Four entities, with the power to move the world constructively, have contributed to the potential for its greatest danger. They are, in no particular order of power:

-President Barack Obama
-Senate President Mitch McConnell
-Speaker of the House Boehner
-American Media

Obama

Despite his many assertions of American commitment to Israel, the President has made it clear he cannot handle a difficult client in the Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who is a hand-full.

The stubbornness of foreign leaders has not stood in the President’s way in making “nice” with some rough characters.

*In 2009, the Obama administration went to bat to squash a civil suit filed against Saudi Arabia by survivors and family members of victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and has shown sincere warmth toward its now departed powerful king;

*For some months, he engaged in personal diplomacy with Iran over nuclear concerns, certainly an urgent matter, but he has yet to express himself very strongly since the noted allegations of Irani involvement in the bombing of a Jewish community Center in Argentina that left almost 100 dead via an alleged deal with the nation’s president whose former chief prosecutor was found dead under suspicious circumstances only a few days ago…and who was prepared to attest to the deal with Iran hours later.

And, of course, there were his inexcusable failures to lend his personal prestige to events following the Charlie Hebdo assassinations or the Jewish market killings.

McConnell and Boehner

Along with his “junior partner” John Boehner, McConnell always had the authority and experience to go beyond the partisanship of the “opposition.” On the one hand, the opposition is expected to oppose the other party on major policies. Perhaps it is naïve to expect that idealism will also drive someone of such power to quietly see beyond politics to the wider needs of the nation domestically and internationally. Unfortunately, the same processes that put someone into Senate leadership are the elements of his party and those who finance its work.

Media

The media's failure to focus on the dangers and political threats faced by the US on today's interconnected globe. The world is in turmoil in dimensions, many times greater than those preceding World War II.

The reasons are both simple and complex. Steeped in depression in the 1930’s, Americans thought themselves isolated from the horrors growing in Europe and Asia, struggling to stay even in the tough economy.

They were unaware that their own Congressional leaders overlooked the fact major American industrialists were actually engaged with the Axis powers for huge profit, some even propagandizing within the US for those elements. Details of such egregious realities should be studied but are far too immense for this discussion.

What is most pertinent now is the danger that deeply routed partisanship from all sides interferes so deeply with the need for Americans and the world to see our leadership worthy of national and international respect in such times.

Now, with not only the Middle East in the worst disarray in memory, our standing vastly diminished there and elsewhere and the revelation that terrorists have found ways to attack nations without the need for conventional armies only by destabilizing key areas, populations and throwing governments and media into total messes, how will our President and his contentious Congress find the way to act maturely and effectively?

After all, it was only a decade ago when the Republicans told then Senator Obama, “We only have one President at a time.”

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Joseph Honick is president of GMA International in Bainbridge Island, Wash.