Madeleine Albright's specified audience for her new book Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership is a bit limited: less than a dozen and shrinking every week.

Her real audience, though, is those of us who will choose the next president. "I have felt for a long time that people haven't fully grasped the difficulty of the job of being president," said Albright.

The first woman to serve as secretary of state - and a graduate of Kent Denver School - says whoever is elected in November must avoid what she views as the missteps and needless confrontations of the past seven years.

"As my editor said, the context (of the book) is a little bit of a conceit: a vehicle for expressing views about how negatively I view the current administration. To be blunt, the world is a mess."

In advance of her appearance in Denver next week, she spoke with the Rocky from Iowa, where she was campaigning for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

What are the major issues with which the next president will have to deal?

I've identified a number of overarching trends: the rise of terrorism, the breakdown of the nonproliferation regime, unhappiness with or backlash of democracy, the negative impact of globalization in terms of inequality of rich and poor, and global warming. If the United States adopts a different modus operandi, I think that will help in terms of restoring our leadership. I think the way I would put it is that we might be the leading partner, the managing partner, with the emphasis on the noun.

You say that you feel more sadness than anger about the policies of the Bush administration. In what way?

This goes a little bit to my own background. I wasn't born in the United States. My family moved to Denver when I was 11. I love being an American. There is such a sense of pride in the power of the U.S. and the generosity of the U.S. and how we were viewed in the world. The sadness comes from our reputation being at the lowest point ever. We may be feared in some quarters, but we're not respected. I think we're better off when we're viewed in a different way. People come up to me and say this isn't an America they recognize, and this is a reason to be sad.

Some presidents inherited economic problems, some domestic strife and some war. But did 9/11 fundamentally change the mind- set a president must have?

I think it has affected it a lot. For the most part, we have found ourselves in a very enviable position, feeling secure behind two oceans and next to two friendly neighbors, which is really unique if you look at other major powers. Even though Pearl Harbor was a hit on America, the mentality was different. What ( 9/11) did is put the fear factor into American politics. It's different from the way FDR talked about the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

What sort of temptations would you caution the next president to resist?

The temptation to not have our reach be supported by our capabilities: not just that we have the best military in the world but of what the American people support. Where we have to be very careful is (thinking) that everybody in the world wants to be just like us. We have to understand what national interest other countries have. The temptation of a powerful country is being a bully, and we don't get anywhere by being a bully.

You write that America's right to lead is no longer widely accepted, that America has lost moral legitimacy and that the American brand needs a makeover. Can that right to lead be regained?

I don't think it will be easy. The next president will have the advantage of not being this president. Whoever the next president is will have the necessity of saying the code words "Abu Ghraib" and "Guantanamo" and that we don't behave that way anymore. Certain things have to be rectified. People will come up to me and say, "We want America to lead, it's just that the way it's been carried out has been wanting." It will be difficult because we're in a deep hole, and there are competing powers out there. The rise of Russia, China and India is something the next president is going to have to take into consideration. We require partnerships for the things we want to do.

What would you tell the next president about how to isolate al-Qaida?

First of all, to be clear about what al-Qaida is. It's a combination of various national terrorist organizations that feed on themselves and each other. There has to be a recognition that the genesis of some is different from others. I do say that when we were in office, there were questions about whether we should mention Osama bin Laden. I don't think we (should) keep making them all powerful, a mega-network in which everyone follows the dictates of one.

You write that the Bush administration's "failure in Iraq was predictable but not entirely inevitable." What would you advise the incoming president to do about Iraq?

Part of the problem is there's another year of the Bush administration, so there's no way to tell where the story will be left in January '09. Presuming it's not much different than it is now, the president has to make clear that we're leaving and there has to be political settlement embedded in a regional approach.

We can't have permanent bases, (there) has to be international support for training and support for the rebuilding of Iraq. We have to look at the entire region and use political and diplomatic tools.

The U.S. didn't start World War I or World War II, but we went in and turned it around when we saw it affected our national interest. Iraq affects Europe and the region even more than it does us. They have to be part of the solution.

Mark Wolf is host of RockyTalkLive.

Madeleine Albright

* What: Appears at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Tattered Cover LoDo, 1628 16th St.

* Cost: Free with the purchase of Albright's new book at any Tattered Cover location. Customers will be allowed one guest with each ticket.

* Information: 303-436-1070

Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership

* Nonfiction. By Madeleine Albright. Harper, $26.95. Grade: A-

Book in a nutshell: The world is a mess and the incoming president will need a very large shovel to dig out from what Albright argues are a litany of failures of the Bush administration.

She skewers the current occupant of the White House for everything from the deployment of the U.S. military to international economic leadership and budget policies that have "spun the gold of surpluses into the straw of record deficits."

Drawing upon her White House experience, Albright advises the incoming chief executive on how to assemble a staff, what tensions to expect and the role of the vice president (not a section Dick Cheney will read with a Hi-Liter in hand).

The overarching theme is the need for the U.S. to restore its leadership in a world that has grown much less willing to follow. The next president, she argues, needs to be more anticipatory and less reactive in dealing with both friends and foes.

Promoting democracy, she believes, is a good fit with anti- poverty efforts, but the new president "should be honest in stating that political liberty is no guarantee of prosperity and free elections are just the beginning of the democratic process."

Addressing the threat of nuclear proliferation, Albright urges the next president to "restore America's vocation as an architect of peace" and cautions against the temptation to withdraw internationally, which would allow other nations to fill the void.

Best tidbit: "The purpose of a national security policy is to make the world safer, not to legitimize mere anxiety as a pretext for war."

Pros: Albright blends history and analysis to make concise, compelling arguments about how the next president can restore America's world leadership, sprinkling it with dry, droll humor. To wit: "The men who wrote the Constitution did remarkably well, considering the absence of female guidance."

Her insights into how the internal politics of Russia, Japan, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other nations affect U.S. interests are particularly engaging.

Cons:The book is far longer on international issues than domestic ones, no surprise given Albright's history.

Final word:The incoming POTUS will get plenty of advice. Some of the best of it will mirror Albright's book.