First came the State of the Union. Then came the Republican response. Then came the Tea Party response to the response. And then we heard from an even higher power.

The message was clear. President Obama wants us to win the future. But we couldn't even win the snowstorm. Even as cute news stories were explaining that WTF now was the acronym for the president's aspirational goal, it had already reclaimed its more established meaning.

In the nation's capital, 45 minute commutes took 12 hours. Power flickered off for hundreds of thousands. From Washington to Boston hundreds of flights were cancelled, schools were closed, businesses ground to a halt.

Closing the schools hurt doubly because a report that was buried in most newspapers the day after Obama's speech pointed out that U.S. students were falling further and further behind on science achievement. Astonishingly, horrifyingly, only one out of five U.S. high school seniors were proficient at science, only 1 to 2 percent qualified as advanced on a national test administered to over 300,000 students.

While the test results don't bode well for the future of the United States or for the president's grand vision of the United States as the innovation nation, they do explain why so many of this country's meteorologists failed to predict yesterday's snowstorm. And they also explain why so few of Washington's residents have enough grasp of basic physics to realize that pounding on the accelerator (or the horn) will not make their two wheel drive cars cut through the snow and ice any better.

Meanwhile, the Telegraph simultaneously carried a story of China's plans to build a city in the Pearl River Delta that will incorporate 9 existing major cities and will ultimately be home to 42 million people. 26 times greater than the size of metropolitan London, the region will be linked together over the next six years by 150 massive infrastructure projects worth over $300 billion. And I read about it on my iPad while sitting shivering in my darkened living room huddling next to the fire that was providing the only heat for my house on the edge of the capital of what once was the most powerful nation on earth.

Win the future? WTF.

Post-speech reaction: Just like Beaver Cleaver's mom used to make

President Obama is absolutely right to focus on innovation and competitiveness in his State of the Union. The United States' strength and stability depend on it, and they are both areas in which the government has a vital role to play -- as history has shown with every expansionary leap in U.S. history from the railroads to the Internet.

But there is one trap associated with this approach that the president and the country need to beware. It is the widely subscribed to notion ... often cited by politicians and op-ed writers ... that somehow there is something special, some gene in American DNA, that makes us uniquely capable when it comes to innovation. This idea is offered up like it is our ace-in-the-hole, our economic Get Out of Jail Free Card. Once we tap into this unique dimension of the U.S. character those Chinese and other Asian robots won't be able to hold a candle to us. They lack our creativity. They lack the United States system's special innovation ecology -- built around ideas like the degree to which we welcome failure and let the resulting Schumpeterian winds fill our sails propelling us onward to our next great triumph.

Now, there is certainly some truth that other societies are less welcoming to the errors which often are part of the innovative process (some have, for example, inadequate bankruptcy laws, others risk-averse cultures). And there is also truth to the idea that some societies promote conformity in creativity-suppressing ways. And of course there is considerable truth to the fact that America has been the home of some great innovation and remarkable stories of entrepreneurship that have made us a world leading economy for decades. But the reality is that the idea that the United States has somehow cornered the market on innovation is an overblown myth.

Take the most important inventions in history. Naturally many of them actually were created in other hotbeds of innovation that existed long before the United States -- whether it is the Chinese invention of gun powder or paper, or the Arabic invention of algebra or the printing press, progress somehow muddled through without the United States. If you take more modern innovations however, it is not exactly as though the United States has dominated when it came to the big ones.

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We are two years into the Obama administration and judging by the president's progress to date, assessments being made on this the second anniversary of his time in office are likely to be viewed not as midterm grades but as his first quarter report card. With an increasingly confident, experienced president at the helm of a country that seems to be gradually creeping toward economic recovery and with a divided opposition in search of a leader, Obama's re-election prospects are looking better and better.

Still, the reality is that any assessment of the president's progress to date must be taken with several large pillars of salt. First, as I have noted before, the first two years of any presidency are learning curve years and seldom contain either the highlights of a presidency or even a very clear signal as to its ultimate character. Second, almost inevitably political and policy types overstate the influence of the president on the great issues of the day or even on those factors that weigh in his or her re-election. As is the case with most presidents, Obama's future will most likely be dictated by exogenous developments over which he has only fairly limited influence -- global economic trends, unanticipated actions of third parties at home and abroad, public moods that impact how presidential actions are interpreted and credit and blame allocated, etc.

Nonetheless, given that today is the second anniversary of the president's inauguration, it is a natural time to take stock and offer some quick evaluations of how he and his team are doing on foreign policy issues.

• Afghanistan-Pakistan: This is the administration's signature international issue. Unfortunately, it is also the area in which they have done the worst. Costs and troop commitments have gone way up but likelihood of a lasting, positive outcome -- say a stable AfPak region in which the extremist threat is materially diminished -- has not improved at all. It increasingly looks like pressure to get out will force the United States to accept a bad outcome in Afghanistan and the future for Pakistan is murky at best. Our lead ally, Hamid Karzai, is an unrepentant crook and our strongest supporters in Pakistan face strong opposition and are on shaky ground politically. The likely best outcome is strong man regimes in both places, no democracy, and festering threats. Further, despite the White House's lack of appreciation for Richard Holbrooke (and the hypocrisy of some them in terms of their comments in the wake of his untimely death was breathtaking), he will be missed and is already proving to be very hard to replace. Bob Gates will be even harder to replace. Grade: D
• Iran: The administration got off to a slow start in Iran, didn't express support for protesters when it should have, and has not done anything to really counteract the threat Iran poses to the region via its support for Hezbollah and Hamas and its infiltration of the politics of its neighbors. However, the carefully coordinated, tireless efforts to find an effective diplomatic-cover action response to the Iranian nuclear program has shown some promising progress of late. (And WikiLeaks helped illustrate some of those efforts for the world.) The nuclear threat remains but the way it has been handled by the Obama administration has been about as well as anyone could have done. Grade: B
• Israel-Palestine: The administration deserves credit for getting involved in this issue and not pulling back even as both of sides have done almost everything in their power to impede, delay, and complicate the process. For a change. The relationship with the Israelis has been, to be polite, fitful. And part of it is clearly due to divisions and missteps within the administration. Although blaming them is roughly akin to blaming Elin for Tiger's sins. (Sandra Bullock for Jesse James's? Charlie Sheen's ex-wife for his? Women for what men do wrong? You get the idea.) This is one case where I believe getting nowhere is about as well as could be hoped for and remaining engaged is a sign of strength. The key to a better grade going forward is whether they will break out of the box of old-think on this. My sense is that the ticking of Israel's demographic clock, the shift in global opinion, and the changing mood in the United States could actually lead to a breakthrough on this issue during the remaining (six) Obama years. Although that breakthrough could well begin with the Palestinians taking their recent Washington flag-raising to its natural next step and simply unilaterally creating a two-state reality. Grade: B
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It is clear that the memo that went out to the media from Echo Chamber Central Command this morning was "the visit of President Hu to Washington will be presented in terms of China's growing threat."

In paper after paper headlines blared and reporting backed up the message. Some of the stories focused on the nature of the economic threat. Notable among these were the Financial Times's front page piece on how China's influence was being enhanced by dramatic increases in its lending to the developing world -- lending that now surpassed that of the World Bank. Inside the FT there was more including a well-researched and compelling piece by Geoff Dyer, David Pilling and my long-ago colleague from Institutional Investor Magazine, Henny Sender called "A strategy to straddle the planet." The thrust of the piece was also that China is using its trade flows to build links and leverage worldwide in an effort to shape the rules and set the priorities for the international economy. There was also an excellent accompanying piece on the potency and problems associated with China's almost $3 trillion in hard currency reserves. The Washington Post had an in-depth look at the frustrating times that Wisconsin's Manitowoc Company was having in its dealings in China… echoing a piece in the New York Times about the uncomfortable deals trading technology for market access that General Electric has embarked on. In both cases the point was: while China is an appealing market, the Chinese are hard to deal with and seem likely to pose long-term threats as an economic rival.

On the security threat posed by China, we had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal called "The New Era of U.S. China Rivalry" by Princeton professor Aaron Friedberg. The conclusion of the article: "Hu Jintao's visit may mark the end of an era of relatively smooth relations between the U.S. and China." The lead editorial in the Journal: "Dealing With an Assertive China." In the Times, Helene Cooper had a good piece (and not just because it quoted me) on the tougher posture adopted by the Obama administration called "For Chinese President's Visit, U.S. to Take a Bolder Tack" and another lead editorial which echoed that of the Journal in concluding, "State dinners and 21-gun salutes are ephemeral. What will earn China respect as a major power is if it behaves responsibly. That must be Mr. Obama's fundamental message."

The guts of the piece included statements like "(China's) overconfidence is clear. It has been aggressively pressing its claims to disputed islands in the East and South China Seas. The military's rising influence is troubling." And in the next paragraph: "For a country that claims to be a global power, it is still shirking its responsibilities. … For a major player, it can also be remarkably petulant."

It may seem unremarkable to Mr. Hu's delegation that the Journal and the Times are so aligned in their views. Americans who know them often to be polar opposites know better. (The Washington Post also had its lead editorial in roughly the same place:

China's would-be reformers face an ugly contrary current, seemingly centered in the military, that has been pushing a belligerent foreign policy, including toward the United States… Mr. Hu's visit offers the opportunity for the United States to make clear that a liberalizing China will be far more welcome as it rises as a world power than one that continues to deny its citizens freedom and the rule of law."

While normally such a convergence of views in the press should be a warning sign, this is one of those rare cases in which even the experts believe what they are reading. Oh sure, there are debates about the tone with which one should address the threat (there is still a school-marmish quality to some of the pieces advocating that the United States lecture the Chinese) or whether or not the United States is in a position to do that any longer (Francis Fukuyama's piece in the FT suggests we've lost ground). But in my conversations with diplomats from around the region during the past couple of weeks, there has been a recurring theme that China is engaged in a sweeping, systematic effort to extend its influence and flex its muscles.

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You can tell a lot about a major summit between world leaders by what happens in the weeks leading up to it. That's when staff scurry around trying to nail down "deliverables" -- agreements that might be signed, initialed, announced, dusted off, and signed again, that sort of thing -- and fine tune the optics of the upcoming meeting. Tensions are typically defused in advance. Good news is often played up to produce a positive mood.

That's just what has been happening in the run up to the visit of China's President Hu Jintao to Washington. The Chinese foreign minister blew through town last week, meeting with the likes of Hillary Clinton and Tom Donilon and allowing both sides to test out their language about how important the relationship is while also testing thrusts and parries on currency policy. Our North Korea envoy Stephen Bosworth went to Beijing to seek progress on cooperatively managing the vexing Mr. Kim. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates is in China right now seeking (unsuccessfully thus far) to reboot military cooperation that broke down in the wake of last year's decision to sell more arms to the Taiwanese.

At the same time, as is also typical with such a visit, we have members of Congress like Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) flexing their muscles and warning that China had better adopt "fairer" currency policies or else. And sometimes we have seen other actions designed to send messages to the rest of the world to place the upcoming meeting in context -- or at least international actions that cast an important light on the upcoming meeting whether intentionally or otherwise.

Read these tea leaves and you can tell a lot about the largely formal high-level summit to come. In fact, these pre-summit periods are actually where the real work usually gets done with the most important summits typically being so carefully orchestrated that it's almost impossible for anything to actually spontaneously occur out of them.

So, what have we learned? Here are a few highlights:

• The Chinese would like the meetings to go well. The announcement of a couple banking licenses last week is precisely the kind of commercial gifts the Chinese like to hand out as summit-related door prizes.
• The Chinese are ambivalent about how the meetings go. Their pushback on U.S. calls for currency adjustments from the likes of Donilon and Clinton was firm but diplomatic.
• The Chinese are perfectly willing to tell the United States to stuff it. Gates's effort to get military cooperation restarted was rebuffed in a way that was both embarrassing for the United States. and, rest assured, carefully cultivated. (Although getting that embarrassment out of the way this week rather than on the summit trip itself is also a part of deft trip management.)
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This week, President Obama dug deep into the pool of 100 people who are considered for every senior Democratic position in Washington and came up with a couple of very good choices for top White House jobs. While those of you who follow these things might wonder if, in a country of 300 million people, there might be a few fresh names who could produce a little fresher thinking, keep it to yourself.

That's not the way things work here in Washington -- the only city in the world in which someone like George W. Bush could have been described as an outsider upon assuming an office his father had held 8 years earlier.

In the rest of the world familiarity breeds contempt. In Washington, like in some towns in the Ozarks, familiarity just breeds.

That said, there's something to be said for hiring people in top jobs who actually know what they are doing. Bill Daley, the new White House chief of staff, understands how Washington works as well as anyone. What's more, as Washington insiders go, he has a pretty rare skill set: he is actually able to speak several important languages. He is fluent in politics, business, and media and he is conversant in both D.C. and local dialects.

He has demonstrated over the past two decades great organizational skills and real perseverance. He was the quarterback who made the NAFTA war room whirr and produced one of Clinton's most important early victories. He was a Commerce secretary who did not produce a lot of headlines but who did generate trust and good will from the business community. He was one of the people Al Gore came out of his 2000 campaign feeling best about, an absolutely essential player who performed the toughest tasks while generating real loyalty among those close to him. And he was a successful business person who the moment he entered the White House increased the administration's understanding of the part of the economy that actually creates jobs many times over. While some liberal groups may decry his ties to Wall Street or his life in corporate suites, they are missing the point. There can be no successful progressive agenda that doesn't figure out how to collaborate successfully with the people actually driving U.S. growth.

There has been some minor lefty hubbub over the fact that Gene Sperling, the incoming head of the National Economic Council, once did some work for Goldman Sachs. It is revealing that those who seek to complain about this are overlooking that it was work on a project to help promote educational empowerment for some of the world's neediest. And, of course, in a job like the one Sperling is assuming, having a few contacts outside the world of inside-the-beltway wonks is actually a very good thing.

Gene has been one of the best of those wonks for a long time. He is exceptionally intelligent, extraordinarily hard-working, politically gifted and he has a truly good heart. Both he and Daley are among the "good guys", the folks in that tiny D.C. talent pool who you want to see at the top because not only do they know how to use power but they are likely to use it well.

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We're on the brink of a fascinating experiment. One of the most sweeping changes of top White House personnel in history is about to take place. Within just a couple of weeks from now, the president will have replaced his chief of staff (twice), two deputy chiefs of staff, his national security advisor, his top economic advisor, his top political advisor, and his spokesperson.

This would be extraordinary in any organization. But the Obama White House has been famous since its cast and crew were first assembled for being driven by a core team around the president. Characterized variously as a bubble around the president, an inner circle, and a cabal, one of the most common complaints heard from those inside the administration is that the team around the president has been impenetrable .

They have in the eyes of cabinet secretaries and senior departmental officials co-opted traditional cabinet prerogatives. Even to some working at high levels in the White House, they have been less the gatekeepers all presidents demand and more like the trolls living under the bridge by which the Oval Office was accessed -- difficult to deal with and hard to pass by.

And now, of the innermost circle, three members are gone or going -- Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and Robert Gibbs. Rumor has it that possible incoming chief of staff may seek to alter the role of the last remaining member of the Four Horsemen of the Obamalypse, Valerie Jarrett.

So, given the role these folks have played and the sweeping changes that are taking place, one might expect a massive change in the way the administration operates. Unless…

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WikiLeaks provides few revelations but many resonant reminders. The reminders put into language stark enough to reawaken the senses information that we long ago knew but had repressed. For example, take today's multiple reminders that so-called "friendly" governments in the Persian Gulf remain cash machines for the worst people on earth, terrorist groups dedicated to the slaughter of innocents.

"More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," declared a document that went out a year ago under Hillary Clinton's signature, "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide."

Other cables describe how the group responsible for the Mumbai bombings, Lashkar-e-Taiba, raise cash through Saudi front businesses, and how the Taliban and their allies work through networks in the United Arab Emirates. They report fitful progress in reducing these cash flows, the use of religious pilgrimages as cover for illicit cash transfers from the Gulf to militants and the quiet if pointed methods the United States uses to press our so-called friends for assistance.

Here we are coming up on a decade since 9/11, two years since Mumbai, bogged down in horrifyingly costly conflicts against these terrorists and the stark, perverse reality remains that the countries of the Gulf are getting rich selling us oil and then passing part of the proceeds on to bands of murderers who have sworn to attack us and our allies. They are worse than drug dealers who kill only through the deadly addiction they promote. These terror bankers and their fat, arrogant, callous royal protectors have for years placed us in double jeopardy by both promoting a different kind of dangerous addiction and then using the proceeds from that to fund efforts to kill us.

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Yesterday, two unrelated stories showed yet again that in Washington, the best way to shout is to whisper.

As revealed in today's Huffington Post, (Do websites have "daily editions"? Does time even exist on the Internet?) George Soros spoke behind closed doors yesterday to the Democracy Alliance, a group of progressive donors, and apparently had a public fit of buyer's remorse over the important role he played helping to bankroll the candidacy of Barack Obama.

"We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line," The HuffPost story quoted Soros, citing folks in attendance. "And if this president can't do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else."

While a Soros spokesperson contacted for the story said the financier was not in fact suggesting a primary challenge to Obama, that was probably little consolation to the White House. Because in the White House they know that Soros has been going around Washington recently and expressing his disappointment in Obama in his typical sharp and unvarnished style. He has even gone so far as to say to folks something to the effect of: "If I had wanted to elect a traditional, mainstream Democrat, I could easily have supported Hillary Clinton," and then going on to add that he actually had great admiration for the work that Clinton was doing in the State Department. In other words, the man who helped galvanize the fund-raising opposition to her was having doubts.

The Democracy Alliance meeting was off the record. Conducting an off the record meeting is one of the surest ways of making sure that what is said is immediately leaked to the press and spread through the grapevine that supplies sustenance to all forms of Washington flora and fauna.

There is really only one way of ensuring that something spreads more rapidly to the news media and that is saying it is to be kept secret and then providing it to someone on Capitol Hill. Yesterday, Hillary Clinton discovered this as her team provided lawmakers with a first look PowerPoint of State's long-in-the-works Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR).  The document was marked NODIS which of course may look like an acronym for "No Distribution" but actually means "Please forward immediately to Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post." Or at least that's what it seems to mean because within a couple of hours of the Powerpoint hitting the Hill it showed up on the Post's website with a brief summary by Kessler.

The Kessler summary and subsequent reviews of the document, including that by FP's Josh Rogin, focused on the box-shifting nature of the document and the who-get-what division of assets and responsibilities between the State Department and USAID. There are a couple of more things about the document that are also worth noting, however.

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The United States seem to be swimming in economic initiatives that are going to go nowhere. But are we really surprised? After all, as in the case of U.S. efforts with regard to Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Israel and the Palestinians, we also seem to be swimming in foreign-policy initiatives that are very unlikely to produce much (positive) change to the status quo.

But seriously, if the United States is going to devote our efforts to empty symbolism and hollow gestures, couldn't we focus on some that were leavened by a little nobility, creativity or boldness? If we are going to float proposals that are doomed to failure or ineffectiveness, couldn't we float better proposals?

Let's take the four big economic initiatives making headlines this week.

The Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement
We were greeted this morning with the unsurprising news that the efforts by U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and his Korean counterparts to hammer out a new and improved version of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade deal had foundered on beef and automobile issues. I lead with this news because it is one of those rare proposals that actually have the opportunity to fail twice -- in addition to this week's setback, it could also fail in the negotiating phase. That's not very likely (the White House promises a deal "within weeks"). But even if the deal is reached, the likelihood that a free trade deal is going to make it through the U.S. Congress any time soon seems slim.

While conventional wisdom has it that Republicans are warmer to free trade than Democrats, the reality is that centrists are warmer to trade. The real opposition lies in the growing right and left wings in each party. A story in today's New York Times highlighted a Pew poll that 44 percent of Americans feel free trade deals have been bad for the country, while only 35 percent feel they have been beneficial. While some deals are viewed more favorably, others -- like deals with China or Korea, countries viewed with more unease -- are not. The article also notes that, "Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who were aligned with the Tea Party movement had a particularly negative view of the impact of free trade agreements." In the last election cycle something like 4 out of 10 voters identified themselves with the Tea Party or Tea Party candidates -- a group that now has 110 members of Congress.

With the Blue Dogs slaughtered in the last election, the power in Democratic caucus has also shifted solidly to the left; between that fact and the growing importance of unions as 2012 nears, the idea that a trade deal might get approved anytime soon should provoke some skepticism.

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In a single, unexpected stroke President Barack Obama may have made his trip to India one of the most important of his presidency. By announcing his support for Indian permanent membership in the U.N. Security Council, Obama advanced a number of important goals.

First, he went a long way toward establishing a truly special relationship between the world's largest democracy and the United States. He embraced an issue that was important to Indians and, despite the certainty of Pakistan's public unhappiness with the decision and China's less public but nonetheless undoubted discomfort with it, he showed courage and vision in doing so.

Second, he found an issue that could measure up to or even trump the Bush administration's nuclear deal with India, thus ensuring a strong sense of momentum in a relationship that must move forward if both countries are to rise to the challenges of the new century.

Third, he underscored that his administration was serious about turning rhetoric about rethinking multilateralism, and working with a new set of powers, into action. While working within the framework of the G-20 was a step in that direction, that process actually began two years ago under the Bush administration. Adjustments made in the structure of international financial institutions were another positive step, but frankly were rather underwhelming, leaving behind serious representational imbalances.

Admittedly, what the president said in his speech to the Indian Parliament -- "in the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed U.N. Security Council that includes India as a permanent member" -- is rather open-ended. Especially when taken in the context of, for example, the extended period of unproductive support we have offered for Japanese permanent membership. Still, the president's statement implied that without permanent membership for India on the Security Council, the United Nations would not be seen as "effective, credible and legitimate." That is not just true (which it is) or an important point from India's perspective (which it also is), but it has major implications for other countries that have a legitimate claim to a similar role.

These other countries, as noted in a quick but insightful commentary from Stewart Patrick at the Council on Foreign Relations, would certainly also include Brazil and Germany. This would make the first tier of new candidates a class of what Patrick calls "four great democracies." Others will cavil and some will argue their merits. But what Obama has done with this statement is to move U.N. reform forward in an important way.

Now, of course, the real work needs to be done. The United States should, at the earliest possible moment, begin a renewed push for translating these words into actions. This will take diplomatic deftness and will require a willingness to begin a process of major-power horse-trading that could well have repercussions across the entire international system. Ideally, the United States will undertake this with a clear vision of how it would like to see the system remade, and with an express willingness to alter, and in some cases diminish, the role of the great post-World War II powers. This is not only the path to a more just and effective system, it is also the path to a system offering fairer burden sharing, a point which may make these changes easier to sell both in Washington and among a group of cash-strapped Atlantic allies. The view should be holistic and represent a sense of where existing institutions need to be strengthened or revamped, and where new institutions need to be cultivated. Virtually no major international institution should be exempted from such a reassessment. The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the regional development banks, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, etc., must be reviewed during this process.

Though it is also true that everything cannot happen at once, Obama boldly and appropriately found an issue that could be a lynchpin of such a process of reform. What will make today's remarks a true watershed -- and thus make the current trip a true success -- is if they lead to tangible progress soon, a worthy goal for the remainder of Obama's term.

What would you do after a rough few months on campus? Roadtrip!

It works the same way for presidents. Though, instead of making the journey in Flounder's brother's Lincoln this one involves -- according to the same people who estimated 11 million people attended the Glenn Beck rally -- 3,000 people, 34 warships, Air Force One, 13 cargo aircraft, three helicopters, and the private aircraft of a coterie of fat cat hangers-on. And instead of heading to Emily Dickinson College to comfort the grieving roommate of Fawn Liebowitz (by treating her to an evening at a local roadhouse to listen to Otis Day and theKnights) this one includes stops in India, Seoul,Korea for a G20 meeting that will involve more slippery smooth talking than"Otter" Stratton could ever muster, Japan, and Indonesia.The rumor that Obama is visiting Indonesia to consider locating his presidential library there is untrue and was denied by the White House moments after Mitch McConnell started to spread it, thus ending the three hours and twenty-two minutes of civility following Tuesday's elections.

For Obama, the trip is bound to be a relief. In fact, a variety of pundits are peddling the idea that given likely gridlock, congressional investigations, and general acrimony at home, that this trip will mark the beginning of a period during which the president will focus on international issues. As the theory goes, presidents can elevate themselves on the international stage without being dragged down by the Congress. Like many such theories, of course, this is nonsense. Nothing would seal Obama's fate as a one-term president quite as fast as a refocusing away from the domestic economic issues that torment his employers, the U.S. electorate.

Furthermore, given those domestic economic problems and the problems associated with our recent overseas misadventures, the United States is going to be both considerably less forward-leaning overseas, considerably more inward-looking generally and, in all likelihood, despite the "trade" sub-theme of the upcoming trip -- which is really a form of mercantilist chest-thumping -- more protectionist going forward.

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When I first joined the Council on Foreign Relations, I was in my mid-30s and knew nothing and no one. The reason I was fortunate enough to get into the organization was the sponsorship of some very kind folks who had more faith in me than was warranted. Notable among these was the late Bill Colby, the former CIA director, who was the guy who encouraged me to try to join in the first place, offered great counsel and support and to whom I will always be grateful.

He was the first but not the last of an exceptional group of very well established foreign policy community leaders who made it a practice to reach out to and be supportive of younger people who they thought showed some promise. Another of those gracious and encouraging individuals died yesterday. That, of course, was Ted Sorensen. I will never forget the several times that he took the time to sit down and talk with me, to give advice, to share stories.

Of course, as someone who was seven years old when Kennedy was assassinated, the tales of his administration were as remote and legendary to me as the Camelot that gave them their name. But Sorensen was accessible, kind, and wise. He joked easily and was always encouraging. The fact that once upon a time, he offered vital counsel to a president at a fateful moment in our country's history or that many of the words best associated with that president originated in Sorensen's brain seemed a bit dizzying to a young wannabe like me and, yet, listening to him, completely plausible.

Later in life, I would learn that many men and women who are especially accomplished achieve a certain kind of calm -- almost preternatural in nature -- that comes from something gained in the course of their experiences. It's not so much self-confidence or self-satisfaction as it is simply having risen to great challenges and knowing it -- not intellectually but viscerally. It expresses itself as grace.

Sorensen will be missed for these reasons by many as much as he will be by the public at large for his service and the memories he helped create. It is a particular irony that the loss of this man, who put the promise of an entire generation into words, comes at a time when the latest in a long line of presidents to be inspired by his efforts seems to have lost his voice. But perhaps in contemplating the loss of Ted Sorensen in conjunction with the losses he will suffer at the polls on Tuesday, President Obama might be reminded that inspiration is not only possible amidst dark moments, it is especially essential. To my mind John F. Kennedy was a bit of a mixed bag as president. But he made an extraordinary contribution, capturing -- in collaboration with Sorensen -- the American spirit and reframing it in terms that would motivate a new generation. It is an example Obama must emulate or he will be passed over by yet another rising generation in dire need of getting back in touch with America's promise.  As Sorensen would have advised and as his work underscored, that message of inspiration cannot pander but rather must force listeners to look inward -- as suggested by the single most indelible phrase that Sorensen via Kennedy left to history: Ask not what their country can do for them but what they can do for their country.

They say politics makes strange bedfellows. That's a polite way of saying that if you want to make it in Washington, you don't always get to choose who is screwing you.

Take the case of Tom Donilon, President Barack Obama's choice to replace Gen. Jim Jones as national security advisor. Today it was announced that replacing Donilon as deputy national security advisor will be longtime Obama national security confidante, Denis McDonough. This was how most insiders expected things to play out. No national security official has been closer to the president longer than the intensely loyal McDonough.

Indeed, that was one of the biggest problems Jim Jones faced. McDonough was clearly a member of Obama's inner circle when the national security advisor was not. McDonough often second-guessed and even on a couple occasions publicly undercut Jones in front of other staff and in at least one instance in front of a reporter. He was seen as a kind of shadow national security advisor. In fact, he was also seen as operating very comfortably from the shadows, serving as the political Paulie Walnuts of the National Security Council (NSC), sending midnight emails, denying access and otherwise bullying reporters who dared to stray from the prescribed spin on countless stories.

Frankly, in Washington, a place where politics famously ain't beanbag, having a loyal, tough, and no-nonsense aide like that is useful. But if that aide's presence effectively blows up the management structure of the national security apparatus, it's a bit of a problem.

Fortunately for Donilon, he built his own close relationship with the president and he is likely to be considerably more empowered than Jones was. Unfortunately for him, McDonough will always be closer and now he will be Donilon's deputy -- thanks, presumably, to a deal that Donilon must have accepted but that no matter how enthusiastically he embraced publicly, he must privately have had some real doubts about.

Having learned from the experiences of the first two years, perhaps both Donilon and McDonough will manage a more disciplined relationship than that which undercut NSC effectiveness under Jones. But insiders are highly skeptical that McDonough will ever fall into line with the hierarchy or even that Obama really cares whether he does or not. Furthermore, there are already reports that the Donilon-McDonough relationship while functional has gone through frosty patches and that the level of mutual trust is not fantastically high.

Given all this, perhaps Donilon would be well advised not to have McDonough walking behind him down any of those long White House staircases because many feel that the man who was Obama's top campaign national security aide won't be fully satisfied until he is his top national security aide in the White House.

All that of course is speculation, gossip and fairly typical for any White House. What is a bigger immediate challenge is this: Whatever the reasons for Jones' struggles as national security advisor, he and the president always had Donilon to do the vitally important work of making the NSC deputies' process run smoothly. The deputies' process is where the real policy heavy lifting gets done and even critics of the Donilon choice to be national security advisor acknowledge that he managed that process with great dexterity, a view that is echoed by virtually all the deputies with whom he worked.

Donilon's biggest problem is that he has no Donilon. McDonough lacks the bureaucratic sophistication built up over the years by Donilon including the knowledge of the various key cabinet departments (Donilon was Warren Christopher's right hand guy at State, after all). Most importantly, it seems highly unlikely that the combative McDonough will be seen by anyone as an honest broker -- the impartial manager of an inclusive policy process. Indeed, McDonough is being asked to play against his real strengths in much the same way that Rahm Emanuel was as White House chief of staff. There's a reason Paulie Walnuts never made it to the top job, struggling with the transition from capo to underboss. The Peter Principle works in the swamplands of Washington just like it does in the swamplands of North Jersey.