Is the 2016 election a national embarrassment? Secretary of State John Kerry thinks so. 

“Everywhere I go, every leader I meet, they ask about what is happening in America," Kerry said in an interview with "Face the Nation" over the weekend. "They cannot believe it. It is fair to say that they're shocked. They don't know where it's taking the United States of America. It upsets people's sense of equilibrium about our steadiness, about our reliability. To some degree, I must say to you, some of the questions, the way they're posed to me, it's clear to me that what's happening is an embarrassment to our country.”

America has indeed had plenty of embarrassments over the years: Watergate and the Vietnam War, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, weapons of mass destruction, and the list goes on.

Does the 2016 election and the rise of Donald Trump now belong to that list? Or might it be the opposite — that his campaign, and the election process around it, are democracy working in its purest form? 

Nancy Soderberg, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Robert Mann, a communications professor at Louisiana State University and a columnist at The Times-Picayune, join The Takeaway to debate both perspectives. 

What do you think? Vote in our poll below.