Let’s be clear about our nation’s plight: At this moment, American voters face a choice between two historically corrupt, dishonest, and incompetent politicians.

One of them helped create the most dangerous foreign-policy environment since the Cold War, a world in which our nation faces the largest and most savage jihadist fighting force in modern times, a re-arming and potentially nuclear Iran, and the re-emergence of threats from Russia and China. The other would respond to that crisis with a collection of announced policies that range from the insane (intentionally killing women and children to punish terrorists, sending Exxon to pacify the Middle East, blocking even our Kurdish allies from entering the United States) to the reckless (ending the NATO alliance that has been the foundation of Western security for nearly 70 years).

One of them promises an economic policy worse than the status quo: raising taxes, increasing government spending, and pushing the same tired progressive agenda that has helped stagnate middle-class wages and dramatically expand dependence on government. The other casually proposes economic changes that could plunge the nation into yet another deep recession, threatening destructive trade wars, questioning the full faith and credit of the United States, and outlining a tax plan that could add as much as $10 trillion to the national debt.