From decline to renewal: Why leadership still matters

PUBLISHED: October 27, 2025 | foxbaltimore.com

If you really want to understand the stakes of the next election, stop and imagine where America — and the world — would be right now if Joe Biden or Kamala Harris were still in charge. Strip away the noise and partisanship for a moment and look plainly at the record, the trajectory, and the implications. What would our national security, our economy, and our cultural sanity look like? The answer isn’t hypothetical — it’s observable from the direction we were heading just two years ago.

First, Iran. Under the Biden administration, Tehran was emboldened by a foreign policy of appeasement disguised as “diplomacy.” Billions of dollars were unfrozen, oil sanctions were quietly relaxed, and the regime knew the White House lacked the will to enforce red lines. The inevitable result? A near-nuclear Iran — weeks, not months, away from a bomb. The world understood that if Biden had remained in power, Iran would have crossed that line. A nuclear-armed theocracy in the Middle East would have sparked a regional arms race and fundamentally altered global security. Today, deterrence is back. Iran is once again cautious because it knows a credible threat exists — a lesson history teaches tyrants repeatedly: peace is kept not by words, but by the fear of consequences.

Then there’s Israel. If Biden or Harris were president, Israel would still be fighting a multi-front war. Under their leadership, America’s posture toward Israel was one of hesitant support — lip service for “our ally” while funding flowed to those who sought its destruction. The Abraham Accords would have withered. Regional peace would have been impossible because weakness invites chaos. The difference now is clarity. The United States once again stands unapologetically beside its ally, projecting strength instead of apology, ensuring that Israel can fight and finish the wars it must, rather than being trapped in endless, politically convenient stalemates.

Ukraine and Europe tell another story of drift and confusion. The Biden team never articulated an endgame in Ukraine — only an open-ended commitment to “as long as it takes,” a phrase that became shorthand for strategic aimlessness. Billions were spent, corruption persisted, and Europe grew dependent on American resolve it could no longer trust. With decisive leadership, however, the calculus shifts: diplomacy with purpose, defense with limits, and an insistence that Europe shoulder its share. Under a different administration, Ukraine might now be a frozen conflict at best, a lost cause at worst. Under steady leadership, it has a path — however narrow — toward stability, and the continent has a reminder that freedom must be defended, not subsidized indefinitely.

Domestically, the crisis at the southern border would have continued to metastasize. Two and a half million illegal crossings each year under Biden wasn’t a policy failure — it was the policy. It reshaped cities, strained resources, and eroded national sovereignty. Sanctuary cities begged for relief from the very laws they championed. Under Harris, the so-called “border czar,” there was neither control nor compassion — only chaos. Contrast that with renewed enforcement, the rebuilding of deterrence, and the assertion that borders are not racist relics but the very definition of nationhood. The numbers tell the story: when leadership changes, so do incentives, and the flood slows.

But perhaps the most insidious legacy of the Biden-Harris years isn’t geopolitical — it’s cultural. “Woke ideology” seeped into the marrow of the American body politic, infecting institutions that once embodied merit, excellence, and common sense. The military became a diversity seminar. Schools taught self-loathing in place of history. Corporations traded productivity for performative politics. And through it all, anyone who objected was labeled a bigot. What’s being restored now isn’t merely policy — it’s sanity. It’s the reaffirmation that America’s greatness lies in opportunity, not obsession with identity; in duty, not division.

Consider, too, the broader tone of the country. Under Biden, the national mood was one of fatigue — economic anxiety, social fragmentation, spiritual aimlessness. Gas prices soared, grocery bills doubled, and the White House responded with lectures about “transitioning economies.” Americans didn’t want transition — they wanted relief. Today, optimism is fragile but returning. Markets respond to confidence, and confidence comes from clarity.

Leadership, real leadership, provides that clarity.

Critics will insist these contrasts are exaggerated. But the evidence of the past four years refutes them. The difference between managed decline and renewed purpose isn’t rhetorical — it’s measurable. Inflation, border crossings, international crises—all down when decisiveness replaces drift. That’s not ideology; that’s reality.

The larger truth here is philosophical. When a nation ceases to believe in itself, it becomes vulnerable not just to enemies abroad, but to despair at home. The Biden-Harris years reflected that loss of confidence — a governing class convinced America’s best days were behind her. The current moment, imperfect though it may be, represents the opposite conviction: that the American experiment is still worth defending, that strength is not cruelty, and that belief in one’s own civilization is not a sin.

If this weekend’s “No Kings” gatherings are about anything, they’re about that restoration of belief — that no politician, no bureaucracy, no unelected elite should reign over a free people. And that’s the great irony: under Biden and Harris, the rhetoric of equality masked an expansion of centralized control. Today, the pendulum is swinging back toward liberty, toward accountability, toward the idea that citizens, not bureaucrats, define the nation’s destiny.

So as we look at where we are, and where we could have been, the conclusion is stark but simple: leadership matters. Weakness invites danger; strength restores order. The past few years have shown us both paths. Only one leads toward renewal.