I've suggested previously that the next U.S. president will and should be a "foreign policy president," something we haven't seen since George H.W. Bush got the gold watch (in significant part for being that, when the Cold War was ending and voters no longer put much value on knowing where Crimea is and other such skills). We're now third in a series of U.S. presidents who came to the office with minimal or less foreign policy experience, and the world situation is becoming less and less forgiving of on-the-job training. Here's an interesting and relevant post about the next vice president, but I think the world will look troubled enough by 2016 that its condition will shape the top of the ticket as well.
UPDATE: "Putin Smashes Washington's Cocoon." Well worth reading, and for general background I recommend my own bubble/cocoon piece "Who's Kidding Whom?" I agree with the gist of what Walter Russell Mead and/or staff are saying there, but I'd add it's not purely a left-liberal bubble being burst. In recent years, we've seen the rise of a don't-call-us-isolationist wing of the Republican Party, epitomized by Rand Paul, and that wing is looking less and less like the future of anything anywhere.
