Forget Lipstick and Pigs: What is this Election Really About?

A new intelligence report, discussed yesterday by Thomas Fingar, the top analyst in the American intelligence community, outlines the challenges the next president will face. In the midst of debates about lipstick on pigs and other such nonsense, it’s important to consider what some of these challenges may be.

According to an article from today’s Washington Post about the report, the next President will lead an era through which American dominance and the significance of military power will diminish, as will the roles of international institutions. This shift, which comes as a result of globalization, and, as the article points out, is described by Fareed Zakaria as not the "decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else."

Climate change, energy security, and immigration policies will also figure heavily into the challenges the next president will face:

The predicted shift toward a less U.S.-centric world will come at a time when the planet is facing a growing environmental crisis, caused largely by climate change, Fingar said. By 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large swaths of the globe, from northern China to the Horn of Africa.
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Floods and droughts will trigger mass migrations and political upheaval in many parts of the developing world. But among industrialized states, declining birthrates will create new economic stresses as populations become grayer. In China, Japan and Europe, the ratio of working adults to seniors "begins to approach one to three," he said.

The United States will fare better than many other industrial powers, in part because it is relatively more open to immigration. Newcomers will inject into the U.S. economy a vitality that will be absent in much of Europe and Japan -- countries that are "on a good day, highly chauvinistic," he said.

"We are just about alone in terms of the highly developed countries that will continue to have demographic growth sufficient to ensure continued economic growth," Fingar said.

Dealing with the effects of globalization, confronting climate change, and formulating a rational immigration policy have been hallmarks of NDN’s economic narrative. For more on how to confront these challenges and make globalization work for all Americans, visit NDN’s Globalization Initiative page, and visit the Hispanic Strategy Center’s page for more on NDN’s immigration work, including a brand new poll.

On Morning Joe today, MSNBC’s panel got into some of these issues, and how they do (or don't) play into the state of the election. Take a look: