Harris as president should terrify you

OPINION:

We’ve come to the close of an election campaign that may rightly be billed as the most unusual and consequential in a century.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ closing argument to voters is brimming with celebrities who have about as much in common with regular Americans as former President Barack Obama does with struggling inner-city Black voters. Rapper and singer Lizzo is telling people we should make America Detroit. Let that sink in.

Ms. Harris has gone from “joy” to a dark but predictable mantra about former President Donald Trump being Hitler, a racist and unstable.

This point in any campaign can be dizzying, exciting and ludicrous. Many Americans awaiting Election Day are ready for relief. When it comes to Ms. Harris, however, a win for her will bring no respite from global chaos.

The principal responsibility of the president of the United States, beyond upholding the Constitution, is to administer our foreign policy. Serving as civilian commander in chief of our armed forces and protecting us from enemies foreign and domestic is the most sacred duty of the person in the Oval Office.

Regardless of what one thinks of Ms. Harris’ domestic policy positions, voters must prioritize her ability to protect this nation and maintain American global leadership.

If America doesn’t lead, other powers will fill the vacuum. The likely substitute is the largest, most brutal communist dictatorship in history, one that has made it clear that its goal is to supplant the United States as the dominant world power. The other players in this new axis are also murderous dictatorships, including Iran, Russia, North Korea and Venezuela.

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and Iran’s Ali Khamenei have exported terror, extortion and death to dozens of nations, including ours. These men and others are maniacal, evil and relentless in their pursuit of power.

If you’re honest, the prospect of Ms. Harris sitting across the table from any of them should terrify you. To paraphrase a Black voter interviewed by MSNBC’s Alex Wagner last week, Ms. Harris isn’t built for this. The vice president has not demonstrated that she is up to being commander in chief.

For 12 of the last 16 years, our enemies have watched us surrender our leadership position. Our retreat in the Obama and Biden years has been marked by a lack of moral clarity, an abandonment of strategic deterrence and an approach guided by fear and cowardice.

As the Democrats have lurched to the left pursuing their radical domestic agenda, they’ve largely given lip service to the notion of American global leadership.

As president, Ms. Harris would be surrounded by the same feckless Obama and Biden team.

For nearly four years, while Democrats have yammered on about climate change, pronouns and puberty blockers, America’s enemies have gotten stronger.

As we’ve led from behind on the world stage, the progressives’ domestic agenda has also eroded our legitimacy as an advocate for freedom. As the leader of the free world, Ms. Harris could never credibly advocate freedom of expression and religious liberty when she and her party have championed censorship, cancel culture and an anti-religion agenda.

It is a historical truth that every time America has taken the position that it is somehow protected from the affairs of Europe or Asia, our nation’s youth have soon found themselves in foxholes. American weakness imperils not only American lives but those of billions worldwide.

This is not about advocating military adventurism, nation-building or preemptive strikes. History has taught us that we can maintain and expand peace and fundamental freedom through demonstrations of strength executed with surgical precision.

With the removal of the Houthis from the list of terrorist groups, the lifting of sanctions against Iran and a lack of deterrence against Russia, Democrats have proved themselves incapable of executing a foreign policy that will counter our enemies.

This month, China and Russia orchestrated the BRICS conference to strategize how to topple the global dominance of the dollar and, by extension, American economic influence. Russia hosted the event, a demonstration of another failure of the Biden-Harris administration to isolate Mr. Putin in the wake of his invasion of Ukraine.

A new bipolar world order has formed far more dangerous than the one President Ronald Reagan inherited. European governments spend more time going after Elon Musk than Mr. Putin and have repeatedly demonstrated they are too afraid of their Muslim populations to take a strong, principled stance against a nuclear Iran.

Nobody benefits from our attempting to sweet-talk our way to peaceful coexistence with communists and Islamo-fascists. It always costs us more money, more lives and more freedom for more people.

The drum and tambourine global community many Democrats envision is naive pathological optimism. Ms. Harris is surrounded by people who suffer from this delusion.

Our enemies are salivating at the prospect of seeing her across the table from them. A weak American president is a threat to the security of this nation and the free world. Mr. Obama and President Biden have made that clear.

If you believe that climate change, abortion and the wrong pronouns are the biggest threats to humanity, then vote for Ms. Harris.

But American strategic deterrence, moral clarity and stability are the only bulwarks against all of us living in the long shadow cast by depots.

America must lead. That choice, for the sake of all the young people who will pay a heavy price for the Harris administration’s foreign policy failures, couldn’t be clearer.

• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV and is a columnist with The Washington Times.