Dear President-elect __________,
This column must publish before Tuesday’s results are known, so I’ll have to fill in your name later. Sorry — but no worries. Because, whether it’s Harris or Trump, some pieces of advice will serve either of you equally well.
First point: You owe your victory as much, if not more, to your opponent than you do to yourself. If it’s President-elect Harris, be grateful you didn’t have to face Nikki Haley or some other Republican who was not quite so verbally flatulent and politically toxic as Donald Trump. If it’s President-elect Trump, thank your lucky stars that Kamala Harris was, after Joe Biden, probably the least electable potential Democratic contender. You’d have been toast if your opponent had been Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania or Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
Put bluntly, outside of your hard-core supporters, many if not most Americans dislike or distrust you and will not easily give you the benefit of the doubt. Which raises the second point: Unlike Barack Obama in 2008, Ronald Reagan in 1980 or Lyndon Johnson in 1964, you do not have a mandate for sweeping change. Even if your victory is larger than the pre-election polls anticipated. Even if you win majorities in Congress. Even if friendly pundits hail you as the Savior of Democracy or the Vanquisher of the Woke or some other quasi-messianic moniker.
What happens to presidents who think they have mandates when they don’t? Look at Joe Biden, who promised Americans he’d be a transitional president and then decided to take a run at being the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt. He hasn’t had a positive approval rating since September 2021. Or look at George W. Bush after his 2004 re-election, promising sweeping immigration and entitlement reform: He achieved neither, while his legacy sank in the mire of the insurgency of Iraq, the debacle of Hurricane Katrina and ultimately the financial crisis of 2008.
What, then, can you do with your victory? A third point: Start with something that will pleasantly surprise your skeptics. Believe in the power of political grace to earn political capital.
For Harris, skeptics worry you’re intellectually vacuous, culturally radical and unready for the challenges of high office, especially when it comes to foreign policy. For Trump, the fear is that you’re not just a fascist at heart but that you’ll rule as a despot. Those fears could be eased by Harris through a sharp increase in the defense budget and the choice of a homeland security secretary with a reputation for security-mindedness, perhaps even a Republican like Senator Jim Lankford of Oklahoma; by Trump, by extending your legacy of criminal-sentencing reform and with a nonpartisan attorney general in the mold of Gerald Ford’s choice of the University of Chicago president Ed Levi.
(Yeah, I know. But hope springs eternal.)
A fourth thing: Establish an Office of Common Sense Reform, working directly from the White House, with a statutory limit of no more than 30 employees to prevent it from becoming yet another permanent and oversize bureaucracy. Appoint either Philip K. Howard, author of “The Death of Common Sense,” or Cass Sunstein, who worked on regulatory reform for Obama, as its first director. Give it the mandate to cut through all the permitting requirements, duplicative regulations and other bureaucratic haggles that keep even modest infrastructure projects from ever being completed on time or on budget.
If Harris wants to build three million new homes, or Trump wants to finish his border wall, they’ll need this.
When it comes to foreign policy, be guided by a simple distinction: It is wiser to seek to keep nightmares at bay than to try to make dreams come true. So, to my fifth point, organize your priorities accordingly. What do you need to do to prevent China from trying to seize Taiwan? Or Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb? Or Russia from overrunning Ukraine and then turning its sights on its next victim? America’s security, and your standing as leader of the free world, will rise if you get straight to work on these looming threats rather than expending yourself in another Sisyphean attempt to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace, denuclearize North Korea or address the root causes of Latin American migration.
Sixth: Believe in the power of smaller but more visible achievements. President Biden prides himself on the passage of the mammoth Inflation Reduction Act: How many Americans can recall a single major element in it or name a benefit that has accrued to them personally from its passage? But people can get their heads around legislative achievements like the bipartisan 1994 Crime Bill that put 100,000 police officers on the beat — and contributed to long-lasting improvements in public safety.
Last, despite demands for “change,” know that what Americans mostly want from the government is neither social transformation nor high drama; it’s competence. Don’t be afraid, as Harry Truman wasn’t, to surround yourself with advisers who, in wisdom and experience, stand taller than you. Don’t be reluctant, as George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton weren’t, to find common ground with political opponents. And keep in mind Reagan’s favorite maxim: “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”
No limit to what a woman can do, either.
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