DENVER — National Security Day kicked off in Denver Wednesday, with delegates looking forward to speeches from former Vice President Al Gore, former President Bill Clinton, and Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) vice presidential selection, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE), among others. Just outside the high-security zone around the Pepsi Center, CFR co-sponsored a roundtable discussion moderated by NBC News Special Correspondent Tom Brokaw on the international issues facing the United States.

Before an audience of 1,200 at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, a bipartisan panel including senior members of both Republican and Democratic administrations past traded ideas and offered prescriptions for the next president, who, according to panelist Richard Holbrooke, “inherits the worst opening day position in American history in international affairs.” The statement brought no dissent. Indeed, CFR President Richard N. Haass, who headed the State Department’s Policy Planning Council in the first term of President George W. Bush’s administration, noted that the next president’s troubles will not only stem from missteps by the current administration, but by important, tectonic shifts in the world since 9/11.”We‘ve got a gap between the problems of the world and the institutions needed to deal with them ,” Haass said, noting that the sheer number of problems – from ongoing wars, Russia’s aggressive move in the Caucasus, instability in the Middle East, energy supply and security issues, climate change, and a host of others – simply overwhelm the systems in place meant to help tackle them. Haass also said he was deeply concerned about polls showing Americans beginning to flirt with the idea of pulling back from global involvement.”Globalization at the end of the day isn’t a choice, it’s a reality. The world is not Las Vegas, what happens there won’t stay there … We have to deal with the world.”

Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman and senior fellow at the Humphrey Institute in Minnesota, cautioned that problems are not going to go away simply because America changes horses and adopts a less confrontational, more multilateral approach in the world.

“I think some Americans have developed an attitude that Obama’s going to be president, he’ll say the right words, and all of a sudden NATO will step up to the plate, the United Nations will step up to the plate,” Weber said. “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. ”

Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright, former Clinton administration secretary of state and a top Obama adviser, both argued that the election of a Republican – even Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), whom both praised as a good, qualified man – would send a devastating message to the world after the past eight years.

Referring to Barack Obama’s ability to draw an estimated 200,000 to a rally in Berlin earlier this summer, Holbrooke said: “What those Germans were saying is, “We still love America, we’re not anti American, but we’re anti-Bush.”