1. The deadly Afghan exit with hundreds dead, including 13 U.S. troops,
2. So many trillions in wild spending that spawned inflation and taxed everyone buying food beyond our means, and 
3. Willfully opened the southern border, creating a humanitarian crisis with more than 10 million illegal, undocumented, and untracked immigrants whose legacies will haunt our communities socially and educationally for decades to come.

Harris and Biden are parodies of themselves. Neither one is a bright candle on the Sunday dinner table. Someone told him that shouting and then whispering in public remarks makes him seem strong instead of like a fading AM radio signal on the Interstate.

The oldest president in U.S. history can’t remember the names of important people standing next to him. Or that he’s telling the same fake story twice in the same speech. Another cabinet member, Gina Raimondo, says his political opponent, who has survived two assassination attempts in recent weeks, must be “extinguished.”

When a TV host, attempting to display her Woke virtue, likens Donald Trump to a bug, devout Catholic Biden mimics squishing an insect on the table.

This is not leadership. It's amateur theater.

Not long ago, Biden declared that only the Almighty could convince him to abandon his doomed reelection effort. She came in the form of Nancy Pelosi.

Now the tarnished nomination belongs to Kamala Harris, Biden’s VP political partner whom he handpicked for reasons that had nothing to do with intellect.

Harris is a native of Oakland, California, across the bay from San Francisco. That was also the hometown of the 20th-century author Gertrude Stein, who once wrote of Oakland, “There is no there there.”

Harris has lived up to that. At a news conference, she hailed the “strong and enduring alliance” between the United States and “the Republic of North Korea.” She has described computer clouds as being “up there” in no particular place.

With great authority, Harris has expressed concern about the health crisis that she learned in recent months had claimed the lives of two-thirds of all Americans, 220 million.

She didn’t blink.

The would-be first female commander-in-chief has also become infamous for her word salads, like the cost-of-living explanation she served to Oprah Winfrey recently.

Harris has not been terribly specific about campaign promises. But she has come out against the white plastic lids on Starbucks coffee cups:

It’s one measure of how ridiculous Harris’ cobbled campaign has become that a widely-discussed explanation for Harris’ meaningless expositions is that she’s simply drunk. As if, well, that would be understandable for someone who wants access to the nuclear launch codes.

So, it was with considerable interest the other day that I watched Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, address the United Nations General Assembly. 

He’s that nation’s longest-serving leader, and if you watch the video (starting here at the 19-minute mark) or read the full text here, you’ll likely understand why.

In short, he’s a strong leader, a most refreshing sight these days. At 74, he’s a commanding presence, eloquent in two languages. Unlike recent U.S. leaders, he’s a combat military veteran; his younger brother died leading Israel’s successful 1976 rescue of airline hostages at the Entebbe Airport.

As in many parliamentary democracies, the conservative Netanyahu has had a broadening life outside politics, and spent years in the U.S. An MIT professor described him this way: "He did superbly. He was very bright. Organized. Strong. Powerful. He knew what he wanted to do and how to get it done."

Israel faces existential threats from Hamas, which killed 1,200 innocents in an attack one year ago next week, then from Hezbollah in Lebanon, and from the Houthis in Yemen. Arming and pulling the triggers on all of that was Iran.

With a reasoning that seems very 2024, paid U.S. demonstrators protest Israel defending itself against terrorists who rape, murder, torture, dismember, burn civilians, and blindly launch thousands of rockets into cities.

The other day, Israel launched preemptive raids against Hezbollah ammo depots and offices hidden in Lebanon, including its underground headquarters.

There, the notorious head killer Hassan Nasrallah and other senior commanders were snuffed with bunker-buster bombs. Remember, it was Hezbollah in 1983 that killed 241 U.S. military and 58 French paratroops in separate Beirut bombings.

Imaginative Israeli intelligence even planted explosives in Hezbollah walkie-talkies and pagers used to plan attacks, wounding hundreds and killing others. That could complicate terrorism planning.

As someone on Twitter noted, that means the Iran-sponsored terror group is now being run by people who were unworthy of an official Hezbollah pager last week.

Israel also claims to have destroyed much of Hamas’ vast underground tunnel network in Gaza and rendered most of their fighting units ineffective by eliminating about half of their fighters. 

I don’t recall Israel or any ally publicly critiquing the U.S. reaction to the 9/11 attacks and urging a ceasefire to avoid killing more al Qaeda members. But Biden was unhappy that Netanyahu disobeyed his ceasefire wishes. Neither the U.S. nor Israel started those fights, but their responses needed to be vigorous and lethal.

Last year, while China floated a spy balloon across the entire country, radioing intelligence back to Beijing, Joe Biden's leadership style was to do nothing. 

In the waning weeks of Trump's term, the Pentagon spotted Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. The Iranian general engineered the deaths of scores of American soldiers. He passed away suddenly while encountering two Hellfire missiles.

As Netanyahu said at the UN, “Enough is enough.”

Sadly, the only functioning Mideast democracy and ally has endured endless criticism and kibitzing, often unsourced, from the Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris administrations. They even cut Israel completely out of the talks on that so-called nuclear pact with Iran, its sworn enemy.

The Israeli leader’s U.N. appearance seems like foreign affairs, which unfortunately get short shrift from American media in election years, though not here at RedState. 

Here are a few speech excerpts that struck me as an American who’s endured 12 of the last 16 years under Democrat presidents who seem unimpressed with American exceptionalism:

Iran’s aggression, if not checked, will endanger every single country in the Middle East, and many, many countries in the rest of the world, because Iran seeks to impose its radicalism well beyond the Middle East.

That’s why it funds terror networks on five continents. That’s why it builds ballistic missiles for nuclear warheads to threaten the entire world. 

For too long, the world has appeased Iran. It turned a blind eye to its internal repression. It turned a blind eye to its external aggression. Well, that appeasement must end…. 

In measured military operations, we destroyed nearly all of Hamas’s terror battalions -- 23 of 24 battalions. Now, to complete our victory, we are focused on mopping up Hamas’s remaining fighting capabilities.

Just imagine, for those who say Hamas has to stay, it has to be part of a post-war Gaza—imagine, in a post-war situation after World War II, allowing the defeated Nazis in 1945 to rebuild Germany? It’s inconceivable. It’s ridiculous. It didn’t happen then, and it’s not going to happen now. 

As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice. 

Strong national leadership matters. At times, by necessity, it's unpredictable. It’s often controversial, criticized, even attacked, and undermined by competing domestic and foreign interests that feel threatened.

Recall all the negative media coverage of Trump demanding that NATO allies boost military investments to reach their promise of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. 

Now, most are. Good thing, given the renewed Russian threat.

Netanyahu knows a lot about controversy. He’s had many. So does a certain American political leader seeking to return to the White House. 

Jared Kushner points out on Twitter, "Over the past six weeks or so, Israel has eliminated as many terrorists on the US list of wanted terrorists as the US has done in the last 20 years."

I would just point out a silent fact. During the George W. Bush presidency, Russia’s Vladimir Putin annexed two provinces of Georgia. During the Obama-Biden presidency, Putin annexed Crimea and a significant chunk of Eastern Ukraine.

Two months into the Biden-Harris presidency, Putin began organizing his full-scale invasion to take over the rest of Ukraine. Putin endorsed a second Biden term, and Iranian intelligence hacked Trump’s campaign to share information with Democrats.

Notice any pattern in this recent history? 

During the Trump presidency, there was none of that. Zero. Now, you know why.