Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last night was the perfect campaign speech for a presidential candidate — in 1996.

Back then, when her husband was running for re-election against a dyspeptic old Republican who’d won the nomination by waiting his turn (see: Hillary 2016), the world was going pretty well for Americans. Republican policies had worn down the Soviet Union and contained Saddam Hussein, leaving Bill Clinton a “peace dividend” that allowed him and a newly Republican House to balance the budget.

Also, Reagan had pared back taxes and regulations to make our economy competitive, and centrist Democrats like Bill Clinton had shown the good sense not to reverse this, while the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress had goaded Clinton to enact welfare reform. There was a consensus on natural marriage, which Clinton supported with his “Defense of Marriage Act.” Clinton presented abortion as regrettable, and claimed he wished the procedure to be “safe, legal, and rare.”

The two-party system was working, and Americans shared a broad consensus on problems that needed solving — among them, illegal immigration, which Bill Clinton called out as crucial, and about which black Democrat Rep. Barbara Jordan had issued a report on how to address effectively. There was a wide and vital center, which both parties could fight over, and Clinton had the edge since the economy was chugging along and we felt safe.

Not a single one of those facts remains true this year, and Hillary’s upbeat speech will strike millions of Americans as cynically chipper and delusional. As I lived through her remarks, I couldn’t help wishing that the monitors behind her would have flashed to the relevant scene in that classic comedy Animal House, when the hapless ROTC recruit Chip Diller (Kevin Bacon) responds to the riot that breaks out at homecoming by shouting at fleeing bystanders: “Remain Calm! All is well!” He keeps on shouting that till he’s flattened by the mob.

That’s what’s going to happen to Hillary Clinton come November if her stump speech and campaign remains this delusional. And while Donald Trump’s campaign really does have some Delta House overtones, the Republican nominee at least recognizes and acknowledges many of the serious challenges we face.

There really is chaos abroad, in the world and here at home, and the conventional forces we’ve counted on to contain it aren’t doing their jobs — or else they have been subverted by greed and political correctness.

Americans with fewer educational or career opportunities are stuck or slowly sinking. Yes, Hillary also acknowledges this one, but how can it possibly cheer such Americans of every race to know that she intends to offer amnesty to 11 million illegal immigrants, and welcome millions more?

How well will Hillary’s message of saccharine hope and suburban uplift wear through the coming months, when the next Islamist atrocity strikes Paris, London, Rome, New York or Dallas?

In the wake of the next Muslim mass murder, or the next three or four, will it really benefit Clinton that she has promised America, “We will not build a wall. … We will not ban a religion”? As if the only live options were (a) banning the religion of Islam from America or (b) sitting passively by, like much of Europe, while Muslim migrants flood in and the process of Islamification takes deeper and deeper root.

If I were on Trump’s campaign, I would have those audio moments ready for savage campaign ads, to run as voiceover with images of radical, orthodox Muslims taunting Western policemen and calling for sharia. America, at least, isn’t ready to elect its own Angela Merkel, to serve as the pious gravedigger of a nation.

Would we really feel secure handing power to the Bumbler of Benghazi, to the woman who stole classified emails from our own government, then deleted 30,000 of them so the FBI couldn’t see them, then lied to the public and Congress about it all — barely escaping handcuffs and a perp walk?

As we confront the Islamic colonization of NATO, do we want the next White House Chief of Staff to be Hillary’s “body woman” Huma Abedin, whose last job before the White House was running a radical Islamist journal based in Kuwait and funded by the black-robed imams of Saudi Arabia — who punish rape victims with the lash and execute gay people and Muslims who turn to Jesus?

Hillary Clinton assures us that our diversity is our strength, even as her own party’s convention is mobbed by a movement, Black Lives Matter, whose supporters have praised cop killers. But she fails to acknowledge that there is one kind of diversity that weakens. We are less united than ever by common faith or values, a fact that’s directly traceable to our culture’s corrupt elites — to the race-baiting tribalist politicians and nihilist entertainment industry figures who thronged the Democrat podium, to the abortion profiteers and sellout “Christian” officeholders who have rallied to her standard.

These same leaders have surgically altered marriage, and pushed a new pro-abortion language: “On Demand and Without Apology.” They make our culture a desert, and call it “peace.”

Hillary Clinton tells us happy stories, but we know better. She’s the teacher we’ve learned is willing to lie to us that the building is not on fire, as we smell smoke and look around for the exits.

I have a long list of criticisms of candidate Donald Trump. But he lives on the same planet we do, he knows the nature of the crisis, and he’s not so tied down by thousands of tiny, unbreakable threads of political correctness that he’d rather let us die than tell us the truth.