The upcoming election does not just have the national economy and welfare at stake, but also America's standing abroad. More international students are choosing to study elsewhere after learning how difficult it is to garner a student visa, fewer courts are citing American law for precedent, and in America, seven out of ten people think that the world doesn't respect us as much as they did a few years ago.

The Bush administration's diplomatic tactics have not always been positively recieved. At the United Nations, where the U.S. is the biggest debtor and uses its threat of veto power with impunity, other countries are increasingly hesitant to work wit the Americans. In fact, the former American representative to the U.N., John Bolton, was widely seen as aggressive, completely undiplomatic (He once said that, "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost ten stories today, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."), and a shining example of the low opinion the U.S. had for the organization. He was replaced by Zalmay Khalizad, an Afghan-born career diplomat, in 2007.

However, it will take a lot more than a new face at the United Nations to repair the bridges burned over the last eight years. Congress is pushing for U.N. reform and threatening to hold back more money if its demands are not met. The U.S. must be very careful; while it is true that the United Nations would be a paper tiger without membership and support of the United States, eight years have been a long time for other countries to reform their opinion on the weight and value of what a blustery and self-important U.S. has to say on matters of human rights, the spread of democracy, and the global economy.

The United States must start to make amends on the international stage or risk becoming irrelevant. Russia invaded Georgia and no one in the Security Council blinked. How will the U.S. react next time a democratically elected government is otherthrown?