Exactly one year ago today, President Joe Biden wandered onto a CNN debate stage in Atlanta. Democrats were oozing confidence ahead of the showdown against Donald Trump. They had managed to persuade most mainstream journalists that all the video clips of Biden bumbling around like a demented geezer were dangerously misleading "cheap fakes." Former Hillary Clinton strategist Zac Petkanas argued Biden had "already won" so long as he wasn't "wheeled out on stage in a hospital bed." Biden's campaign team posted a photo of the president "feeling pretty jacked up" and holding a can of "Dark Brandon" water.

What happened next would spark a chain reaction that would ultimately usher in a new era of American greatness and change the course of Western civilization for the better. Donald Trump would cruise to victory and secure another four years (at least) in the White House. Within a year, many of Iran's senior military leaders would be dead, its nuclear program in ruins, and its own doddering tyrant cowering in an underground bunker.

Biden wasn't wheeled out on stage in a hospital bed that fateful night, but he might as well have been. His answers were rambling and incoherent. His mouth agape. His gaze glossy and unmoored, as though he'd been jolted awake from his afternoon nap and ordered to perform open-heart surgery with a pair of child's scissors.

"Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the—with the COVID," Biden said in response to an early question about tax policy. "Excuse me. With dealing with everything we have to do with—look, if [long pause] we finally beat Medicare."

In response to a softball question about abortion, Biden gave a rambling answer about how illegal immigrants, and men more generally, weren't the only ones out there raping women.

"Look, there’s so many young women who have been—including a young woman [Laken Riley] who just was murdered," Biden said. "The idea that she was murdered by an immigrant coming in, and they talk about that, but here’s the deal. There’s a lot of young women who are being raped by their in-laws, by their spouses, brothers and sisters."

Flashback: We Need to Talk About Grandpa

When it was finally over, Dr. Jill Biden praised her husband like one might applaud a toddler who got all of his poo-poo inside the potty. "Joe, you did such a great job," she gushed. "You answered every question, you knew all the facts."

The rest is history.

Biden's disastrous performance, arguably the worst in the history of politics, made it impossible for Democrats to keep lying about his fitness to serve another four years. Journalists sprang into action. They finally had a reason to report on Biden's decline now that it seemed likely to cost Democrats the election. Biden refused to drop out at first. His advisers warned Democrats that the only viable alternative, Vice President Kamala Harris, was an incompetent bimbo. Alas, she eventually became the nominee and proved her critics right.

Joe Biden will be remembered as a terrible president who accomplished nothing. However, his insistence on running for reelection—a decision fueled by his wife's insatiable ambition—was undoubtedly a crucial turning point in American history. In his own bumbling way, Biden helped save the United States from ruinous decline, and delivered a crippling blow to the Islamist regime in Iran. The only things he had to sacrifice were his dignity, the respect of his party, and his so-called legacy.

Any patriotic American would accept that trade.

Happy anniversary!