Although I loathe to pluck analogies from a Wes Anderson movie, I will point to one that doesn’t bear quite as oily a stain of hipster embrace. In his early film “Rushmore,” the protagonist is the star of his school and an extracurricular junkie. He’s in the French club, debate team, astronomy society, calligraphy, model United Nations — pretty much anything you can imagine you wouldn’t want to be a part of in high school, he’s found himself a place. However, there’s a slight problem. He’s failing academically.

Just like the overzealous Max in this irreverent movie, John McCain is biting off more than he can chew with a recent proposal for a new global club. Putting on the erudite mask of a Woodrow Wilson, John McCain recently called for the formation of a “League of Democracies” that can “harness the vast influence of more than 100 democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests.” Although it may sound bizarre that what essentially is a second United Nations is being proposed by a GOP presidential hopeful no less, this isn’t even the first time a 2008 candidate has called for the formation of this kind of organization. Back during his hackneyed presidential bid, even Mitt Romney called for the formation of a “National Summit of Nations” to “create a new partnership - a partnership for hope and prosperity.”

I suppose the most jaded reason behind McCain’s declaration is to dispel the criticism of him as an opportunistic political animal whose adherence to a cult of militarism will sour an electorate with war fatigue. Such a utopian proposal of global proportions will probably soften many to his cause and it is clear that he needs such a diversion, considering his focus on Iraq up until this point. Currently, Muqtada al-Sadr’s freeze on Madhi Army activities in Iraq (the real reason for the Surge’s success) appears to be thawing on the burner and McCain’s trumpeting of success and stability in the country will likely evaporate over the next few months as the country once again devolves into chaos. Thus, it seems a prudent political defense to create a vague program for global unity in the face of our own stumbling foreign policy.

I don’t expect McCain to lay out the logistics of such a League because I recognize it as a pipe dream that will likely be abandoned on November 5th. Aside from the obvious technical challenge of attracting a majority or even a sizable amount of democratic nations to our cause, there is the broader hurdle of collectivizing interests to a degree where such a League would work. What would be the prerequisites to join? If democracy is the only qualification, then how would the League reconcile the electioneering and human rights abuses of democracies like Russia? In fact, in the same speech McCain stated that Russia should be excluded from the G-8 on the basis of “nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks.” If the U.S. is to decide who can and will join such a compact, then how is the proposal any different from the bully pulpit foreign policy that has ruffled the UN, the EU, and even NATO allies during the Bush Administration?

Then there’s the question of conflict of interest with preexisting global compacts or defense agreements. What happens when the interests of NATO clash with the greater outlook of the League of Democracies? Will member countries of a political compact be forced to approve or support military actions of an independent military defense league of which they themselves are not a part of? Will they even have the authority to do so? In the event that hell freezes over and a majority of world democracies join McCain’s grand plan, then what happens to the United Nations? It seems to me that the leading democracies of the League might come into a conflict of interest with two of the five permanent nations on the UN Security Council, namely China and Russia. With so many clubs already in existence encompassing democratic nations, including the European Union, it seems that adding another merely adds to squabbles for authority.

Although the League would be a logistical nightmare, the main reason such a brash proposal would never get off the ground is that the time has passed when the world has looked to the U.S. to lead anything and everything tenuously connected with democracy. In his speech, McCain stressed that “The United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone. We must also lead by attracting others to our cause.” Admittedly, this is something that I’m sure every American would like to see after the ethical malaise of the interminable Bush administration. However, the nagging question is, what authority do we have any more to lead coalitions based on the righteousness of principle? Our economy is in the dumpster, we perpetuated a war that has been roundly criticized the world over, and America has been wracked with allegations of torture, war profiteering, corruption, and bullying over the past seven years. For a more prescient metaphor in this NCAA post-season, the U.S. has four fouls in the first half. Maybe it’s time for us to grab some bench for a while to cool our national head before proposing an even more gigantic “coalition of the willing.