When the United Kingdom's prime minister stands up in front of an elite audience and slams an old friend alongside of whom Britain is fighting the war on terror for its government waste and because too many of that country's richest are getting away without paying much tax at all, it's got to sting. But fortunately for Jeff Immelt and the rest of us here in the United States, David Cameron was in Islamabad and the broken, favoritism-ridden, inefficient system he was excoriating was not the one in Washington but the one that, at least nominally, is responsible for Pakistan.

That said, Cameron is among a rapidly shrinking number of folks who have yet to pile on to the revelations of GE's protracted tax holiday and, by extension, President Obama's appointment of Immelt to be his competitiveness advisor. In fact, my guess is Immelt will not be able to survive indefinitely in his capacity as an informal consultant to the president. When I spoke to two different senior economic officials in the administration about him this morning, they both rolled their eyes and wondered aloud what the White House was thinking when he was picked.

America has produced few better respected senior executives than Immelt. And for an administration that needed better ties with the business community in a hurry, he seemed like an excellent choice. But as one of the officials observed to me, he was a disaster waiting to happen even before the tax hubbub and GE's ties to the Fukushima nuclear calamity became hot topics. Why? Because with so much of GE's revenue coming from outside the United States, it was only a matter of time before the company made a decision to invest in an overseas project that would be seen as sapping American jobs or at least failing to create them.

Read on

While it is too early to assess the long-term outcomes of the uprising in Egypt, there are nonetheless a number of important conclusions to which we can reasonably come.

First, something profound has changed. It did not change because of the uprising in Tahrir Square. It changed and the uprising was the result; the power has shifted in the region. We have passed a generational and technological tipping point. While the dinosaurs cling to the levers of power in virtually every country in the greater Middle East, the under 30 majority is now the great force to be reckoned with. While the establishment has done almost everything conceivable to keep them down from denying them education to curtailing the spread of information technologies to gutting the economies, nonetheless, new information sources and technologies and ways of connecting and collaborating seeped in to these societies through every one of the cracks spreading across the Ozymandian edifices of the elite.

These changes are irreversible. They are seen in the cell phones that even the poorest carry with them, in the broadcasts of Al Jazeera, in the burgeoning Twitter feeds, the apps young Arabs create to provide work-arounds every time a government tries to curtail Internet access, and even in the technological use of some of the region's worst players.

These changes have remade the social and political fabric of the region. What they have yet to do is what they have done everywhere else in the world and that is to fuel economic change.

That is the second inescapable conclusion we need to consider. The great challenges before this under-30 majority are economic, they are about opportunity. They are not about Israel or battles between Shiites and Sunnis or tribal divisions. Those problems still fester, but the unifying challenge for this generation is even more basic: They need jobs. They crave opportunity. And the failure of their leaders to provide them with these basic sources of sustenance and dignity is what has fueled the revolutions of 2011.

A corollary to this conclusion is that we in the United States have been sending the wrong people with the wrong approaches to solve the wrong problems in this region for decades. The problems of this region will not be solved by negotiators or generals. They require investors and entrepreneurs and educators. To the extent that we can contribute, we must do so by supporting the creation of economic opportunity. It is a massive undertaking but it is the only true peacemaker.

A third conclusion is related to the second, however. The role for the U.S. government in all this is very, very limited. We would do well to redirect what aid we provide to address this core challenge of creating jobs for the under-30s. We would do well to put our best economic minds in charge, perhaps even appointing a special economic envoy of real stature. But the only people who can ultimately solve this problem are in the Middle East. In fact, in the hierarchy of those who can help, if the people of the Middle East are first and by far foremost, it is the people of Europe, not the United States who must be second. They are the natural economic neighbors of the region and they must answer the question whether they want those under-30s employed in the Middle East or seeking employment in Europe. After the Europeans, it may even be the Chinese or Indians and others dependent on oil in the region and closer to its problems who should take more prominent roles in helping to solve the problem than the United States, which is a lightening rod and has problems of our own at home.

A fourth conclusion is that the hardest part is clearly still ahead of us. Egypt must make the transition to democracy and that means the military must really step aside after six months. Friends of mine who have met with them believe they understand the implications of the political earthquake that has taken place during the past month and that they will do so. But there are dinosaurs among their leaders so it is by no means a sure thing. Even beyond establishing a democracy is actually keeping one, and beyond that is addressing successfully the economic challenges alluded to above. Further, there are the problems of all the other countries of the region. They will be difficult to handle but we in the United States need to be confident enough in our core beliefs to let them work them out among themselves. There will be fights and setbacks and people we don't like will periodically gain the upper hand. But give me a duel between two guys armed with the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter feeds and let one offer the people the 11th Century and another offer the 21th and I know who I will bet on.

Finally, my fifth conclusion is that of all the big challenges ahead for U.S. foreign policy associated with this period of upheaval, the greatest by far lies with Israel and the Palestinians. Personally, I am not sure why the Palestinians have not yet unilaterally declared independence. The world would surely support them. But imagine what would happen if, perhaps on the road to such a declaration perhaps following it, a hundred thousand Palestinians took to the streets peacefully demanding real self-determination. With memories of Tahrir Square fresh in the minds of the world, how could the Israelis respond as they might have in the past? On what side of history would they appear to be as President Obama might put it? And in that vein, on what side of that history would President Obama and the United States want to be?

Until now, the fact that Israel was the region's only democracy was its "get out of jail free" card. It was used to excuse ... or attempt to excuse ... a multitude of sins. For this reason, no Arab military offensive could be as effective in undermining Israel's strategic advantages as real democracy taking root elsewhere in the region. The Netanyahu administration would be flummoxed if people power came to the West Bank and Gaza. They would be cast involuntarily with the dinosaurs. They would have no pages in their playbook indicating how to handle this. They would have very few good choices.

Actually, they would have only one. They would have to get out of the way. They would have to do what Mubarak did. They would have to step within the 1967 borders and let the Palestinians begin the job of building Palestine. And they would have to hope that the United States, Europe, and the rest of the world helped the Palestinians do it because once that happens, it will be of the utmost importance for Israel that its new neighbor produce real opportunity for its people ... because we have seen the alternative and it, for this generation who have both nothing and nothing to lose will not be contained by the tactics or the rhetoric of the past.

Think tanks being what they are -- large meat lockers in which future government bureaucrats are stored until needed -- the reports they produce tend to be little more than exercises in reputation management. They state the obvious, then slather it in a bland, nutrient-free sauce of quasi-academic qualifications that seek to explain why they are really not saying anything new or practical. The best of them offer course corrections that are minuscule at best, and new ideas are as hard to find as honest politicians in the Karzai administration.

Which brings us to the latest such report to be issued, one that proves to be the exception to the rule. That report is "A New Way Forward: Rethinking U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan" from the New America Foundation. It is one of the very few such documents that I have recently read and found myself nodding at almost every turn of the page. It is so good that it almost restores my youthful belief in the potential benefits of putting smart people around a table and letting them cogitate and argue and bullshit and grapple with tough problems. Produced by a glittering group of wonks, it contains real thoughtful insights into America's situation in Afghanistan and comes to sound, generally implementable conclusions about what the United States should do to avoid making a very bad situation even worse.

The report is well summarized in an article by Steve Clemons, one of its architects, that appears in Politico. In short, it makes the case that spending $100 billion a year to fight a war we can't win in Afghanistan is just one of several reasons that America's policies are misguided and demand immediate correction. He writes, "Though Obama is more likeable, and often more inspiring, than the fictional captain in the Melville novel, Afghanistan has now become the Moby Dick to Obama's Ahab."

The report begins by revisiting the forgotten territory of America's initial reasons to be involved in the region in the first place. It correctly notes there are only two: preventing Afghanistan from being a staging ground for further terrorist attacks against the United States, and doing what we can to reduce the threat that Pakistani weapons of mass destruction might fall into the wrong hands. It argues correctly that if we focus on these two goals, then our mission, military and diplomatic presence in the region would and should look very different.

It makes five key recommendations. The first is promoting power sharing and political inclusion in a more decentralized Afghanistan: In other words, trying to work with rather than against the historical and cultural tides in the country. Second is downsizing and ending military operations in southern Afghanistan and reducing the military presence there. Third is focusing the military's attention on Al Qaeda, which is no longer really present in Afghanistan but remains an issue in Pakistan. (Notably, the New America group suggests using the cost-savings the drawdown would produce to bolster U.S. domestic security and contain the spread of weapons of mass destruction worldwide.) Fourth is encouraging the promotion of economic development, while emphasizing that this should be an internationally rather than U.S. led effort. (Hallelujah to that.) Finally, it recommends collaborating with influential states in the region to ensure Afghanistan is not dominated by "any single power or being permanently a failed state that exports instability." The report notes that those states -- Pakistan, India, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia -- aren't the best of pals, but suggests correctly that there are ways to work with each or even small clusters of them to promote these outcomes that are, for the most part, in their interests.

Point five is a bit of a stretch. Point four is more or less boilerplate, though worthy of emphasizing. The reality is that Afghanistan will become a strongman dominated quasi-failed state, but that as long as our core goals in the region -- the two mentioned above -- are met, then we should be less concerned with whatever structure produces an outcome supportive of them.

Personally, I think the international community needs to be involved actively in ensuring that whatever successor state emerges, the rights of all Afghans -- and notably women and tribal minorities -- are respected and protected. It is also true that Pakistan is the real problem and appropriate subject of U.S. attention in this region, and that this requires forthrightly addressing what diplomatic and force structure is required to promote stability and contain threats within that country.

But this report is clear-eyed, direct, well-argued and in its tone even more than its substance sends a message that the only door we should head for in that country is the one with the exit sign over it. In Clemons article he notes that the United States spends seven times Afghanistan's own GDP on our involvement there -- an amount equal to the cost of the recent U.S. health care legislation, and one that if saved could pay down the U.S. deficit in 14 years. The recklessness and irresponsibility of such a costly involvement, given America's other urgent priorities and the true nature of the threats within Afghanistan, makes the blood boil.

It does no dishonor to our military to wish their lives and services were available for other missions. Reports like this raise the hope that opinion is shifting in ways that may lead us to just such a desirable outcome.

It's the end of 2009, and not just the end of the year, but the end of the decade. A fact that has editors everywhere jonesing for lists ... who am I to disappoint? (Here is the first in a series of lists. Be on the lookout for big Hanukkah treat: The Winners and Losers of the Decade! Put that in your dreidle and spin it.)

Let's start with The Loveable Losers shall we? After all, while Vince Lombardi said that in football "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."In politics, most of the players are losers to begin with and watching them squirm is what makes Wolf Blitzer so damn irresistible. And that's not to speak of Gloria Borger or Chris Wallace. (Come to think of it, if those guys can make it in television, I have an idea: The Potato Channel. Wouldn't it be more fun to watch an entire field of tubers ripen and rot? That's reality television the average American viewer can relate to. Heck, the average American viewer is likely to think it's about them.)

• The Salahis: The good news: At last a Palestinian captures Washington's attention. The bad news: He's a fraud wrapped in a con-artist, wrapped in the arms of a big cheap blonde who makes the Real Housewives of New Jersey look like the Algonquin Roundtable.

• John Boehner and Mitch McConnell: One looks like an extra in "Mad Men," the other like one from "Six Feet Under" ... but both are clearly dancing to music only they can hear. The Lawrence Welk Show maybe? So far this year they have exactly zero major victories to show for themselves and even their party realizes (well, the ones that are honest with themselves) that we won't be sure that the GOP is back until after these two have exited stage right..

• Jim Jones: One minute he's up ... a great choice for National Security Advisor ... the next minute he's down ... ineffective ... then he's back up. Obama respects him, but now, at the end of the year, it is clear the policy process is drawn out, too messy, and the buzz is that he is getting regularly backdoored by former campaign staffers and others who would have been sitting up straight and saluting in his previous job.

• The Short-Timers: Jones is one about whom the whispers of an early departure ebbed but have now returned (watch for the fight over that slot when it eventually does happen… Susan Rice vs. whoever Hillary’s candidate is with the likely compromise winner being Tom Donilon). How about Rahm? There's lots of buzz that he'll leave early to pursue new political horizons. People say the same about Tim Geithner but I doubt it ... he's proved canny and grows stronger daily. Holbrooke? Mitchell? I'm willing to be that at least one big name czar goes early -- and I mean a bigger name than the already long-gone Steve Rattner (who is rumored to be working on a tell-all book). Ron Kirk? Gary Locke? For them leaving would be redundant.

• Rep. Joe Baca: Here's a guy who thought he would win points for proposing legislation giving Tiger Woods the Congressional Gold Medal. Blergh. Sploink.

• The MSNBC Anti-Sarah Palin Brigade: You know who you are. You guys have watched Twilight too many times. You wanted to kill her with a stake through her heart or a bullet made of your silver tongued ridicule ... you didn't realize that would just make her stronger. It's a year later folks, and don't kid yourself, this semi-literate snow bunny is the second strongest brand in American politics.

• Harry Reid: Here he is quietly putting together a health care bill against all odds and in the corridors they're talking about who'll replace him as majority leader when he loses his seat next November. While Dick Durbin is the likely suspect, smarter folks than I expect N.Y. Senator Charles Schumer to unleash his death-eaters (a Harry Potter reference for those of you over 30) in a stealth campaign to deny Durbin the job and win it for himself.

• Chris Dodd: He may finally start doing what's right in terms of financial reform, but it's way too late. Independent voters in Connecticut are through with him and the betting in the virtual OTB on Capitol Hill is he won't even run the race. Time to retire to that big house...those big houses.

And the Big Winners?

• Barack Obama: Quibble all you want about that process stuff, here are the facts: A year ago we were at the economic brink doubting a turnaround would happen for years, he had been elected to bring an end to an unpopular war and switch our focus to Afghanistan, he pledged to do something about health care despite the fact that nothing had been done of substance in about half a century and then he said he'd restore America's reputation around the world and reverse our stance on global warming while he was at it. Twelve months later despite having had to climb a steep learning curve and deal with the one horse shay up on the Hill, he's done it all. Perfect? No. Flawed? Plenty. But without question the most impressive first year in office for a U.S. president since Franklin Roosevelt.

• The Cardinals: No, not the ones in St. Louis ...or even the ones in the Vatican (especially not them) ... I mean the campaign inner circle that now are the most powerful people in Washington who are not actually named Obama. Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett lead the parade but also key, folks like Pete Rouse, Denis McDonough and even, on the foreign policy side, Donilon, who literally defies Washington gravity by being the only guy I never hear anything negative about.

• Larry Summers: Not getting the Fed job is probably the best thing that could have happened to him. He's made the NEC and the tight team around him and Geithner the invaluable A-team on the issues that will mean most to Obama's political future. Crisis? Check. Now on to jobs. Tougher...but no one is smarter or more pragmatic ... which happen to be the two traits most often used to describe the President too.

• John Podesta and George Soros: The Center for American Progress is the most influential think tank in Washington, Brookings is a distant second. (And I say that as a visiting scholar at Carnegie...which is home to the smartest, most creative and most drop-dead good looking wonks in town.) Podesta has made it the brain of the Democratic Party. And despite the fact that the right wing nuts have said Soros has bought huge influence in Demworld by writing the check for the place, it's actually true.

• Chuck Todd and Savanah Guthrie: These two are the big journalistic winners for the first year of the Obama administration. The NBC tandem is comprise of rising stars who will dominate American journalism. Todd is a rock solid reporter and analyst and Guthrie is not just sharp as a switch blade she is the most appealing new television journalist who doesn't work on the Daily Show. Close runner up: everyone at Politico who has carved out a central place for themselves in the intellectual life of Washington, (most notably Mike Allen whose morning Playbook has climbed the must read list to the point that I go to it before I go to the Times, the Post, or Drudge). Third place: the Wall Street Journal. Admit it ... go on ... Rupert Murdoch has vastly, vastly improved this paper. When the dust settles and America only has three or four national newspapers they'll lead the pack. 

• Representative Joe Sestak: He's my pick for Sleeper of the Year. Watch the former Admiral closely; he's the real deal ... brilliant, hard-working congressman who is headed for bigger things if the people of Pennsylvania and the leaders of the Democratic Party know what's in the national interest.

• Hillary Clinton: She has done an absolutely superb job in a thankless task. I'm on the record on this with the piece I wrote a couple months ago in the Post but I have to say, the more I know what she is up against bureaucratically in the administration (yes, Virginia, the Obama administration is rife with the same kind of in-fighting as all others ... and the Camp Clinton vs. Camp Barack tensions are there even if the secretary and the president have forged a terrific partnership.)

• Rising Stars: The next Secretary of Defense is likely to be Sen. Jack Reed or Michele Flournoy, the Under Secretary for Policy. The fact that people say these things about them is not a bad thing. Kurt Campbell has done a great job as assistant secretary of state for East Asia...helping to make his region the central long-term strategic focus of the administration. Anne-Marie Slaughter has restored the energy and intellectual clout to the State Department Policy planning department. Susan Rice has done a great job at the United Nations (watch one of her mentors Tony Lake end up as the next head of UNICEF). Gayle Smith may bump heads with state on development issues, but her portfolio at the NSC (global affairs which includes development) is central to every outcome we want in the Mideast and she is a force to be reckoned with.

• Steven Chu and the Department of Energy: From worst to not quite first but at least this onetime backwater has become absolutely central, dispensing big bucks, delivering deals around the globe for the president and playing a vital role in reshaping U.S. energy policy at a time when that is vital on the national security, environmental security and economic security fronts all at the same time.

While we here at FP don't recommend eating disorders as an effective weight control technique, sometimes it's hard to pass up the canapés at those fancy Washington parties -- like GQ's "50 Most Powerful People in DC" cocktail blast at 701 last night. 

Of course, GQ's party had its own built-in trigger of the gag reflex for most Washingtonians: their names weren't on the list. (I talked with one of GQ's writers as she was working on the list, a conversation I enjoyed right up until the moment it was clear they didn't think I was list-worthy. As for the final product's, um, curiosities see FP's earlier take. But, Leon Panetta ahead of Hillary Clinton? Tom Donilon on the list, but his boss Jim Jones off it? Various worthy but random journalists and bloggers and not Tom Friedman or David Sanger? The Sidwell admissions director ahead of the GDS admissions director? Insiders know the truth ... even as they all hungrily pour over the list looking for their own names and those of their allies, enemies and worst of all, their friends.)

But when a glossy, man-perfume scented equivalent of a long hairy finger down your throat isn't readily available, then knowledgeable Washingtonians know there is always another place they can turn, the Capital's naturally produced form of Serum of Ipecac. Just follow the news until you develop the acute reaction to hypocrisy that is certain to launch away your own indiscretions in one or two turbulent but satisfying moments.

For example, here's a recipe for Capitulimia drawn from just what's going on around town today:

Take just one dose of insurance companies trying to suggest in print and broadcast advertisements that after years of making indefensible profits from literally killing people and destroying families with their policies (the one's they didn't actually deny to those who needed them), it is they who are actually looking out for the interests of Americans in need of health care.

Add one 30 second American Petroleum Institute commercial in which they actually argue that the pending climate bill might hurt consumers by producing more highly priced gasoline? After their record? While they should actually all be hovering in their basements waiting for the class action suit from the planet for selling a product they have known for years was destroying it?

Then sit down and take a listen to say, Rush Limbaugh complaining the media is making spurious, emotional, and uninformed attacks against him ... and that "the media" has too much power. The media? Who is he? Where does his power and obscene wealth come from? Appearances to the contrary, he is not a manatee sunning on a rock. 

If that hasn't done it, listen to one-time supporters of the havoc wreaked by the Great Decider's impulsive and catastrophic policies in Iraq or his ineffective blundering in Afghanistan as they criticize President Obama for actually taking some time to work out a sensible adjustment to tackling the mind-boggling challenges posed in the AfPak region ... challenges that were altered by the recent elections embarrassment in Afghanistan.

Or listen to Republican legislators responsible for the biggest deficits in American history and the collapse of the American economy, attack President Obama for doing what had to be done to clean up their mess.

Not there yet, go to Amazon.com and pre-order not only the Sarah Palin book but the upcoming books from President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Hank Paulson, and Karl Rove. Then think about the millions that will be generated by these books. (In New York State, I seem to recall once upon a time in the days of "The Son of Sam" they passed a law blocking criminals from writing books allowing them to profit from retelling the tales of their wrong-doing. These aren't criminals, of course ... well, not all of them ... but what are we to make of millionaires who gutted the American economy making millions from telling us all how they did it?)

Still on the verge of relief but not quite cleansed? Well, pick up a paper and read about the fact that roughly $140 billion in compensation will be paid out on Wall Street this year, a record beating out the last peak year of 2007. (And while you're at it, flip back to the FT from a day or two ago and read Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's call for more industry reform and ask yourself: was placing this oped at the time the bonuses were going to be announced just a little cynical? Do they really think we're going to fall for that kind of grade-school spinning -- even if he did make a number of good points.)

There, that ought to do it. Feeling better now? Lighter on your feet? Angry but empty? No need to thank me. Just another public service from your virtual friends here on the Internet who will always do what we can to ensure our Washington readers are ready for another day of making the rounds from the Four Seasons to the Palm to the usual receptions sponsored by the likes of the American Foot Odor Institute and the National Alliance for Getting Children to Make Their Beds. And for the rest of you outside the beltway, with America's health care system unlikely to be high functioning any time soon, it's probably a good idea to drop a few pounds and get into better shape. 

And here's our hint for turning what could be an eating disorder into a sustainable diet: just keep watching those headlines -- they're the world's most effective non-addictive appetite suppressant. If you follow Washington without losing your appetite, you're not paying attention.

TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

I am beginning to think that John Edwards, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, Octomom, and Jon Gosselin have joined together to form their own public relations firm ... and that their first client is the Vatican. I have come to this conclusion because it is impossible for me to imagine any other group of people giving the Holy See the kind of P.R. advice they seem to be getting.

The evidence came in yesterday's extraordinary statement from the Vatican "defending" themselves against attacks that they have not done enough to combat sexual abuse by priests. Rather than contritely focusing on all they have done to address this cancer on their credibility, they offered a response that will be studied in schools for years to come, whether in classes seeking to offer a lesson in how not to handle a crisis or in those offering an advanced degree in miscalculated chutzpah.

Following a meeting with the U.N. Human Rights Council meant to address concerns that the Church was failing to respond appropriately to a long history of members of the clergy abusing their flocks, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi read a statement that was undoubtedly considered by some spin doctor-equivalent somewhere to advance their case but which actually probably amounted to more convincing proof that the Vatican doesn't get it on this issue than anything discussed behind closed doors with the United Nations.

• They argued that "available research" showed that only 1.5 to 5 percent of the clergy engaged in child sex abuse. Which is to say that they seemed to think that possibly having one out of every 20 priests taking advantage of the children in their parishes was not really such a big number. After all, it's only 6,000 to 20,000 priests worldwide.

• Tomasi then went on to quote statistics suggesting that in the U.S. protestant churches actually had a much worse child sex abuse problem and that sexual abuse was also common in Jewish communities. "They're doing it too," was never a very good defense when I was in elementary school and in this case, it seems a particularly ill-considered line of argument. Compounding the mistake, he also argued that family members, neighbors and babysitters were far more likely to molest children than priests. While all this may be true, it does not exactly sound like they were focused on accepting responsibility for actions within their own organization. Not being a Catholic, I'm not sure of the procedures, but I'm pretty sure that the proper drill at confession is "forgive me Father for I have sinned" and not "well, yes, Father I may have sinned, but I wasn't the only one."

• As reported in the Guardian, the statement then took what was probably its most bizarre turn:

The statement said that rather than paedophilia, it would "be more correct" to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males.

Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."

Aha. Well, I don't know about you, but now I feel much better about things. Most of the 6,000-20,000 priests who are abusing children at a rate somewhat lower than that of other religious groups are doing it with somewhat older kids. That puts things in a whole different light! I'm sure the whole ephebophilia defense will have altar boy enrollments skyrocketing in no time at all.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Vatican's response neither satisfied the man accusing it of covering up sex abuse within the Church nor did it sit very well with representatives of other religions. Keith Porteous Wood, of the NGO that charged the Catholic Church with violating several provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, said not enough had been done by the Church to address its internal problems or to open its records to permit civil prosecution of wrong-doers.

Protestant and Jewish representatives were quick to respond condemning the Church's attempt to spread around the blame and defending their own approaches to the problem.

Had these other religious groups asked my advice, I might have told them to simply remain silent and let the Archbishop Tomasi have the limelight and the microphone all to himself. It is hard to imagine what the Church could possibly do to look worse than it already did in the face of a global scandal that has cost it $2 billion in settlements in the United States alone. Hard to imagine ... and yet somehow, that's precisely what it did. 

CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty Images

This week is a three ring circus for the international community. The U.N. The G20. The Clinton Global Initiative ... and a host of other side shows for good measure. But with most of the activities featuring little more than the foreign policy equivalent of jazz hands ... eye-catching moves amounting to much ado about nothing ... it may ultimately be remembered for a reason no one saw coming. Because I think it is pretty likely that in the future we will look at this week as the beginning of the end of America's presence in Afghanistan and by extension, George W. Bush's 8-year involvement in the Middle East.

It will take some time to wind things down. I also think history may come up with some better name to describe the Bush war in the context of related wars that took place before it, during his father's time in office, and will almost certainly take place after it. Perhaps it will be seen as the Second Gulf War in a series of several. Perhaps it will be seen as the Second Oil War. But we can leave the lasting labels to historians.

The reality is that the reaction to the leak of the McChrystal Report is indicative that there are really only two options in Afghanistan open to the administration. One is that they do not provide McChrystal with the additional resources he requests and they further narrow his mission as a justification for their decision and we begin an inevitable process of winding down. The second is that Obama does grant McChrystal's request but due to the growing doubts about the entire endeavor that the leak of the report has both revealed and exacerbated, that he sets much more specific goals and timelines that in turn pre-sage an ultimate winding down.

The Vietnam analogy is sticking -- the quagmire paradigm -- and no one near the President wants making that mistake again to be his legacy. The fact that Karzai's regime is turning out to be just as corrupt and feckless as our partners in South Vietnam were doesn't help. Further, as we approach the 10 year point at which Russia ended its occupation (which we'll hit in less than two years), comparisons with yet another futile military effort will become too strong for many to bear. Finally, of course, there is the small fact that we're playing whack-a-mole with the insurgents, we can't close the backdoor to Pakistan and if we could, they would go someplace else in the world. In fact, they already are whether to Yemen or Somalia or, apparently, to Colorado.

The seemingly serious threat posed by an Afghan-led terror group associated with al Qaeda that wanted to use explosives to attack U.S. transport hubs underscores two other important points. One is that as we squeeze Afghanistan we may crush some opponents but we do create new ones. Further, it is also clear that we really need to do some new thinking about how one actually does reduce the risk of terror attacks ... and accept that effective homeland security enforcement as apparently has taken place this week, may be the best front line on which we can prosecute this effort.

Meanwhile, of course, in New York and later in Pittsburgh, the headlines that were hoped for from the three-ring circus are unlikely to be materializing ... and the ones that do emerge are likely to be rather disheartening or, at best, underwhelming.

The United States is likely to frustrate the world by providing it with just what it has been asking for. On climate, on the business of the U.N., at the G20 meeting, America will be the key player but it will not dominate or direct or make the tough calls. It will be a better partner than at any time in the recent past. But the result is a three ring circus without a ringmaster. And paradoxically, the United States will be (is being) fiercely criticized for not being strong enough. We can call the world hypocrites all we want but the reality is that everyone wants the same thing: a leader who will take the heat and always lead in the direction they want to go. Any deviation from this ideal will produce howls ... and reading the news this week should produce plenty of corroboration for this observation.

For the Obama administration, the problem is not being an America we can never be.  Every girl sooner or later (it always happens around her 29th birthday if the girl's still single), realize that Prince Charming is a myth and must settle for a real man. But when they do, they then want that man to have some demonstrable qualities and being better than the last jerk you dated only gets you so far. For Obama though, the world is looking for proof that he can actually deliver on one or more of his international priorities: make engagement work with Iran, embrace a new approach to Israel and Palestine that actually produces results, refocus to AfPak and make that work, get our leadership on with regard to climate, be a better neighbor in the hemisphere, jettison tired old artifacts of policies (see: Cuba), help foster real reform and new levels of cooperation and transparency in international markets, and reduce the threat of WMD proliferation.

One by one these issues will play in one or another of the three rings that makes this week's foreign policy circus so compelling. The Obama team is hoping there will be signs of progress ... but that seems unlikely. Taken together, the United States may end up being seen as the absent ringmaster not because we have chosen a different style of leadership but simply because we can't deliver. Sometimes this will be because circumstances truly are beyond our control and America doesn't have the influence or options that others ascribe to us. Sometimes it may be because we ourselves promised more than we could deliver. Obama's credibility is at stake ... and given the way most of the issues listed above are trending, regaining it is going to be a challenge that could take a long, long time to address.

As with Afghanistan, here's the secret: resetting expectations. Identify some goals you can actually achieve. Achieve them. That should have been the approach to domestic policy. Go slower. Build up a head of steam. And it needs to be the approach to international policy. Ringmaster or not, in the three ring circus of international affairs, the last place Obama wants to be is with his predecessor and many of his critics in a clown car full of people the world no longer takes seriously. 

DAVID FURST/AFP/Getty Images

The revelations of out of control behavior among the guards assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul no doubt brought to mind the images of out of control behavior by guards at Abu Ghraib. But there is an important distinction. The guards at Abu Ghraib were U.S. military personnel. The embassy guards were hired guns, part of the outsourcing explosion that is transforming the way the United States conducts its foreign policy.

The embassy guards were not employees of the U.S. government, did not report up a chain of command to senior U.S. military officers who could make career-ending decisions for them, were not subject to the same rules as U.S. military personnel and, perhaps most importantly, blurred important lines about the nature and role of government.

As most people now know, they also allegedly engaged in "lewd and deviant behavior" featuring nudity, drunkenness, hookers, and other behavior more suited for the cast of a Joe Francis video than U.S. embassy security forces, particularly those in a dangerous environment or a country in which strict Islamic values played such a central role. Why it took a report from the Project on Government Oversight to call out these Guards-Gone-Wild and their employers at ArmorGroup, a subsidiary of Miami-based Wackenhut Services, Inc. is a question worth asking.

But the bigger question in the wake of this behavior and other examples of out of control contractors, most notably the cowboys from Blackwater, who allegedly killed as many as 17 Iraqi civilians while providing an escort for State Department personnel in Baghdad's Nissour Square, is about the centrality of outsourcing in the conduct of sensitive U.S. operations worldwide. 

The Congressional Research Service reported that well over half of America's manpower in Afghanistan, for example, is comprised of contractors -- almost 70,000 of them. They cited it as the "highest recorded percentage of DoD contractors in any conflict in the history of the United States." 

How did we get here? Well, some of it was clearly expediency ... beneath which investigation will reveal another level of expediency. The first level is the one cited by government officials hiring the contractors: they provide skill sets needed by the government and the ability to deploy human resources quickly in difficult circumstances. The second level is that by using contractors, the Bush Administration was able to field twice as many people in Afghanistan with half the political exposure. Headlines report troop deployments. They ignore the ArmorGroups and Blackwaters until they screw up, misbehave or start making obscene amounts of money ... all of which are part of the story of the Bush War on Terror.

But at another level, not only do they put America's goals at risk, they also raise important questions about fairly fundamental questions like "who has the right to legitimately use force?" Traditionally that's a prerogative reserved for states, notes Allison Stanger, professor of international politics and economics and director of the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, and author of  the much anticipated One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy, to be published by Yale University Press next month. But by handing over a license to kill to big American companies, that line is blurred observes Stanger, which plays directly into the hands of America's enemies.

Stanger is not, it should be noted, an adversary of using outsourcing to leverage American government resources. Indeed, her much-needed upcoming book considers how broadly outsourcing has transformed the way government works in a wide range of issues including areas such as development where NGOs and other private sector players add a great deal of value. But she is a sharp critic of what she sees as outsourcing approaches that undercut America's foreign policy interests either by compromising values or raising risks. (See her recent U.S. News column "How the CIA Became Dangerously Dependent on Foreign Contractors" which addresses similar problems associated with the agency's use of contractors in covert programs to hunt down and kill al Qaeda members.)

Her point is simply that while it makes sense to leverage government resources with private sector capabilities in many instances, we need clearer rules and guidelines about how and when to do it. Her book could not be coming at a more auspicious time and one hopes that her work will get a close reading at State, the Pentagon, and from the leaders of the Intelligence Community.

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images

In today's installment of the annals of going too far, we find the following stories:

• Hugo Chavez to Replace Bill Murray in Remake of Caddyshack

Hugo Chavez may have finally crossed the line. Gutting Venezuela's constitution was not enough. Fostering leftist uprisings across the Americas was not enough. Getting into bed with anyone who hated America was not enough. Arms deals and military exercises with the Russians were not enough.  Providing arms to the FARC, a revolutionary group dedicated to the overthrow of a neighboring government was not enough.  But yesterday's report that Chavez is now taking on golf may ultimately do him in.

Reportedly, Chavez sees golf as the leisure pursuit of the elite and is therefore taking steps to shut down two of Venezuela's top golf clubs, one in Maracay and one in Caraballeda. Previously he took off after the sport in one of his televised rants. As reported in the New York Times:

Let's leave this clear," Mr. Chavez said during a live broadcast of his Sunday television program. "Golf is a bourgeois sport," he said, repeating the word "bourgeois" as if he were swallowing castor oil. Then he went on mocking the use of golf carts as a practice illustrating the sport's laziness.

Doesn't he realize that he has finally stirred up a bees nest of trouble he may not be able to control. Golf is not bourgeois sport. (Actually, it started as a pastime of humble shepherds in Scotland.) It is a religion of the rich and powerful. Why just yesterday one of Washington's most notable journalists was commenting to me about the avidity with which President Obama made his way to the links by Andrews Air Force Base, going whenever he could find weekend time. In fact, this reporter wondered aloud how the President found time to be with his family given all his weekend golf. But Obama has the bug. It's not curable. It has historically infected presidents and others who might finally start giving Chavez a hard time now that he has decided to go after them where they live. (My pal New York Times columnist Tom Friedman even writes a golf column, he is so devoted to the game. Personally I am a tennis guy ... because tennis is actually a sport ... I agree with Chavez that nothing involving riding around in a little electric cart can actually be called a sport ... but I bear no malice to golfers. I don't dare.)

Eviscerate democracy in your own country and all you do is anger millions of Venezuelans and right minded people everywhere. That's survivable. But does anyone really want to go head to head with Tiger Woods?

• Give Hillary a Break, Please

This week the media went too far (for a change) in its attacks on Hillary Clinton when she took umbrage at a question about what her husband thought about a particular issue. While the question was misquoted, she had every right to push back on the idea that somehow her views were secondary to his. The attacks on her, focusing on her pique, her mood, her level of exhaustion, the challenges of being married to a powerful man, were almost uniformly sexist. She was delivering through her honesty an important message on a continent where the message needs to be heard. (On a planet where the message needs to be heard.) She is Secretary of State. She is one of the most important political leaders in the United States. She is vastly more relevant to contemporary American politics and policies than is her husband.

That said, I wonder if she then went too far in her response to a question about political corruption when she answered that we had our own problems with our "evolving" democracy in the United States and then offered as an example the implication that the 2000 election was compromised by the fact that Republican candidate for president's brother was governor of the state whose contested election decided the race. Personally, I think the 2000 election is a stain on America's political history, that almost certainly the results in Florida were not fairly reflected in the result and that the intervention of the Supreme Court along party lines was particularly ugly. But the implication that Jeb Bush rigged the results without proof was probably a step too far especially overseas. That said, I am not of the opinion that speaking of our warts overseas is such a bad thing. Honesty is the only path we've got to restoring credibility. It also looked to me like she was a.) joking and b.) exhausted (which is understandable toward the end of an historic 11 day trip across Africa).

• You say Myanmar, I say Burma…Let’s call the whole trip off? 
  

Finally, I find myself wondering if Senator Jim Webb's upcoming trip to Myanmar is a trip too far. He will be engaging the leaders of that country's regime concurrently to their latest outrage against the rights of Aung San Suu Kyi -- an 18 month extension on her house arrest which was handed down this week. Further, I highly doubt that anyone sees Webb's trip as that of an independent official.  He is not only a prominent Democratic Senator, he is also known to be close to many at senior levels in the Obama administration and almost certainly would not have undertaken this trip without their okay.

The trip tests the core idea of engagement. There are few more odious regimes on the planet and this one is being interacted with precisely at one of the moments when that odiousness is most clearly on display. If Webb's message is tough or produces some relief for Suu Kyi (or at least makes a legitimate attempt to do so), then the risks such a visit will be spun by some to the advantage of the Burmese regime are worth taking. But it's a delicate business and engagement will almost certainly produce instances in which we are played.

All that said, if Webb's trip involves the kind of direct talk of which he is especially capable and is a real effort to advance U.S. interests there (which begin with fairer treatment of Suu Kyi and movement toward restoration of basic rights within Burmese society) then it is not only not going too far ... it will remind the world of how far Burma's neighbors in Asia really ought to be going (and have not gone) to address this blight in their back yard.

UPDATE: After posting I received a note containing an open letter to Webb from three major dissident groups in Burma: the All Burma Monks' Alliance, the 88 Generation Students, and the All Burma Federation of Student Unions. "We are concerned that the military regime will manipulate and exploit your visit and propagandize that you endorse their treatment on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and over 2,100 political prisoners, their human rights abuses on the people of Burma, and their systematic, widespread and ongoing attack against the ethnic minorities," it reads.

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images,STR/AFP/Getty Images,ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty Images,THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images

Quick, somebody explain to the president that a deal and an accomplishment are two different things. The future of his presidency depends on it.

"Health reform at any cost" inevitably will produce an outcome we can ill-afford. The same is true for "a climate bill at any cost" or "engagement at any cost" or "withdrawal from Iraq at any cost." The mentality that you can spin the dross of a lousy deal into political gold or at least the currency of reelection is the single greatest risk facing the Obama administration at this point.

To observers from around the world, this is one among many reasons why the current health care debate in the United States is so vitally important to watch. Other reasons are:

• America's broken health care system is bankrupting our economy and rendering American businesses deeply uncompetitive. Unless it is fixed, it more than any other single factor will drag down the U.S. economy and undercut American power. (To put it in perspective, America's unfunded retirement health care liability amounts to somewhere between 3 and 6 times America's current fiscal deficit depending on which estimates you believe.)

• The political horse-trading currently going on over health care are already starting to have a big impact on other pending legislative initiatives from climate to trade. (See for example the ethanol tariff deal that was cut or note that the centrists who are key on the health deal are also the key obstacles to progress on some aspects of a climate bill.)

• The shrill and purely unconstructive response of the Republican Party to this health care reform effort is seen by some of them as a potential rallying point for a badly wounded politically party. That is a sign of just how weak they are. Because while this issue regularly ranks high on the list of American concerns as a party the Republicans have had absolutely nothing constructive to say on this issue during this entire debate...or during the eight years of the Bush administration. Every time a Republican leader opens their mouth on these issues and lists another problem they have without offering an alternative approach they further underscore their intellectual bankruptcy.

• That Obama's health care reform efforts are floundering despite such facing pathetic opposition from the Republicans might suggest weakness on the part of the president. I would say it more accurately reflects too much reliance on his part on the undistinguished Democratic "leadership" on the Hill and effective opposition not from Republicans but from entrenched interests in the health care industry.

On this last point, let me add two things.

First, I am in Las Vegas at the moment. (More on that tomorrow. Seriously, I can explain everything.) On the TV periodically are ads for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's reelection. The notion that the majority leader of the Senate of the United States happens to represent a state dominated by the one of the sleaziest and most corrupt cities in the history of the planet really speaks volumes. That the Senate has picked as a leader a "nice guy" whose actual mastery of the Senate is roughly akin to a munchkin riding bareback on a brontosaurus explains loads about why Obama was wrong to punt to depend on his former Hill colleagues to shape a bill that still ... this far into the debate ... lacks any intellectual core, any principles around which it is to be built. (Reminder: the bill needs to be seen by the American people as improving the quality of our health care system, cutting costs and ensuring universal coverage. Those are the basics.)

Second, it's hard not to be in Las Vegas and think about corruption and moral decay. That's what the city sells (and why we should hope to the heavens that what happens in Vegas actually stays in Vegas). It is such a repulsive monument to tasteless venality that I visit it every so often as a kind of public service -- so you don't have to go yourselves. Ok. I'm not such a saint. I also go here because it is the only place in the world I feel not only comparatively virtuous but also elegant and thin. In fact, last night walking out of a show (the truly lousy "Jersey Boys" ... a subject about which I know something) I felt like I was trapped in some nightmarish Francisco Botero painting of the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Costumes by Old Navy.

Anyway, the point is that as bad as Las Vegas is, it is only the second most corrupt city in America. Read Robert Reich's Salon piece on Obama's deal with the drug companies to understand just the latest outrage in this respect. Or read Frank Rich's excellent piece in the NY Times, "Is Obama Punking Us?" (Note to observers from outside the United States: note that these are critiques from Obama's base, the left.) The fact is that there will be no good deals in Washington, no meaningful reform, until there is real campaign finance reform in America. Barack Obama talked tough about lobbyists and punished a few by keeping them out of his administration.  But he has done absolutely nothing to limit the real forces that are corrupting the U.S. system ... the flow of cash from Big Pharma or insurance companies or on other matters from Wall Street or unions.

So the combination of unclear marching orders from the White House, weak leadership from Dems on the Hill, shrill negativism from Republicans and a corrupt political system has produced a muddled health reform bill when we need a strong one. While we are right to be frustrated and appalled we should not be surprised. The same will almost inevitably follow with climate. The same will almost inevitably follow with every bill until we fix what is really broken in Washington.

But on another level, if the administration continues to send the message that it is so eager to check the boxes on some check list of deliverables that it will buy into the illusion of progress rather than fighting for the real thing we are likely to see engagement for the sake of engagement (watch Hillary Clinton try to talk herself around this issue with Fareed Zakaria from his show this weekend...you could tell it was tough for her) or withdrawals from warzones that mask heightening risks in those places (Iraq) and new ones (AfPak). Or rather, we're already seeing these things. 

From health care to climate to Iran to half a dozen other policies in the Middle East we are seeing dangerous compromises and worrisome caveats and complications. And since some of these have nothing to do with the money politics of Washington we have to conclude that they are linked to and revealing of the still evolving character of the administration.

This should be a warning sign for them as well as for us. It carries an important message: The most important achievements of this administration may come from the deals it is willing to walk away from. Only through these can it send a message that it actually has principles and the integrity that is a prerequisite of real leadership.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Sometime next year, probably a few months after the unemployment rate in the United States passes 10 percent, Goldman Sachs may well generate the $10 billionth dollar of profit that it has made since the American taxpayer helped bail it out at the nadir of the financial crisis. At least it will if keeps making $3 billion a quarter in profit as it did last quarter. 

With 2010 being an election year, the Republican Party will be vigorously hammering the Obama administration on record unemployment (it's quite possible real unemployment...including those who don't report, etc...will be approaching 20 percent, it's already 16.5 percent now). They will say the stimulus was wasteful and that new taxes on the wealthy are just the tip of the iceberg. And, if midterm elections hold true to form, the Obama administration will lose the big advantages the Democratic Party currently has in the Senate and the House. (Watch for Mitt Romney selling his business and management credentials to lead this charge and position himself successfully to be the Republican candidate in 2012.)

The Republicans won't actually win a majority in either house. But they won't have to. As we have already seen with health care and climate reform, even with current advantages the Obama team barely can force their own initiatives through given divisions within the Democratic Party. 

And those Democratic divisions should grow. Because in all likelihood...if the left has any hint of a spine left...they will be furious that Obama not only fumbled his lead but that he is copping out on health care and climate, seeking to be the Henry Clay of the modern era (and let's remember, the fates of the compromises engineered by "the Great Compromiser" were not so great.) Meanwhile, Obama will also be seen by many as the guy who Wall Street had dancing on a string. Because nothing says "you been played, suckah!" like reading stories such as those in today's Wall Street Journal or the FT of Goldman's bounties. The taxpayer couldn't get played in this instance without the willing shnookery of the Obama administration (and the historically clueless shnookery of the U.S. Congress not to mention that of the Bush administration...let's be fair, the nation's capital is shnook central).

In other words...if things play out as described....2009 could be the legislative high water mark of the Obama administration with the election paralyzing action next year and progress on the Hill much more difficult thereafter.

As for Goldman's record payday, I've asked this before and I will ask it again: Where is the outrage? I'm a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist. I love free markets. I hope a free market marries one of my daughters some day. But if some people have too many advantages and others simply can never catch up, the markets aren't free, regardless of law or intent. Even if the advantages are in part derived from talent and hard work, fairness can remain an issue if other components of the success are linked to access, influence, history and other intangibles.

Few companies in American history...perhaps Standard Oil, perhaps J.P. Morgan's bank, but probably not G.M. in its prime...have had more high-level influence on public policy than Goldman Sachs. This may have seemed fairly benign when markets appeared to be operating as they should and Goldman merely seemed a source of talent for the government. 

But now we have a different perspective. In a story from the front page of today's Wall Street Journal: "With competitors such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Sterns Cos. Gone and others like Citigroup Inc. flailing, Goldman appears to be pulling off one of the biggest market grabs in Wall Street history." And so we must ask, how did we get here? Is it purely a coincidence that former Goldman CEO Hank Paulson oversaw the management of a financial crisis that allowed several of Goldman's biggest competitors to be destroyed but included goodies like the $12 billion passed through AIG to its prime counterparty Goldman, why aren't there more questions?

Goldman over-leveraged. Goldman advocated for the system that produced the crash...self-regulation by banks, proliferation of risky vehicles, a trading culture that passed risk along and left tidy profits for the traders. When the system blew up, Goldman, its advocate (including a busload of former execs who helped write the rules in the USG), and one of its prime beneficiaries, went to the government and asked for help. It got it. It used it. And then, apparently not as badly off as it once had seemed, it paid off the government cash when it seemed there would be too many strings attached.

Now it is using the new-found freedom and vitality to gain an edge on its remaining competitors, many of them still struggling. (In fact another banking crunch is possible due to margin issues, consumer credit issues and commercial real estate issues among others.) Throughout, it was a Goldman guy at Treasury in the Bush administration, a Goldman guy at White House chief of staff at the end of the Bush administration, a Goldman guy in charge of TARP, and when Tim Geithner left the NY Fed to replace Hank Paulson, it was a Goldman guy who replaced him. 

And now, when the rest of the economy is in ruins, who is it that is striding about announcing record profits and record bonuses? And why is there no talk of any commensurate return on investment to the taxpayers who, they argued at one point, were needed to save their hides? (If you ever wanted proof of the premise behind my book Superclass, look no further. These guys operate as ultra-citizens in our society, virtually able to tell the government to heel and fetch in ways the rest of us can only fantasize about.)

Some will surely argue this is the American way, that Goldman has earned every penny. No. While Goldman has legitimately earned much of it, and there are many great and good folks working hard at Goldman who have made important contributions through government service. (In particular I applaud the pending appointment of the vice chairman of Goldman International Bob Hormats as Under Secretary of State for Economics, a great and talented guy.) Fair-minded individuals must also conclude they played the system, their huge profits came at the expense of others who could have used the government bailout money who had no access to it, no clout, no Treasury Secretaries hailing from their failing auto parts dealership or struggling stationery store. Further, Goldman's profits are simply not the broad-based benefit for America, they are a benefit for Goldman employees and shareholders.

Goldman is the most influential financial institution in a community of banks that sucked the system within an inch of its life with greed and to whom the U.S. government seemed to feel a prime responsibility was to rescue them..."to mitigate systemic risk." Crap. What about the risk to the system caused by the inequities created here? These ultra-citizens -- Goldman is one, think of Exxon registering record profits while the country squirmed in the midst of an energy crisis...and then demanded tax breaks along the way -- are operating apart from  and above our system, using it for their benefit, putting people at risk, exacerbating inequality. While they may help America in some respects...we need to wise up and recognize when we are being used and abused.

And sooner or later, with deficits mounting (Happy Trillion Dollar Deficit Day everyone!) and the government in need of revenue in some form other than loans from abroad, there will be more tax hikes. And companies that operate with sense of entitlement and moral blankness that distinguishes their counterparts in modern fiction...in the Twilight movies say, or "True Blood"...will be the ones who will find that they are increasingly the targets. And what's more, I think they should be. 

My sense is that it is going to take the next wave of crisis...the growing unemployment...the very very slow growth of the recovery whenever it happens...perhaps the next downspike...to mobilize the left and to paralyze the traditional defenders of these folks. (Admittedly a big shift to the right in next year's elections could protect the ultra-citizens in our society, the organizations that have trumped the people in American democracy. And thus watch who supports that shift.)

Obama can still avoid these outcomes...a shrunken edge in Congress, an even more fragmented party, this year's watered-down programs being the high point of a one term administration...but not if he doesn't realize that at the moment his "let's get Wall Street back to the way it was" approach could be the death knell for his popularity with much of his base, much as it was for his Republican opponents last fall. It's time to recognize something not working as planned with this recovery in which the top enjoys record rebounds while the bottom still plummets. 

In the old time TV and radio series "The Life of Riley," William Bendix's character would regularly say what I thought this morning while reading about the Goldman bonanza: "What a revoltin' development this is." The question on my mind is: When does the revoltin' in response begin?

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Millions of you turn to this blog site every day because you feel I will offer you insights that will help you make sense of the world. I know this. It's a humbling responsibility. And frankly, the enormity of it forces me to offer a confession. Today I reviewed the morning papers as I usually do (online, sans paper) and watched the early broadcasts of TV news organizations and I have got to admit it, I find everything pretty confusing. 

For instance:

• The Michael Jackson memorial service will cost the City of Los Angeles $4 million. That's their official estimate. I would bet you my copy of the "Thriller" album that the costs are considerably higher and they can't bear to admit it. Why? Well, because California is broke, right? So here we have a government that is strapped for cash forking out for the public funeral of a multi-millionaire...an event that is likely to sell hundreds of thousands of records the profits of which go straight to Jackson's family.

• On top of this, isn't this the same local government that spent hundreds of thousands trying to prosecute today's hero for child molestation? Whose case was made more difficult because today's hero paid millions to buy the silence of children with whom he had some sort of interaction...one that was worth millions to keep covered up?

• Also baffling: in a bizarre twist on a bizarre case, in order to defray the costs of memorial, the NAACP is, according to MSNBC, trying to raise funds from their members and supporters. Am I getting this right? The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is pulling out the stops to raise money for an individual who actually spent a small fortune testing the boundaries of medical science in order to actually cease being a person of color?

• And, back to California being broke, yesterday its credit rating dropped to two notches above junk status. This is an economy that were it that of a country would rank 8th in the world. This is a failing government that controls an economy larger than that of Russia, India, or Brazil. (Not to mention, Canada, Mexico or Italy.) And yet here in Washington, I get no sense of urgency on this. We do company bailouts. What's our policy going to be on state and city bailouts?

• Meanwhile, while the media's attention is focused on the Staple Center in Los Angeles, the President of the United States is meeting with the prime minister of the world's only other nuclear superpower. This story is less important than the media canonization of the guy who actually invented the concept of celebutard (someone famous primarily for doing really stupid things) and whose greatest accomplishments consisted of making high-pitched noises come out of his food hole. Want to get a sense of what it must have been like to be in the room with Vladimir and Barack? Take a look at the video of them settling in before the cameras for their joint statement this morning. Yikes. Calling all body language experts. There was none of that George W. Bush staring deep into each other's eyes you can rest assured about that.

• At the same time, roughly the same number of protestors was likely killed in Western China as in Iran a couple weeks ago, and the global outrage-o-meter is barely stirring. Apparently Muslims killing Muslims is worse than Muslims and Han Chinese killing each other which proves what? The media believes in the multiplicative power of Muslims in weighing the value of a story? Or could it be that China is too big and important to too many people to be called out on its abuses? When will we realize that we can't actually have a strong relationship with a country and a spineless one at the same time? For the United States, for example, our shared interests with China and the strengths of the relationship need to be strong enough to endure the airing of our differences or they are meaningless and the relationship will ultimately be doomed by the tensions that are not aired.

• Meanwhile, sitting in his gilded Vatican palace, the Pope has issued an encyclical striking out against greed. The encyclical, while assailing the ethical lapses that caused the current global economic meltdown, makes no mention of hypocrisy however. This might be seen as a lapse given the Church's financial record over the years, including but not limited to the failure of Banco Ambrosiano, a bank it owned. (Although one has to wonder if they had access to a higher power that guided the Vatican treasury away from investing in derivatives, which they reportedly eschewed.) Interestingly, the encyclical also warned against the perils of mismanaged globalization...an interesting switch since arguably the Catholic Church was the world's most important early force for globalization, a fact which largely triggered the reformation. (Well, the globalization thing and the financial excesses and ethical abuses of senior church officials.) And, confusingly enough, noting all these ironies and twists, the message of the Pope's encyclical about better ethics and distribution of wealth seemed timely and useful.

• Similarly confusing to me was the fact that in the wake of the United Nations latest impotent, paper condemnation of North Korean missile tests that one could not hear a wave of laughter rippling around the world. But then again, perhaps everyone was too busy figuring out which of the 16 television networks that were scheduled to be carrying the Jackson memorial they would be watching. Fortunately for us all, the Security Council, according to an AP report quoting its current president Ugandan Ambassador Ruhakana Rugunda, "will continue to closely monitor the situation and is committed to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution." What a relief. 

• Finally, while all the above surprises me, one last thing that I find a bit bewildering is the number of things that are utterly unsurprising that pass for news. Just to take a couple of utterly predictable examples from today's Washington Post, "Post-Bankruptcy GM Will Have Work Cut Out for It," "Pottermania Grips London for World Premiere" and any story that discusses the arrest of former DC Mayor Marion Barry.

David McNew/Getty Images

What is it about this hemisphere? As Mark Sanford has once again demonstrated...and as Latins themselves have long known...the only thing worse than not having U.S.-Latin relations is actually having them. Perhaps that's why so few U.S. politicians care to get deeply involved in the region. Sanford, of course, is among the very few recent exceptions. The last American politician to care as deeply about our neighbors to the south was former D.C. mayor, Marion Barry, and that's only because that's where his coke came from.

Maybe that's it. Maybe it's just that Norte Americanos tend to get in trouble down in that part of the world. Think how many U.S. political careers have been damaged south of the border. (I'm speaking geographically here.) Kennedy had the Bay of Pigs. Kissinger will not be visiting Chile any time soon. You don't hear many people thumping their chests about all the support they gave to one-time U.S. favorites like Carlos Salinas or Carlos Menem or Fernando Collor de Mello. (It's a long list.) Other than NAFTA, which Bill Clinton doesn't offer high on his resume any more, the last big Latin achievement that helped a political career was Teddy Roosevelt's ride up San Juan Hill.

But of course, the fall of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, top Republican presidential prospect until he disappeared five days on the long stroll during which he became the first man ever to walk the Appalachian Trail all the way to Buenos Aires, is about more than his apparent weakness for tango music and alfajores. It's even about more than the romance novel prose of his email communications with his Porteno girlfriend. ("I could digress," he wrote, "and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night's light -- but hey, that would be going into sexual details ...")

No the story of Sanford is also about that special something, that yearning, that searching for love...that dark, standard-issue pol pathology...that makes the stories of fallen glad handers the Old Faithful of Washington press coverage, erupting regularly, offering a brief messy spectacle and then slithering back into a dark crack in the earth pending the next outburst. John Ensign last week. His fellow senators David Vitter and Larry Craig. Clinton himself. Eliot Spitzer. John Edwards. Time lists others like Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Mark Foley, Barney Frank, Gary Hart, and, of course, former Cincinnati Mayor Jerry Springer. Springer, of course, earns a special place in this parade of libido casualties for his memorably stupid decision to actually pay off a hooker with a check. But there are more...so many more...Gary Condit, Vito Fossella, Tim Mahoney, Schwarzenegger's groping, Gavin Newsome's affair, Antonio Villaraigosa's affair, Jim McGreevey's dalliance with his homeland security advisor, and on into history...Bob Packwood, Newt Gingrich, Wilbur Mills, Wayne Hays, George Bush, Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy,  Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt...back to James Buchanan and William Rufus King and then on to our founding philanderers Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and goodness knows who else. Could it be that Demosthenes had more than pebbles in his mouth?

Which leads us to the real question behind the Sanford story: Why is it even a story?  It is as surprising as a hangover after Tequila Night at your local bar. Yes, the guy was stunningly hypocritical. Yes, he ran on family values and seems, in retrospect, somewhat conflicted on the subject.  But shouldn't there come a time in the history of civilization where we realize this painfully predictable stuff has precious little to do with on-the-job performance? Some of our greatest political leaders have been hopelessly flawed as husbands. In fact, history argues that no matter what we do, we're going to elect people who will screw up on a personal level. Sure, it's fun to joke about how finally Sanford found a stimulus package he was willing to accept...but can't we get over it? 

The E! Network yesterday announced that they would no longer be covering the exploits of Speidi --Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag-Pratt of "The Hills" -- because their stories were so contrived and superficial as to be beneath the high journalistic standards of Ryan Seacrest and Giuliana Rancic. The Book of Revelations speaks of this moment. When the time comes that entertainment reporters no longer cover contrived superficiality in Hollywood, Washington newshounds should it see it as a sign they should throw down their notepads and give up covering politicians who -- not satisfied with the high volume work they are doing in their day jobs -- start trying to screw their constituencies one by one. 

I therefore take the oath: This blog will lead the way. I will never again write about a D.C. sex scandal. (Because it's a non-story distraction from real issues. Because American politicians have the unique ability to make love seem so dirty. And because this is, after all, FP...and if I ever feel the rest of you really do need a sleaze fix...or just some low comic relief...we still do have all the rest of the world to work with. Buon giorno, Silvio!!!)

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It's June, which means it's time for FP's 50th annual International sleazestakes, the definitive ranking of the most odious cases of political corruption and scandals worldwide....and the most entertaining ones. This ranking is the one used by prosecutors, tabloid editors and the crooks themselves to know who is up (to no good usually) and who is down (to their last appeal). In fact in some places (Equatorial Guinea, Illinois) it is used as a kind of handbook for public officials.

Ok. That's not true. We've never done this before. But when you write about the lying cheating dirt bags who have made politics even less respectable than investment banking and the priesthood, it rubs off on you.  Nonetheless, every word that follows is based on absolutely unimpeachable allegations even if the same cannot be said of the politicians in question.

So here goes, 10 world class sleazebags in 10 categories of sleaziness. 

1. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (Please Don't Make Me Visualize This Division)

From the country that gave us Caligula comes a scandal that makes us wish that there was a way to pull an Oedipus and gouge out our mind's eye. (What, you think I meant the other oedipal stuff? Gross. There are standards of taste, even in this blog.) Please don't make us imagine the 72 year old media-baron-turned-Godfather-of-Italian-politics (which is quite a distinction when you think about it) with the 18 year old lingerie model that Berlusconi's wife alleges he had a dalliance with. Fortunately, recently Berlusconi got his country's privacy commission to bloc the release of pictures of him at a party in Sardinia with the girl, then age, 17. And, to get back at his wife for calling him out on his alleged cradle-robbing, friends of the PM are now circulating stories that Berlusconi's wife had taken a special interest in her security detail. Ah, Italia...the dolce vita never ends.

2. Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo (Perfect Scandal Division)

Even the Italians couldn't come up with a scandal as delicious as this one in tiny Paraguay, known for its mountains and its unusually large number of schnitzel restaurants and goose stepping senior citizens. Here we have the President of the country, a former bishop, now being the subject of not one, not two, but three separate paternity claims. Lugo is clearly a man who may not have been true to his vows, but who is making up with it by literally trying to become the father of his country.

3. The U.K. Parliament (Small Time Venality Division)

This weekend our favorite black hole of charisma, Gordon Brown, proposed constitutional reforms to help bring an end to one of Britain's biggest and yet most piddling political scandals in years. No sex here. No diddling young boys. No Profumo spy scandal. No, this case...which has already got 12 members of parliament from three political parties already announcing they will not seek reelection...is about padding their official expense accounts with claims running from the costs of a home swimming people to an eight dollar donation to a church. Still, the scandal has accelerated the speed with which Gordo's career is circling the drain and it has claimed the Speaker of the House of Commons. Still, I'm not sure if Brown's suggestion that the country's constitution be altered is the answer...given the British history of political scandals, perhaps he ought to be focused more on the constitution of British politicos.

4. Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom (Homicide Division)

We've written about him before thanks to the fact that the scandal surrounding a murdered lawyer's video accusation from the grave has threatened the stability of Colom's government. But the scandal only gets more politically fraught even without much more clarity on whether the lawyer's claims were true. While Colom spent yesterday touring Mayan ruins with Taiwan's president, labor unions backing the leftist leader have started to push their case that the whole scandal was cooked up by Guatemala's business elites to undermine the leftwing president. Bad as the scandal is, I can't quite get my brain past the oxymoronic notion of Guatemalan business elites.

5. South African President Jacob Zuma and, Special Mention, the Japanese Media (Cover Up Division)

A scandal without a cover up would be like an aging Hollywood star without plastic surgery...its often the effort to put a better face on things ends up doing the really upsetting disfiguring. So in this category we salute incoming South African President Jacob Zuma who nobody argues is a model citizen but who nonetheless managed to shrug off accusations of every manner of crime and buzz about his polygamy to rise to that nation's highest office where, Wednesday, he will deliver its state of the nation address. But because you can't do a good scandal without the cooperation of the press, we also want to tip our hats to the Japanese media who were cited in an article in the New York Times last week for their complete willingness to be the tools of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in funneling accusations against opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa...thus reminding us that the best friend of any scandal monger are the tools in the press who will print first and ask questions later.

6. Former Iraqi Trade Minister Abdul Falah Al-Sudani (Who Says We Didn't Bring U.S.-Style Democracy to Iraq Division?)

It's gotta make George Bush proud. In a page right out of American democracy (New Jersey, Louisiana or Illinois-style), yesterday, the former Iraqi Trade Minister tried to slip out of the country as an investigation centering on the disappearance of $39 million dollars, massive shipments of food  and that old favorite, obstruction of justice, closed in on him. He was foiled when the Iraqi police got the plane to Dubai he was on to turn around and return to Baghdad where Al-Sudani was taken directly to the slammer.  It's working, people, it's working! We can make the Middle East look like us.

7. Tie: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Polls of Surat Thani Thailand (Vote Buying Division)

Buying votes is the meat and potatoes of political corruption (as we shall soon see.) And so we have to honor those who have shown the most creativity in this regard. In Thailand, the brother of the Deputy Prime Minister and a colleague are accused of handing out towels printed with slogans as an inducement to elderly voters to cast their ballots for them. That's a novel twist. But the prize in this category goes to our old friend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has been attacked by his opponents for trying to buy votes through the use of shipments of potatoes to districts he wants to carry. This in turn has produced the best political chant of the year, crowds of anti-Mahmoud Iranians rolling out that old national trope, the little black dress of Iranian politics, with their call for "Death to Potatoes, Death to Potatoes!" 

8. Senator Roland Burris (Shameless Moron Division)

It is no small thing to even have the possibility of becoming the least distinguished U.S. Senator ever.  But only months into his tenure (which will almost certainly only be measurable in months), Illinois Senator Roland Burris has managed to achieve nothing for the people of Illinois but further embarrassment. His streak of misstatements on his interaction with Governor Rod Blagoevich prior to his selection for the Senate rivals any of the acts of truth-twisting every achieved in that upper chamber of the U.S. Congress. And almost certainly when Burris is gone...which will be soon either through resignation or when he loses election when his temporary term is up (he is as electable as Dick Cheney in Nancy Pelosi's district in San Francisco)...it is for these dubious achievements that he will be rightfully remember. 

9. The Sucker, er, Sultan of Brunei (Tables Turned Division)

You gotta love it when a political leader becomes the victim of a scam. It's a small victory for everyone.  But it is especially sweet when one of the world's richest men, known for his own history of beauty-queen-sex-slave scandals, is suckered out of 20 billion rupiahs by a team of Indonesian crooks who had the sand to call up the Sultan's adjutant and persuade him to send the money to fake bank accounts in order to help allegedly support political campaigns in Indonesia.  On one such call, one of them even pretended he was the President of Indonesia calling. The embarrassed sultan followed up the announcement with a trip to the current ASEAN Summit which is being held in Korea, a country where political scandal is a national tradition. (See final story below.)

10. The Late South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun (Memorial Division)

Maybe Roh Moo-hyun took a bribe. In fact, it looks like he did. Why else, in the midst of an investigation, would he go out behind his house and jump off a cliff, killing himself? Still, the popular ex-president, was not an anomaly in a country that may be the next lifetime honoree for the International Sleazestakes Hall of Fame given the fact that two of its military presidents ended up in jail and two of the sons of its first elected presidents joined them there. In fact, as noted in a good LA Times retrospective about Roh, Koreans like to joke that when North and South are reunified, the South will handle the economy but given the South's record on political matters, those will be left to their brother and sisters from north of the demilitarized zone. 

Additional nominees welcome...and being created by entrepreneurially minded political leaders worldwide every day.

TIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images