Presidential Priorities

To the Editor: 
The next president will surely have a full plate.
It is often said that presidential priority one is protecting the nation against enemies foreign and domestic. With the rise of Islamic terrorism and other bad actors taking advantage of America’s weakened global position, who could argue with that?
Russia and China will continue to push the envelope as our position diminishes. As worrisome are Iran and North Korea whose nuclear ambitions are fueled by religious extremism and hatred for the west with the former, and paranoia and irresponsibility with the latter.
While protecting the nation is necessarily priority one it is not sufficient.
There is a companion first priority: robust economic growth (at least 3.5 to 4 percent per year) essential to fund our military and intelligence support functions, not to mention the myriad of social issues. Thus the president needs to adopt policies which will encourage and enable robust economic growth.
We can’t continue to use debt to fund stuff with $20 trillion worth of such baggage already in place. The tax and regulatory burdens on business have to be lessened and a climate that encourages entrepreneurship and growth created. Government’s role has to be one of an enabler, not activist in picking and choosing which enterprises to support.
The president needs to enable a free market capitalist economy to flourish instead of stifling it with regulatory excess and taxes. One of the hallmarks of the United States has been its creative energy and accomplishments which are being thwarted by too much government and a heavy-handed political agenda.