If you take a fast inventory of the world’s “Great Power” leaders, they all have one thing in common: adulthood.

This is one of the most important “national security” aspects of former president Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance: they are adults and don’t hide it.  Neither does Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.  Like them or not, neither does Russia’s Vladimir Putin, or China’s Xi Jinping.

In the game of great-power politics, these leaders play to win, and they don’t suffer fools.  They know where they are going, and they know how to get there.  As Trump recently stated, they are on top of their game.  Harris and her running mate aren’t even in the game, and the rest of the world knows it. That’s dangerous because it signals weakness and easy defeat.

The Democrats otherwise have no idea where they are.  They are directionless.  They have already surrendered to a fantasy of one-world government, where the United States is effectively surrendered to a United Nations.  The Harris-Walz team believes fundamentally in appeasement, apology, and acquiescence, which is their signature political posture, established by their party in 2009 by the Obama administration: apologize for America and seek to dismantle it.  This is the culture of their background, which is defined almost solely by their one claim to achievement: they went to college, and they live in a world of ideas.

In the real world of power, the strong nations will lead, and the weak will be conquered.  It would be difficult to militarily conquer the U.S. by overt traditional means, but it would be relatively straightforward to follow the ancient military strategy of Sun Tzu: win without fighting, by subduing your enemy.  That makes domestic weakness the enemy’s strength.  That is the purpose of the Harris-Walz team: by their weakness, they weaken the country from inside.  The battle to “transform” America is won without an actual fight.

Domestic strength, on the other hand, is the enemy’s weakness.  That is the purpose of the Trump-Vance team: through strength of will and experience, they protect and fortify; they reinvigorate and reinforce America.  That strength also involves more than the military: the domestic economy is at least as important.  That includes its currency, its industrial base, and its energy production.

This is where “make America great again” has its true meaning: making it great means making it strong in national security terms, by making it formidable in manufacturing, energy, science and technology, trade deals, and money and banking.  And in military management and operations.  That includes the realm of outer space, where the Chinese are determined to challenge us.  That is why Trump’s Space Force is so smart. 

By contrast, Harris and Walz are lost in space, with no flight plan, no vision or constructive purpose.  The Democrats don’t look up at the sky: their heads are down, staring at their phones, their attention distracted, their resolve weak, except to act out a childlike fantasy of self-indulgence.  To them, there is no nation to protect, serve, or grow.

That is the difference between a child and an adult: the child sees its world as a mirror of itself, there to satisfy its desires.  An adult can perceive a world separate from itself and its own identity.  That is the vital quality of leadership.  Trump and Vance are adults who can lead.

Matthew G. Andersson is a venture founder and former CEO.  He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the National Academy of Sciences, and the 2001 Pulitzer Prize report by the Chicago Tribune.  He received the Silver Anvil award from the Public Relations Society of America and has testified to the U.S. Senate.  He attended the University of Chicago and the University of Texas at Austin where he worked with economist and White House national security advisor W.W. Rostow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.  He is a jet aircraft commander and graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.