Foreign desk: The Wisdom of Dealing With Dictators

America increasingly finds itself “working with some illiberal regimes” to contain others, Hal Brands notes at Bloomberg, citing Vietnam, Oman and others as examples. But this is “mostly good diplomatic practice,” drawing on “a long and fairly sophisticated tradition in US statecraft.” The idea is to distinguish between “benign” authoritarian regimes willing to work with America to maintain global order, and “malevolent” ones, with “intense geopolitical hostility to the U.S.” Alas, Team Trump doesn’t grasp that it’s key to push regimes we deal with “toward greater liberalism.” Washington, warns Brands, “should not lose sight of that long-term emphasis on liberty, even as it tends, in the near term, to the demands of maintaining order.”

From the left: Say It Ain’t Joe (Biden, 2020)

Joe Biden clearly wants to be president. And though he has reportedly yet to make a decision about running in 2020, that may be the last chance for the former veep — who’d be 78 on Inauguration Day 2021 — to stage a White House bid. Still, asks Jamelle Bouie at Slate, is this Biden’s “moment”? The short answer: no. Blame it on Biden’s record, says Bouie. Before teaming up with President Barack Obama, “Biden was known as a centrist Democrat with an active role in the Reagan-era turn against both New Deal liberalism and ‘identity politics.’ ” He was a “drug warrior” and “incarceration hawk,” and “ushered Clarence Thomas to a seat on the Supreme Court,” while doing “little to stop attacks on Thomas’ accuser, Anita Hill.” Biden has as good a chance as anyone, Bouie concludes, but he’d “do well to consider whether his reputation as a beloved party elder would survive another run.”

From the right: The Decline and Fall of Liz Warren

Another high-profile Democrat, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, may also throw her hat into the 2020 race, but, observes Frank Barnes at The Weekly Standard, her “most serious” problem may be her party’s willingness “to lean a bit toward the center.” Consider a bipartisan reform to the Dodd-Frank Act. When 16 Democrats helped pass the measure, Warren was “furious.” Or moderate Democrat Conor Lamb’s election to Congress in a Pennslvania district Trump won by 20 points. “Warren’s vision of a new America” was at odds with Lamb’s. “He’s a centrist,” says Barnes, who won’t be joining the “resistance” to Trump. “It’s not that political events since Trump entered the White House stand in the way of a Warren candidacy,” declares Barnes. “But she’s hardly on a winning streak. She needs one.”

Culture critic: When Liberals Realize What They’ve Done

Joshua Harmon’s new play “Admissions,” writes Kyle Smith at National Review, brings one of liberalism’s internal debates into sharp relief. Charlie is rejected from Yale while his friend, who has a half-black parent, is accepted. Charlie’s mother, a liberal who firmly believes in affirmative action, is also an admissions officer at a private high school in New Hampshire. Charlie rages against being the victim of his family’s worldview, only to later enthusiastically embrace it. Thus we have liberals grappling, openly and honestly, with the world they made: “The conflict with the American ideal of meritocracy is obvious,” Smith asserts. “So is the solution: The bien pensant liberals use all of their connections to make sure it’s somebody else’s kid who gets turned away from the table.”

Religion beat: The Vatican Woos Silicon Valley

The soul-searching that Trump’s election has inspired in Silicon Valley is helping techies find God. Or, at least, the pope. So the Vatican, report Segal Samuel and Josephine McKenna at The Atlantic, recently hosted a “hackathon,” and “many companies realize they have a lot to gain — reputationally and, ultimately, financially — from associating themselves with the Vatican and other spiritual institutions.” It’s not only out of the goodness of tech execs’ hearts: “Look at the rise of smartphone apps dealing with mindfulness,” Catholic Italian entrepreneur Stefano Marzani told the magazine. “Where there’s a need, there’s a possibility of innovation,” he added. “And why should spirituality not be innovated?”

— Compiled by Seth Mandel and Adam Brodsky