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There is something puzzling about America these days from our sense of who we are to our place on this planet.

Once again the wisdom and leadership we desperately need to find our way seems lost in a chorus of political cacophony and that we are forwarding a "day of reckoning" to our children and grandchildren.

That is saddening, especially when I look at my 9-month-old grandson, River, and ask, "What can I do that would create the opportunity for him to know a good life?"

I have seen enough of this election with 24/7 media coverage and analysis to conclude this: Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent in the coming weeks by two political parties neither of whose presidential candidates will make a difference in this dilemma we face.

Their eyes are more on the prize of political power than shaking us from this perplexing truth — that we are the problem.

A few days ago, I came across a Bill Moyers Journal interview of Andrew Bacevich whose words, thoughts and insights brought clarity to what has troubled me.

Who is Bacevich?

He is a quiet, thoughtful man, a West Point graduate, retired Army colonel, veteran of the Vietnam War, professor of international relations at Boston University, author and public thinker who has the ear of both liberal and conservative politicians. He is also a father who lost a son to the war in Iraq, which seems not to have made him bitter, but perhaps ponderous, of the big questions facing our country.

His book, "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism," makes this statement:

"The pursuit of freedom, as defined in an age of consumerism, has induced a condition of dependence on imported goods, on imported oil, and on credit. The chief desire of the American people is that nothing should disrupt their access to these goods, that oil, and that credit. The chief aim of the U.S. government is to satisfy that desire, which it does in part through the distribution of largesse here at home, and in part through the pursuit of imperial ambitions abroad."

He notes that since the days of President Jimmy Carter we have made the Persian Gulf the center of our foreign policy. And, we have paid .5 percent of our population to be our professional army, sent to these "little countries" on two, three or four tours at great personal duress to keep our lives from being disrupted.

Bacevich does not dismiss the war on terror. But, he does contrast it to World War II where President Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced the American people that the war was essential to our national security and that we, the American people, would be called upon to make sacrifices. It was, he notes, a national effort.

Bacevich is disturbed that we have become what historian Charles Maier describes as an "empire of consumption." We have an economic system that is in debt to the Chinese. Every year we have a negative trade balance of roughly $800 billion, which is a way of quantifying how much more we buy from others than we sell to them.

We have had answers to the energy problem for 30 to 40 years, but except for a brief period when energy prices spiked during the Carter years, we have failed to take any action. In fact, when Carter spelled out the problem of dependency on oil we derided him with what became known as the "Malaise Speech."

Bacevich comments that the Carter speech was "powerful" because he said that our dependence on oil posed a looming threat to the country. And that if we did not act immediately we were headed down a path in which not only would we become increasingly dependent upon foreign oil, but we would have opted for a false model of freedom. A freedom of materialism, of self-indulgence, of collective recklessness.

We opted instead for a different message — the "morning in America" of President Ronald Reagan, which promised us that we did not have to sacrifice; we could have more.

Bacevich, himself a conservative, concludes that all the presidents, Democrats and Republicans, over the past 40 years-plus have been committed to the proposition that our way of life in this age of consumerism must be sustained — at all cost.

He says that the notion that we are to remake the world in our image is a fool's errand; that there is nothing in the Constitution that ever imagined that we would embark upon an effort to transform the greater Middle East, a region of the world that incorporates 1.4 billion people.

Rather, he believes that the framers of the Constitution were primarily concerned with focusing on the way we live here, the way we order our affairs. To try to ensure that as individuals we can have an opportunity to pursue our differing definitions of freedom, but also so that, as a community, we could live together in some kind of harmony. And that future generations would be able to share in those same opportunities.

So, our problems are not what they seem to be. But, they are of our making, and they are solvable. It is just that every four years we have an opportunity to find our way, to avoid passing this "day of reckoning" to our children and grandchildren; and, there is little that suggests we recognize the moment that is upon us.

Chuck Lyons is chief executive officer of The Gazette.