America AWOL

The challenge tonight if you plan on watching the GOP presidential debate is to ascertain whether any of the characters say anything that resembles reality as you know it and whether any of them can say anything that makes any sense for a wealthy country that pretends to be the leader of the world in the 21st century.

Zbigniew Brzezinski appeared on the Morning Joe show the other day and followed up on his 2009 statement on the same show that the disparity of wealth in this country and around the world would destabilize our political system. In the wake of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, Zbig focused his attention on the accumulation of vast wealth by people who basically speculate in the global market. Zbig's point is not that people get extraordinarily wealthy but that even the most intelligent person can't figure out how they did it.

He pointed to how fast the global economy moves, while our political system can not catch up. He suggested that Americans should put pressure to have the hedge fund managers reveal their wealth and also the location of their wealth. He complained that he has often been boating with the wealthy and noted that all their boats are registered in places like the Cayman Islands and other tax havens. His point was that these people and CEOs of global corporations have no inherent patriotism or feelings of any social responsibility. One of the other quests mentioned a conversation he had with a CEO of a Fortune 500 company who told him " we have no country" and did not feel constrained to pay executives any less thasn the fortunes they are.

Another issue Zbig brought up was the notable lack of absence around the world at various roundtables or regional meetings about the global economy. While no country has made a move to exert leadership, countries are basically waiting for the United States to get its act together. There is a widespread perception that are our political system is broken and that our Congress is clueless about international policy.

Zbig lamented the total absence of any foreign policy ideas by the Republican candidates and remarked that all of them were just repeating slogans that appealed to a base that was thoroughly ignorant about the requirements of the United States to be a major international player. Zbig also criticized the current administration for forfeiting international leadership by not proposing a new way toward Middle East Peace when the President addressed the United Nations General Assembly.

Let's pretend that the Gallup unemployment report is somewhat accurate. Surprisingly it suggests that unemployment by the end of October will really be 8.3%. Also, let's pretend that the European apocalypse will not happen. And let's really go far out and suggest something of President Obama's Jobs Bill will actually be enacted. All this would mean is that the United States had leveled out. But where does it go from here?

I've surveyed the policy papers and platforms of the conservative think tanks and have found nothing that suggests any fine-tuning of foreign policy ideas. In fact, they are more retrograde than even the George W. Bush period. On economic policy, I believe both conservatives and liberals are now reflectively advocating their old agendas without any notion of the challenges of the future.

What I also find amazing is that all the economic programs being pushed by the GOP candidates as well as Congressional Republicans would actually balloon the deficit to untenable levels, while virtually gutting the social safety net. There is no more pretense of concern about the deficit, except to whip the President. Mitt Romney's economic position would be even more massive transfer of wealth to the .3% and a staggering increase of $2 trillion to the defense budget with no visible means to pay for this. Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan would increase taxes on the poor and the middle class and run up $11 trillion in new national debt over 8 years. Ron Paul's plan to cut $1 trillion in the first year of his plan would end government as we know it and plunged us into a Greater Depression.

That's not to say the Democrats are the solution. They will preserve the safety net. They will cut the national debt somewhat. And so far their plans would cut about 1 percent off the unemployment rate. But we have heard no real plans for the future of the American economy. Democrats would stop the bleeding but we still have not heard how we are to cope with the uncertainty in the world financial markets.

Zbig urged that an effort be made to start educating Americans about the international situation before we are drowned by our own wilfuly ignorance. He suggested our political system must be reformed to deal with the rapid-fire responses of the global economy.

Watch tonight if anyone has any ideas.