What I Want in My Next President

Principle. That is it, plain old principle.

The type of principle that lays out the objectives, some practical policies that could achieve the stated objectives and the expressed willingness to debate matters with both sides of the aisle in order to pass laws aimed at achieving the objectives.

Here are sample objectives: control immigration into America, repatriating the trillions of dollars American corporations have overseas, eradicating ISIS, identifying terrorists before they strike us here at home, creating more middle class jobs, assuring equal opportunities to all Americans, improving our healthcare system, assuring a habitable environment, assuring that justice is truly blind.

Other example objectives that are not as high on my priority are: eliminating income inequality, reducing greenhouse gasses, affirmative action, political correctness. These are low on my priority because they are sub-objectives of some of the objectives laid out in the paragraph above.

I want a candidate to say that my objective is to get American corporations to bring back the trillions of dollars they currently have stashed overseas because they do not want to pay taxes on that money. My plan to do this, and to prevent large American corporations from relocating their corporate headquarters overseas, is to change our tax policy to be more in-line with the rest of the developed world. Why would companies bring their money back here if we tax them more than any other country in the world? To make up for the lost revenue resulting from the lower tax rate, I propose that the following corporate tax exemptions be eliminated (enter appropriate items here). I do not expect that the elimination of these exemptions will fully offset the lost revenue from reduced tax rates. However, the status quo will result in no tax revenue as the money will stay overseas. Furthermore, these trillions of dollars when brought back to America can be used by corporations to distribute as dividends to its shareholders and/or to invest in research and development and/or infrastructure investments that the company needs to further grow its business. I plan to layout the outline of my plan for discussions with the leaders of both parties so that we can together build upon my ideas and most likely come up with a better plan. But, the underlying principle is to repatriate the money to America so it can be used to help stimulate our economy.

I would also like to hear a candidate say that my objective is to control immigration into America. This means controlling our borders once and for all, establishing controls on those who enter our nation on valid visas but never leave, and it means vetting all immigrants and visitors before they reach our soil. This will require an expenditure of $X billion and I propose that we pay for this by charging visa fees, immigration fees, and other methods (hopefully, the candidate has more ideas than I do). We will not build a wall across the Mexican border but we will construct a double fence with sensors to detect possible invaders and sufficient border patrol personnel to be able to intercept these invaders. I plan to layout the outline of my plan for discussions with the leaders of both parties so that we can together build upon my ideas and most likely come up with a better plan. But, the underlying principle is to keep America safe by stopping the flow of illegal immigration, and assuring that those we allow to enter America do not intend to harm us.

I really want to hear: I am going to eradicate ISIS and any other terrorists group that controls territory and/or assets that can be used to plan, direct or conduct strikes against American interests’ particular strikes against the homeland and our citizens.  I plan to do this with special operations forces and our Arab and NATO partners. We and our NATO partners will provide several thousand special operation forces and air support for the mission. Our Arab allies will provide infantry ground forces to establish control of the territory seized. ISIS is reported to have upwards of 40,000 soldiers and they control several hundred square miles of territory. That means that those 40,000 soldiers are spread out over a large swath of land including several towns. We will attack one town at a time and do it slowly. By progressing slowly, we will allow ISIS reinforcements from other towns to attempt to join the fight. And when they travel across open roads to get to where we are fighting, we will hit them with air strikes. We will conduct this operation one town at a time and when we move on from one town to the next, we will leave our Arab allies to establish a temporary military led government until the local country can govern themselves. Any assets we seize from ISIS during this operation such as oil fields will be used to generate revenue to pay for a portion of our continuing eradication of ISIS. I will have our generals work with our allies to develop such plans and I will hold discussions with the leaders of both parties so that we can together build upon my ideas and most likely come up with a better plan. But, the underlying principle is to eradicate ISIS.

The above three examples are what I want to see in our political discourse. Principles of what we should achieve. Discussions of both the principles and policies to achieve these principles and a stated willingness to compromise. I can accept some red lines on the objectives, but I cannot accept a politician that will not compromise on the how-to-get-there details.

I do not want pages and pages of policy wonk. I want some good ideas to gauge the candidates understanding of the issues but I do not want a fully developed pan on a specific objective. I want political discourse from both sides of America to participate so that everybody can buy-in to the plan.

This is the America I remember when I was a much younger man. It is the America I want back.