographic change,” says Robert Jones, founder and CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute. 

This upheaval has been unsettling for some white Christians in the Republican coalition who believe that America has a divinely ordained role and are wary of a multiracial, multifaith future, says Mr. Jones. “They’ve been accustomed to think of America as their country.” 

In a 2021 poll by PRRI, 7 in 10 Republicans agreed that American culture and its way of life were worse now than in the 1950s. By contrast, 63% of Democrats said it had changed for the better. Similarly, 8 in 10 Republicans said America was in danger of “losing its culture and identity,” compared with 33% of Democrats. (White evangelical voters, a mainstay of the GOP base, expressed identical views.) Republicans are five times more likely than Democrats to say racial, religious, and ethnic diversity makes the U.S. weaker, not stronger, the poll found.

“Democrats are leaning into the demographic future of the country, and Republicans are trying to hold on to a 1950s view and composition of America,” says Mr. Jones, author of “The End of White Christian America,” published in 2017. 

But the left’s embrace of demographic change has often been tempered by a different brand of backward-looking pessimism. 

Some Democrats look back to the 1950s as an era of economic fairness and less income inequality, in which unionized workers could afford the kind of middle-class lifestyle that seems out of reach for so many today. Many also use the past as a yardstick for progress on racial and social justice – and find the U.S. still coming up woefully short.

The promise of Mr. Obama’s presidency, and his emphasis on a slow but inexorable path to a better future for all, has given way to frustration over systemic racism that exploded on the streets in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd.

Ethan Swope/AP/File

A kayaker fishes in Lake Oroville, despite low water levels due to drought conditions in Oroville, California, Aug. 22, 2021. Fears about climate change are casting a dark shadow, as the United Nations released a new report Feb. 28 warning about the ways it is harming people and the planet.

The left’s focus on America’s roots in slavery and racism in institutions has compounded the sense of a nation that, far from being providential, seems mired in sin. “They think it’s totally unredeemable,” says Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of the conservative National Review and a critic of what he calls the illiberal left. 

In the PRRI poll, 54% of Democrats said that at some point in their lives they had not felt proud to be American. When the question was asked in 2013, most Democrats could not recall a time when they had felt this way. (One in 4 Republicans said they had not always felt proud.) 

Mr. Lowry says the left’s despair over the lack of racial justice and historical wrongs is at odds with a record of unmistakable progress. “America has never been more open and pluralist and non-racist. It’s never been as close to realizing its ideals of justice and equal treatment under the law,” he says.  

Still, Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, argues that the pessimism on the left tends to be more “future-oriented” than on the right because it’s not tethered to a golden past. This creates at least some space for political hope, even as anger over issues like racial inequality and policing dominate the discourse, along with frustration over inaction on climate change. 

“They’re disappointed we’re not at the promised land yet, but they still see one there,” he says. 

Immigration and the American dream

Some conservatives push back on the idea that fear of demographic change is driving negative polarization on the right. Mr. Lowry blames the “woke ideology” of elite institutions that have marginalized conservative voices and made them feel embattled and shunned even when they win elections. 

He says this has fed a politics of resentment, particularly as practiced by Mr. Trump, whose occasional forays into optimism often drew mockery from the media for being out of touch with reality – from his predictions that COVID-19 would vanish to his claims he had cut a nuclear deal with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. 

Mr. Lowry recently reread President Reagan’s speech at the Republican convention in 1980, a time of intense national gloom over inflation, oil prices, and Iran. Mr. Reagan spoke to all these issues, but still sounded remarkably upbeat about the future. “You shouldn’t be optimistic in all circumstances,” Mr. Lowry says. “But I still think most people in this country want you to be future-oriented.”

John Minchillo/AP/File

An activist uses a bullhorn outside City Hall in New York, on June 30, 2020, after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer sparked nationwide protests. For many on the left, frustration over systemic racism has supplanted the promise of Barack Obama’s presidency, and his emphasis on a slow but inexorable path to a better future for all.

In Mr. Reagan’s era, that vision of a brighter future included immigrant-led population growth. In his final speech as president, he called for America’s doors to remain open “to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” That positive view of immigration had long eroded among conservatives by the time Mr. Trump took office vowing to build a border wall. Since then, legal immigration to the U.S. has declined, and fell sharply during the pandemic.

Notably, immigrants skew younger, have larger families, and put more stock in the American dream than U.S.-born citizens, particularly for their children. “The most optimistic Americans are the new Americans,” says Professor Rowland.

Young people should likewise be optimists, says John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School and author of a book on Generation Z. The generation now coming of age – the oldest of whom are in their mid-20s – have never seen the country really “pull [together] in the same direction,” such as after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

Analysts say President Biden lacks the rhetorical skills of Mr. Obama, under whom he served as vice president. Still, Mr. Della Volpe points to a “pitch perfect” speech he gave in June 2020 after Mr. Floyd’s murder, when he spoke of how progress can come from the darkest moments.

Leaders need to give young Americans a reason to believe in the democratic process, Mr. Della Volpe says. 

They also need to make a conscious effort to message optimism to voters – even when times are hard and it seems easier to rile up the base with anger, adds Mr. Rauch. Otherwise, he warns, the sense of hope and promise that’s long been a key cornerstone of the American story could be lost.

“There’s a risk that this kind of talk drops out of the vocabulary when politicians fall out of practice,” he says. “They forget how to play these chords.” 

Reuters

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández arrives after being detained by members of the Honduras National Police in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Feb. 15, 2022. The United States requested his extradition for drug trafficking and weapons charges the day before he was arrested.

Belkis Galindo raced outside to dance and sing alongside hundreds in the Honduran capital on Feb. 15, marking the arrest of former President Juan Orlando Hernández.

“We were all waiting for it,” says Ms. Galindo, who works in marketing. Mr. Hernández, who served eight years as president and oversaw a period of increased poverty, violence, and international migration, was taken into custody by Honduran police the day after the United States requested his extradition for drug trafficking and weapons charges.

We’re “just waiting for the day when they actually send him [to the U.S.]. There will be more justice there than here,” says Ms. Galindo.

Despite the celebrations, this moment is bittersweet. Extradition is a tool that’s been used in the region by the U.S. since the 1970s to take often “untouchable” politicians and drug traffickers and try them in a system that’s less susceptible to the local threats, bribes, and political maneuvering back home. But with Mr. Hernández’s extradition on the table, many in Honduras are imagining a different possibility: justice for high-profile criminals within Honduran borders.

“Honduras is worthy of a better fate [than extradition],” says Ana Pineda, professor of law at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) and former secretary of justice and human rights. “Honduras should have robust internal institutions, and the heads of these institutions should be selected for ... professional merits so that when they have the opportunity to investigate anyone – regardless of their position – they do so without hesitation.”

There are glimmers of hope, she says, that a shift toward a more independent justice system could be on the horizon. For the first time in 12 years, a new party is in power, pledging to deliver justice for corrupt officials, bring back an international anti-corruption committee, and revive Honduras’ weakened democracy through a constituent assembly. And already citizens are making clear that they are prepared to pressure the government to keep judicial appointments aboveboard and in clear view of the population.

“No foreign justice system is going to indict all of our corrupt leaders,” says Rafael Jerez, a Honduran political analyst and research fellow at the Institute for Transnational Law at the University of Texas at Austin.

“It’s not that difficult if there is political will,” adds Ms. Pineda. “And this government has shown that it wants to do things differently.”

Esteban Felix/AP/File

Juan Orlando Hernández, then president of Honduras, waves as he exits a meeting with Chile's then-President-elect Sebastián Piñera in Santiago, Chile, on March 10, 2018. Backing from the U.S. during Mr. Hernández's presidency “facilitated his [grasp] on power,” says Rafael Jerez, a Honduran political analyst.

Shifting views of extradition

Extradition to the U.S. from Latin America was long justified by weak justice systems that couldn’t handle trials of high-profile politicians or kingpins, says Luz Estella Nagle, a law professor focused on transborder crime at Stetson University in Florida. Although there has been significant U.S. government investment in the region’s justice systems, corruption is still its Achilles’ heel. 

In 2016 and 2017 alone, the U.S. sent more than $104.56 million to Honduras in aid earmarked for justice-system and police reform, according to the latest available data from the Central America Monitor by the Washington Office on Latin America.

“Some feel that [legal] aid has been wasted. Because if we’ve invested so much money and time, ... why has so little changed?” says Ms. Nagle.

But one thing that has changed is the way alleged criminals perceive extradition. It was once feared, based on the belief that sentences were harsher in the United States. But today, the threat of facing justice in the U.S. doesn’t loom so large in the mind of accused criminals, says Pablo Rueda-Saiz, an associate professor of law at the University of Miami who grew up in Colombia when Pablo Escobar was waging war against the government and civilians in protest of his extradition.

In stark contrast to the weekly bombings and violence that shut down schools and supermarkets, and took down airplanes, during Mr. Escobar’s fight against extradition, accused criminals today may seek it out. “They do get sentences, but of course reduced sentences due to plea bargaining,” says Mr. Rueda-Saiz. Oftentimes they don’t lose their assets, even if ill-gotten, and can remain in the U.S. after serving their sentence, he adds. “So, many actually request to be extradited to the U.S. That’s a 180-degree turn since Pablo Escobar.”

But a central complaint from the region is that by taking someone to face justice in the U.S., they aren’t held accountable back home.

Local victims and citizens “lose out by not getting to participate in the process of a trial,” says Ms. Nagle, who notes that these are not victimless offenses. “And who are the victims? The most vulnerable ... and they should have a chance to face” the accused, Ms. Nagle says.

A weakening justice system

Delio Colindres, a fruit vendor, was passing near the former president’s house on Feb.15, when he noticed a heavy police presence. It wasn’t long before Mr. Hernández was brought out in handcuffs.

Fredy Garcia/Reuters

Ana Garcia Carias, wife of former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández, speaks after filing a complaint with the human rights commissioner about what she says is the violation of human rights in the detention of Mr. Hernández, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Feb. 21, 2022.

The past several years have been difficult in Honduras economically, Mr. Colindres says. He felt the pain of gas and electricity price hikes. About 48% of Hondurans lived on less than $5.50 a day in 2019, and the poverty rate reached as high as 51.5% during Mr. Hernandez’s time in office, according to the World Bank. Mr. Colindres may not have had evidence, but he says he’s long thought Mr. Hernández was up to no good. The U.S. sentenced the former president’s brother, Tony Hernández, in 2021 for drug trafficking, which bolstered this perception. To that end, Mr. Colindres supports Mr. Hernández’s extradition: “In Honduras, with money, anyone goes free.”

In 2021, Honduras ranked in the bottom 13% on the corruption perception index, according to a ranking of 180 countries by Transparency International. Since 2008, the year before a historic coup, the country has fallen more than 30 spots down the list.

Honduras’ 2009 coup exposed the weaknesses of its judicial system and opened the door for further politicization. Soon after, Mr. Hernández, a member of the National Party, which ruled post-coup Honduras until its defeat at the polls last November, became president of the Congress.

The justice system underwent a number of changes that consolidated the power of the conservative ruling party, from stacking the Supreme Court with judges sympathetic to Mr. Hernández’s party to allowing him to run for reelection, despite a constitutional ban. In 2020, Mr. Hernández allowed the mandate to expire on an international anti-corruption commission backed by the Organization of American States, known as the MACCIH, which investigated high-profile corruption cases.

The justice system was so co-opted by the National Party that any potential criminal case implicating party members or their interests stopped before it could even begin, says Ms. Pineda, who served as secretary of justice and human rights under Mr. Hernández’s predecessor, who was also a member of the National Party. 

Another factor was U.S. support for Mr. Hernández during his time in office. As recently as 2020, the acting secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security referred to Mr. Hernandez’s government as “a valued and proven partner” in Central America. The seemingly abrupt shift from support for the former president to a request for his extradition raises questions about how much the U.S. knew – and perhaps overlooked – about his alleged criminal activities. Nevertheless, backing from the U.S. “facilitated his [grasp] on power,” says Mr. Jerez, from the University of Texas.

The former president had supporters at home too. “He did good things. He helped me,” says Karen Jimenez, a street vendor, crediting his party with keeping a roof over her head. She thinks the accusations against him are false and that if he is to face any trial, it should be at home.

“It doesn’t seem right to me that [the U.S. will] judge him there when he isn’t from there. He’s from here,” she says.

A fresh start?

President Xiomara Castro, who took office Jan. 27, campaigned on an anti-corruption ticket, promising to restore the independence of Honduras’ justice system. Congress formed a commission last month to investigate why the country failed to bring charges against Mr. Hernández. The idea is that if the U.S. is bringing these charges, which cite alleged crimes as far back as 2004, then the Honduran justice system must have known about them, too.

Ms. Castro’s government recently requested the assistance of the United Nations to create an international commission to investigate corruption, as well. Next year, legislators will name new members of the Supreme Court and an Attorney General, key appointments that will set the tone for the justice system for the next five years.

“If these processes are transparent, ... it would be very positive for our country,” says Luis Javier Santos, director of the Specialized Prosecutorial Unit against Corrupt Networks (UFERCO), housed within the public prosecutor’s office. “There would even exist the environment for the people who are now being extradited to be tried in our country – not the same ones, but the next corrupt people who emerge of this same level,” he says, hopefully.

Since the beginning of Mr. Hernández’s second four-year term, civil society has become increasingly vocal against corruption and closed-door deals within the government. Ms. Castro’s administration will likely feel that growing pressure.

After 12 years of leadership that gutted social services and inspired hundreds of thousands to flee Honduras, civil society and average citizens want more from their political system. 

“With this new government a door of hope has opened,” says Mr. Santos. “And we hope that it doesn’t close.”

Editor's note: The time when Mr. Hernández became president of Honduras' Congress has been corrected.

Over her lifetime, Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) kept more than 90 creatures as pets, and she drew most of them. Her children’s books, starting with “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” demonstrate her skills at depicting animals. But what’s less well known is her passion for botany and the role that mushrooms indirectly played in the publication of her first book. 

In “Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature,” a gorgeous new book packed with examples of Potter’s sketches and watercolors, author Annemarie Bilclough and other contributors underscore the love of nature that informed Potter’s work. 

Helen Beatrix Potter was born into a large, close-knit family of privilege and her early childhood was spent in London. On the one hand, the city was “gritty and gray” to her young eyes, but on the other hand, it had advantages: Gardens, museums, libraries, and a zoo were places of discovery for this “shy and insatiably curious girl,” as she’s described in the book. 

She and her brother, Bertram, were educated at home as young children. The nursery-cum-schoolroom became a science lab where they studied butterflies, beetles, and other insects. Outdoors, they spent time with dogs and horses. And, significantly, they kept a succession of rabbits. Bertram apparently favored wilder species, including salamanders, a frog, and a bat. He later graduated to birds. He kept, among others, a jay, a falcon, and “an owl that hooted all night.”

"Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature" by Annemarie Bilclough, Rizzoli Electa, 216 pp.

Her first sketchbook was done at age 8. Her parents, recognizing her talent, arranged art lessons starting when she was 12 years old. As was usual with their socioeconomic set, the Potters left London for extended stays in rural settings. Eventually her family purchased a summer home in Britain’s bucolic Lake District, an area that was to provide lasting inspiration for Potter.

Around 1885, Potter began drawing fungi. This led to a post at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, London, where she produced faithful, detailed renderings, largely of mushrooms and toadstools. With the aid of a microscope, suddenly a new world of gills and spores opened up. According to the book, one of the reasons she chose mycology was that botanical artists of the day had given short shrift to the species.

While working at Kew, she wrote a paper, “On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae.” She had her heart set on persuading the esteemed Linnean Society of London to publish her study, but the all-male panel rejected her paper. It was a setback, but fortuitous in one regard: Except for that rejection, the book argues, perhaps there would have been no Peter Rabbit.  

The idea for a children’s book grew from a series of what Potter called “picture letters” that she wrote to Noel Moore, the son of a former governess, in the early 1890s. It was suggested that Potter submit her drawings to a publisher. Her first book idea, “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” was repeatedly rejected, so she self-published it.

Courtesy of Princeton University Library

A "picture letter" by Beatrix Potter sent to Noel Moore from Heath Park, Birnam, Scotland, Aug. 21, 1892. Ink over pencil on paper.

Editors at Frederick Warne & Co. saw her book, recognized its quality, and gave her a contract. In 1902, Warne published “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” which, along with Potter’s subsequent books, was scooped up by an enchanted public.

Books inspire universal affection

Potter had a deep understanding of children, although she had none of her own. She created characters with an emotional honesty that children can appreciate, as she “is not obviously always on the side of the Goody-Goody-Two-Shoes,” according to Libby Joy of the Beatrix Potter Society, in an online article. Peter Rabbit returns to Mr. McGregor’s garden, even though his mother has forbidden him to do so. Children can relate. At the same time, the plots have vitality and pace that hold their attention. 

Potter also recognized children’s love of language. “At its best, Potter’s prose has the sound and rhythm of poetry,” says one of the book’s contributors.

Potter’s books have what one might call aesthetic integrity: Some of her rabbit sketches call to mind the work of 15th-
century German artist Albrecht Dürer. She also had a fondness for hedgehogs. This is clear in a series of artworks depicting them in a style not unlike the small, deft strokes of sumi-e, the Japanese genre of black ink painting. But her drawings are far funnier.

She could be delightfully silly. For instance, she once quipped, “It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is ‘soporific.’ I never felt sleepy, but then I am not a rabbit.”

Courtesy of © Tate

"The Tailor of Gloucester" artwork, 1902. Watercolor, ink and gouache on paper by Beatrix Potter.

Her books “have an underlying interest that a lot of children’s books don’t necessarily have for adults,” according to Joy. Potter’s art, she says, is “realistic, compared with many children’s book illustrations.” This fidelity to nature builds on Potter’s years of drawing from life, including her depictions of fungi.

Land stewardship

Such was Potter’s success with her books that she was able to buy Hill Top Farm in the Lake District. In her late 30s, she married William Heelis, a British barrister. Hill Top would become another turning point in her life. (“It is in here where I go to be quiet and still with myself,” she wrote.) 

By 1913, Potter had stopped writing books to embrace farming as her profession. Along with Heelis, she managed a herd of prizewinning Herdwick sheep, enlarged her holdings, and worked to protect open lands in the Lake District from development. Over time, she acquired 4,000 acres. The property was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017, and is now open to the public.  

Potter’s contributions to land preservation are widely recognized, and her beautiful and accurate drawings of mushrooms eventually received their due. Her illustrations were used in the 1967 book “Wayside & Woodland Fungi,” and in 1997 the Linnean Society offered a posthumous apology for its sexist treatment of her research.  

Her knowledge of plants and animals, and her skill at rendering both, give Potter’s drawings a liveliness and realism that continue to appeal to readers young and old.

Reuters

Ketanji Brown Jackson, nominated last month to be a Supreme Court justice, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 28, 2021.

During the past few years, the ability of smartphone recordings to capture police interactions with communities of color has shaken up thinking about law enforcement in the United States. Now with the nomination of a former public defender, Ketanji Brown Jackson, to the Supreme Court, a similar discussion could soon start about a related topic: how the court system treats poor people.

That may be by design. According to The Associated Press, nearly 30% of President Joe Biden’s nominations to the federal courts have been public defenders, compared with 24% who have been civil rights attorneys. Judge Jackson would be the first former public defender to sit on the nation’s highest court.

This emphasis in Mr. Biden’s judicial nominations comes at a time when approaches to criminal justice are undergoing a profound reassessment – particularly at the local level – following recent civil rights protests. In cities like San Francisco, St. Louis, and Philadelphia, district attorneys who were once public defenders are instituting standards for what crimes to prosecute, how to sentence, and when to impose bail.

Shortly after Chesa Boudin became district attorney in San Francisco two years ago, for example, he culled the ranks of assistant prosecutors and added public defenders. Within five months the city’s jail population was reduced by 40%.

But such reforms have drawn at least as much fire as praise. Although the idea that former public defenders may know better how to emphasize redemption and healing over punishment of suspects has begun to take hold, the full effects have yet to be known. It reflects a balancing of individual and societal interests inherent in the work of public defending – a balance that Judge Jackson would likely bring to the court.

“Public defenders require an ability not just to understand a decision, but its effect,” says Trent Ball, associate vice president of equity and access at Southeast Missouri State University. “So often they have to boil their decisions down to an individual losing something versus how does it impact the whole.”

A Supreme Court justice, he argues, “has to be comfortable that the decision he or she makes may not bear fruit now but will in the future. It is not just about judgment, but discernment. Jackson brings that.”

The public defense system in the U.S. was set up to help people facing criminal charges who lack the means to pay for a private lawyer and must be assigned a public defender. Many public defenders manage crushing caseloads on salaries that are often far below what they could earn elsewhere. In many cases, defendants meet their appointed attorneys for the first time when they appear in court.

Public defense is based on a constitutional principle, upheld in a 1963 Supreme Court decision, that every accused person is entitled to legal counsel. Public defenders do not have the luxury of choosing their clients. During her stint as a federal public defender in Washington, D.C., Ms. Jackson represented not just criminal defendants but terrorism suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay.

The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to a speedy trial. But case backlogs result in people spending months behind bars before their day in court – particularly if they cannot afford bail. Often, public defenders say, their clients do not understand how the judicial system works.

As Judge Jackson told Congress last year: “One of the things that I do now is I take extra care to communicate with the defendants who come before me in the courtroom. I speak to them directly and not just to their lawyers; I use their names. I explain every stage of the proceeding because I want them to know what’s going on. ...

“It’s only if people understand what they’ve done, why it’s wrong, and what will happen to them if they do it again that they can really start to rehabilitate. So, there is a direct line from my defender service to what I do on the bench, and I think it’s beneficial.”

For Wesley Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County who swept into office three years ago promising broad criminal justice reforms, fixing an overburdened system by simply processing cases more efficiently isn’t enough. The objective “is healing and justice,” he recently told The New York Times.

A court system that has long depended on guilty verdicts and incarceration as a deterrent to crime has begun to discern indigent defendants as individuals who are more than the sum of their alleged transgressions. Public defenders like Ms. Jackson have long known this. Her nomination invites the rest of society to debate if their ideas are worth trying.