Last time, we covered the death of libertarianism due to the nature of this current financial crisis. This time, I want to briefly discuss the suddenly very real possibility that the next American president will no longer be the leader of the free world, but one among the many voices which define it.

This is the question explored by a Christian Science Monitor article early last week. It is a question of American power and the challenges to it - a challenge posed, interestingly not by a foreign militant or a domestic defeatist, but by a faith, charismatic ally in the form of French president Nicholas Sarkozy.

For those of you not familiar with Sarkozy, he is an interesting study in the changing face of European politics and of the fundamental difference between American and European democracies. Mr. Sarkozy is a second generation Hungarian immigrant born to a father escaping persecution from the Red Army. He started in politics at a young age, being elected to city council at age 22. He has been thrice married, currently married to the interesting and beautiful Carla Bruni, changed his political affiliation quite a few times, and in his election he defeated an opponent from the socialist party.

Yes, French politics is very different from that of their trans-Atlantic counterparts. Yet, despite their leftist leanings, it is the French leader who is ascendent and the American leadership that is on the decline. The current financial crisis only exacerbated the situation of American decline - American approval were falling world wide before it, and the universal response after the "financial 9/11" wasn't an outpouring of support, but a wide condemnation of the American market system from all sectors of the world from Europe to Russia to Brazil to China.

Part of this is because the American brand is at an all time low, thanks to the bungling of leadership of George W. Bush, but we must examine also why people have abandoned the American cause. Part of this is because the leadership deficit that even Americans admit that we are experiencing. Nowhere was this more clear than during the financial crisis. While President Bush wavered as he promised he would never do and the house Republicans clung foolishly to their ideological roots, the leaders of Europe were the ones to call for immediate action while identifying the cause of the problem.

Sarkozy has quickly adopted a bully pulpit for Europe and its traditionally more measured approach to markets. In Strasbourg Tuesday, speaking to the European Parliament, he stated that Europe "must carry the idea of a new foundation of global capitalism. What happened [with toxic assets and derivatives that created a credit crisis] was a treason of the values of capitalism," he said. "The market economy itself is not called into question."

France moved this week to lend 10.5 billion euros ($14.12 billion) to six banks to boost their capital reserves.(Christian Science Monitor)

The lesson of the financial crisis was a simple one for the majority of the world - the long mocked Europeans were decisive while the supposedly non-blinking Americans not only blinked, they shut their eyes completely to the realities of the situation. This financial crisis has made the world see the deficit in American leadership and the flawed nature of American political dialogue. The next president must do his best to act decisively and correctly and he will have to rebuild the coalitions that Americans have taken for granted. This is why we need a man who speaks not of "A League of Democracies" but of a united world - a world that subscribes to Jeffersonian ideals of de Facto recognition and not selective stratification of the world into them and us. This is the lesson we must learn from our failures of leadership these past months, and the idea of a world without American leadership might soon be a reality if we make the wrong choice on November 4th.