With the final days before the Iowa Caucus counting down, Iowans are seeing a flurry of activity by the various candidates. Living across the river from Council Bluffs, I have been able to see two so far (Obama and Biden) and will see Chris Dodd tonight. Once I have seen Dodd I will report on my impressions of the three.

Meanwhile, let me comment on one aspect of a new President and Foreign Policy.

Have you ever driven past a business (might be a restaurant, a convenience store, or an apartment complex) with a sign out front that says, “Under New Management”? Of course you have. Have you ever thought about why that sign is there?

The presence of the sign has much more to accomplish besides just telling people there is someone new in charge. The sign is an admission and a plea. The sign admits to the people living in the area who have the potential to frequent that business that the people who were running that business weren’t doing a very good job. The plea is to give the business with its new business a second chance to earn people’s business. If you are the owner or manager of that business, then you are promising people who try your business again they will have a much better experience with you than they had before. If you’re going to make a promise like that, you had better be able to deliver.

In November this year, we are going to have the opportunity as a country to put out an “Under New Management” sign internationally. We want to be able to say to the world that they will have a better experience with us than they have had for the last 8 years. The world, I believe, is waiting for that opportunity.

In fact, I believe we will see little progress internationally in the coming year for two reasons. The first is that the world does not trust the President we have. The second is that the world does not wish to reward this President for his arrogance and incompetence with a foreign policy achievement.

What that means to us (particularly illustrated by yesterday’s assassination in Pakistan of former Prime Minister Bhutto) is how much we need a President who is capable of being their own Secretary of State with their experience in and vision for foreign relations.

One of the corollaries of Murphy’s Law is that before you do anything you have to do something else first. Until we are able to resolve the foreign relations issues we seem unable to resolve now, we will struggle to solve many of our domestic problems. Those problems include health care, immigration and the national debt. Solve our foreign relations problems and solutions and resources for our domestic problems will appear.