Begonias bloom around the fountain, Friday, Sept. 15, 2023, on the South Lawn of the White House. (Official White House photo by Carlos Fyfe)

Joe Biden, in this week's presidential debate with President Donald Trump, revealed himself as unfocused, uncomprehending, unable to express his thoughts, unable to track a line of argument, unable to remember facts, and unwilling to step aside.

He also did something else: Made the world a lot less safe.

It is John Daniel Davidson, who wrote at The Federalist of the new, enhanced threat.

He said while the "chatter" was all about what the Democrats will do for a 2024 candidate, "now that the president has shown himself to be unfit for office," there's another issue.

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"An important point has gone largely unnoticed: America essentially has no president right now. Whomever is calling the shots in the White House, especially on foreign affairs, it isn’t Biden. While it’s true that much of American governance has devolved into the hands of an unelected (and unaccountable) administrative bureaucracy, when it comes to foreign policy and decisions about how to respond to crises overseas, the president still plays an important and arguably indispensable role," Davidson explained.

However, he noted, "Our current president, as the entire world now knows, cannot follow the train of his own thoughts. He seems to have only a tenuous grasp on reality. He can barely walk down a few steps. Clearly, he’s not the one in charge of the White House, which means the presidency itself is remarkably weak right now. That in turn means the world is a much more dangerous place after last night, because America’s adversaries know they have a narrow window to exploit the obvious weakness of our executive branch while Biden is still in office."

The danger, then, he explained, isn't what "fallout" there might be from the debate. "It might be actual fallout."

He explained, "Right now there are multiple hot conflicts around the world — and not just low-level coups in small countries like Bolivia and Kenya. Israel is essentially at war with Iran. The Russia-Ukraine war rages on, no end in sight. And China could launch an invasion of Taiwan any day. These are dangerous times even without a dementia-addled 81-year-old in the White House. But the extent of Biden’s decline has made it even more dangerous.

"To be clear, Biden has been unfit for office for years at this point. But the public spectacle of the debate gave a new urgency to a reality that our establishment media and political classes have been denying for a while now. Simply put, the debate made it undeniable that Biden is in a state of rapid decline. He can barely string a sentence together or keep track of what he’s talking about. There is no way to spin it. The entire world saw the reality of our situation last night."

In contrast, he explained, was Trump.

"Cogent, forceful, and clear-eyed about the threats we face abroad and what he'll do about them," Davidson explained.

It was former deputy national security adviser for Trump K.T. McFarland who brought up the point that Iran, China and Russia, and others, "realize they have a harrowing window of opportunity to exploit U.S. weakness."

Also there are key differences in the foreign policies pursued by Trump and Biden. Under Trump, Moscow didn't attack Ukraine and there was peace in the Middle East. Not so under Biden.

The differences, he said, are noted by "our adversaries."

"They know it will be much harder to pursue their strategic aims during a second Trump administration for the simple reason that Trump’s foreign policy is guided by nationalism in a way that Biden’s is not," he said.

After the debate, he warned, "the entire world knows we don’t have a competent commander in chief. We don’t even have a president."

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