We are all just this screwed: Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and our muddled, perverted...

"Much as I favor Sanders as the gutsiest, pithiest presidential candidate to come along in many election cycles, I do not withdraw my objections. In the foreign policy sphere what we have in him is another case of underdevelopment. Once again, we are not ready to advance a full-dress alternative foreign policy, are we? Where is the intellectual infrastructure? Where are the position papers on all of the above-noted topics and many others? Why isn’t Sanders’ attaché case stuffed with them?

Note, one cannot say in this case that no one is doing the work. There are plenty of people—well, some—who are developing new thinking on American conduct abroad. Some of this work is exceptional, a building out to another kind of future. While many of us complain about the rain, as Ray McGovern, the principled ex-spook, would say, a few people are building arks.

But how many of us are tuned in and listening? How many of us get beyond complaints about the rain? Who among us forces new, bluntly unorthodox thinking into the conversation? As things stand, one can have all the excellent ideas for policy renovation one wants, but there is no one standing behind them. Once again, this problem is not specific to Sanders. His performance in the foreign policy space is but a symptom. It is our problem, everyone’s.

And we must face, post-Sanders, our bigger problem—the one that makes Bernie Sanders’ fate ours, too: We can see more clearly now what an immense amount needs to get done if America is to fix itself, but we are not ready, in 2016, to get much of it done. We have not equipped ourselves. Too much of the hard work has too long been neglected, and as the election in November will confirm, this leaves us spectators at the spectacle. This is Bernie Sanders’ bitterest lesson—even if he had no intention of teaching it."