Remember when bad things happened in our country before — bad things like 9/11 or the Challenger disaster, for example? We were collectively shocked, even frightened perhaps. We had so many questions — questions like, How could this happen?

The presidents then may have been shocked too. They acknowledged the awfulness to us, shared it with us even, and assured everyone things would be alright eventually. They would find out what happened and would develop a plan. That’s what leaders do.

Joe Biden is not a leader.

Everyone who’s not on “The View” sees countless things going wrong in America today. Inflation. Crime. Air travel snarls affecting millions. Shortages. Supply chains. Striking nurses. A pathetically-predictable showdown over the national debt limit.

An emergency national oil reserve that Biden’s drawn down to its lowest level in 40 years and now his administration is not refilling it.

Threatened rail strikes hyped so a presidential intervention can “settle” it, but not really until Congress acts. And a Secretary of Transportation who transports himself to a Portugal vacation at the same time.

Most everyone in the privacy of their own mind has many questions. How are we going to afford good food? And gas to get around? Why did Joe Biden intentionally kill our energy independence? We couldn’t we get infant formula last year. Now, it’s children’s medicines.

This commander in chief is not looking well. He talks nonsense. Acts bizarrely.

And he tells us that what we see happening is not really happening. Amazon is killing 18,000 jobs. Microsoft 10,000. Google’s parent company 12,000. And Joe Biden says, “The economy is strong as hell.”

His economy may be strong as hell. He has servants, armed chauffeurs, and lives in government housing when he’s not on vacation 40 percent of the time in his two private homes or the government’s mountain getaway.

It’s not leadership to promise that inflation is merely a blip. And then when it isn’t, to opine: “We think we’re getting a handle on it.”

I drove through my community earlier this month. It was surreal to see the lighted Exxon gas-price sign go from $2.74 to $2.75, to $2.76, $2.77, $2.78, $2.79, all the way up to $2.89. Today, it’s $3.29. It’s not leading to say, well, it’s down from the worst it was since he took office.

That’s not leadership. That’s Goebbels-speak. If you just repeat the bald-faced lie often, it becomes a kind of Potemkin truth that goes largely unchallenged by a complicit media.

That’s a media incapable of admitting that its sympathetic “vetting” of 78-year-old Joe Biden “campaigning” from his basement has stuck a naïve nation with an addled man and an enabling spouse who helps him believe he can be president for six more years until age 86.

Now comes word that the same Joe Biden has been violating national security laws since 2017 (at least) when he apparently illegally ferried piles of Classified files from the White House to a borrowed university office in D.C., his garage in Delaware, and some unlocked drawers in the same house.

On Friday, the FBI finally joined the treasure hunt and reported finding yet another stash of secret documents strewn about the house, including documents marked Classified from Biden’s Senate years.

Biden maintains he knows nothing about these secret files in his possession, which makes it worse. And anyway, he claims the garage was locked because his sacred Stingray was parked there.

Alas, photos emerged of a pile of boxes in the open garage and Hunter driving two young women in his father’s Corvette.

Biden and his useless press secretary say they’re being completely transparent — if by transparent, they mean totally opaque.

Talk about questions! Why would Joe Biden sneak out these specific files, including some on Ukraine where a corrupt energy company was then paying shady son Hunter $80-grand a month for influencing someone?

Why, last fall, would Biden attorneys abruptly decide to go through his long-abandoned university office and then move on to the Delaware house?

Why take two months to acknowledge these discoveries, which started just before the midterm elections?

What documents exactly were found on what subjects? Who leaked initial word of the finds to media? And why?

Why were attorneys who work for Joe Biden doing the document-searching instead of the FBI that dispatched a SWAT team to do the same document-searching at Donald Trump’s Florida residence?

Did anyone in Biden’s Justice Department consider that the “Keep-your-hands-where-we-can-see-them” approach to the Orange Man looks strikingly unequal to the “Let-us-know-if-you-find-anything-else” approach to Biden’s private lawyers?

This totally comports with the ongoing corrosion of trust in the once-vaunted FBI that so completely fell for and conspired to promote the phony Russiagate scandal concocted by Hillary Clinton’s people to sink Trump’s 2016 campaign. And the whitewashing of her email scandal also involving national security.

And the FBI’s backdoor bid to play down and censor news about Hunter’s abandoned laptop with all the incriminating evidence of international influence-peddling and 10 percent payoffs to some “Big Guy.”

So much for two-thirds of the bureau motto: “Fidelity. Bravery. Integrity.”

Now, if Biden’s breach of national security laws was unintentional, which his dog Commander might believe, why the stubborn unwillingness to be forthcoming with details? It’s like asking a teenager what he was doing that made him two hours late for curfew. And his reply is, “Nothing.”

Now, we get to a good part. What if – just spitballin’ here – Joe Biden is telling the truth? I know, crazy, right? He’s often claiming “That’s the God’s truth” when it isn’t.

But bear with me. What if he really didn’t know about the illegally-stored documents because they were planted or he did know but their embarrassing recovery was at least timed for convenient discovery just now?

That would create a parallel illegal-document case intended to disqualify Trump from 2024 and now Joe Biden. Justice has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate each case.

You don’t have to be a fan of “Wag the Dog” to imagine a grand conspiracy by Deep State and Democrat money folks to protect their ongoing political interests by easing a fragile Biden onto the sidelines for 2024. Swamp Republicans certainly won’t object; they want Trump gone too.

And if Joe and Jill Biden and their handlers resist, well, don’t forget now there’s a federal prosecutor currently looking into the nefarious, laptop-documented financial affairs of their influence-peddling, drug-taking, philandering son Hunter.

Among other behaviors, Hunter had an affair with his brother’s widow and continues to dodge child support for a stripper he impregnated. So, he’s got no reputation left to lose.

But they surely would not want to see him financially crippled by immense legal defense fees or even a prison sentence, just to show the people, you know, that justice is blind to a presidential son.

If Joe Biden agrees to disappear “honorably,” maybe that investigation will too. Just as the FBI found nothing to prosecute in Hillary’s national security case. And what happened after that whitewash?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.