The symptoms of the Great American Demise are all around me. In the end, when we have finally reached full-blown third-world status and our grandkids compete in contests for best rat trap, we’ll be able to look back and know we did it entirely to ourselves. One beautiful example of how we managed to blow a massive US lead in wealth and technology can be found in one Dan Samuel Senor, a man too wrong to fail.

Senor is a textbook example of all that is Evil and Foul in the US, a full-blown neoconservative capo groomed to succeed by way of epic failure from his earliest professional years. But I only picked him because he happens to be in my face right now. As I write this, our so-called liberal cable news channel, MSNBC, has their morning VJ, Joe Scarborough, carrying water for the failures of recent years on my TV. Current guest on screen, Dan Senor.

Senor cruised into the big leagues at a young age after an obligatory stint at Harvard business school and spent most of the 1990s working for a Republican Senator in New York state followed by a brief foray as an advisor to the Carlyle Group. That’s a privately held venture capital equity firm, sort of the Bain Capital of choice for petro sheiks, international arms smugglers, and drug kingpins the world over who want to profit from leveraged buyouts and influence peddling in the noble fields of US defense pork barrel spending, Asian sweatshops, and middle east oil conquests.

The hiring of Dan Senor also caught the attention of Rachel Maddow, who talked about how disturbing it is that Romney is reassembling George W. Bush's foreign policy team on her show this Thursday night. More on that below the fold.

MADDOW: Everyday, between now and Election Day in November, you`re going to hear something like the Romney campaign today did blah, blah, blah. Or the Obama campaign today did blah, blah, blah.

It`s not just things done or said by the candidate. It`s actually news made by the campaign in some way.

But there`s a practical, logistical nuts and bolts way that campaigns do stuff that makes news. And it`s a little bit weird when you are participating in it.

I mean, covering the campaign firsthand right now pretty much means doing this everyday.

(AUDIO CLIP PLAYS)

MADDOW: Is the what it was like to dial into the Romney campaign conference call today. This is the actual sound from the start of that conference call.

This is what covering the campaign is like now. Yes, I do think that is the version of "Candle in the Wind" by Elton John.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

OPERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining the Obama`s failed foreign policy conference call. Your host for today, Amanda Henneberg (ph) will now begin.

AMANDA HENNEBERG, ROMNEY CAMPAIGN: Hey, guys. It`s Amanda from the campaign. Thanks so much for getting on the call. I have with me here Alex Wong (ph), part of our policy shop. And additionally, we have Dan Senor on the line, Ambassador Pierre Prosper and Secretary John Layman (ph).

I am going to turn it over to Dan Senor.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MADDOW: That`s what it`s like. That`s what it`s like. They do these calls almost everyday and everybody calls in and listens to what they have to say. That`s how we report what the campaign said today.

You know, once upon a time, I guess it was faxing. Every once in a while, it still is the candidate himself or herself talking in the back of the bus or plane with reporters. But mostly, it`s like this on speaker phone.

And the reason -- what did they call this one again today? What do they call it?

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

OPERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining the Obama`s failed foreign policy conference call. Your host for today, Amanda Henneberg (ph) will now begin.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MADDOW: Obama`s failed foreign policy conference call today is because they`re doing something they call bracketing. Whatever the Obama administration does something, the Romney campaign plans a response thing on the same subject.

So, Vice President Biden laying out the Obama campaign`s narrative on foreign policy today, and then the Romney conference call is about giving the Romney campaign counter narrative on that same subject, on foreign policy.

Here was the problem today though other than the "Candle in the Wind" thing. The Obama campaign/Vice President Biden narrative on the foreign policy today turns out is exactly the same as the supposed counter- narrative from the Romney campaign.

Here`s what the vice president said today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Governor Romney, I think, is counting on collective amnesia of the American people. Americans know -- Americans know that we can`t go back to the future.

Back to a foreign policy that would have America go it alone, shout to the world, you`re either with us or against us. Lash out first and ask the hard questions later, if they get asked at all.

Governor Romney`s national security policies, in our view, would return us to a past we`ve worked so hard to move beyond.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: In other words, the charge from the Obama-Biden campaign is that Mitt Romney has George W. Bush foreign policy agenda. He would take us back to George W. Bush`s foreign policy.

Now, Romney has 24 announced advisors on foreign policy. Seventeen of the 24 are George W. Bush administration foreign policy people. And the Obama campaign sees that as a vulnerability. That was their narrative today, hitting Mitt Romney for being advised by all these George W. Bush people.

The counter-narrative from the Romney campaign on that?

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

HENNEBERG: We have Dan Senor on the line, Ambassador Pierre Prosper and Secretary John Layman.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MADDOW: Two of the three advisors the Romney campaign put out to counter the narrative that Mr. Romney is going to have a George W. Bush foreign policy, two of those Romney advisers, two of the three, were George W. Bush for foreign policy guys, Dan Senor and Pierre Prosper.

Dan Senor was the guy in charge of telling everybody that the Iraq war was awesome throughout 2003 and 2004. And Pierre Prosper was appointed by George W. Bush to be America`s ambassador to the world on war crime issues while the Bush administration was setting up secret prisons and torturing people all over the world.

But least you believe that Mitt Romney`s foreign policy will be anything like George Bush`s foreign policy let these George W. Bush administration officials who are advising Mitt Romney assure you that that is definitely not the case.