Longtime Washington insider David Rothkopf looks back on his forty year career in Washington, D.C., and asks a basic question: did Washington fail to lead? He argues that political expedience may have come at the expense of actually addressing real problems that have continued to fester in both domestic and foreign policy, with devastating societal and economic consequences. He also offers some ideas about what we can do now to improve things, and how we might avoid ending up here again.