3) REFORM HEALTHCARE, FOR REAL

With already unaffordable healthcare premiums set to rise 25% or more, it’s no wonder the future of Obamacare became a hot-button campaign issue this election. The American people don’t care what you call it. They want better, and more personalized care, at lower prices. The Kaiser Family Foundation polled Americans last month on a list of 13 healthcare priorities. Repealing Obamacare finished 10^th at 37%. Twice as many people (74%) said their highest priority was making sure that high-cost drugs for chronic conditions, such as hepatitis, mental illness, and cancer, are affordable to those who need them. Some 63% called for government action to lower prescription drug prices, 57% wanted to force health plans to have sufficient provider networks of doctors and hospitals, and 54% asked the government to protect citizens from overcharges when examined by a doctor not covered by their plan.

4) REBALANCE THE ECONOMIC WHEELS

Two totally different candidates — a billionaire real estate developer who plays the tax code like a fiddle and a socialist keen on remaking America into Norway — successfully channeled the frustration and rage of Americans left behind economically in the new century. Michael Spence, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, summed up the sentiment succinctly: “When countries go down the path of non-inclusive growth patterns, it usually results in disrespect for expertise, disillusionment with the political system and shared cultural values, and even greater social fragmentation and polarization.” Much to Bernie Sanders’s dismay, Robin Hood will not be the nation’s next treasury secretary, polarization isn’t going away soon, and lost industrial jobs are not returning. But if there are two areas that both liberal and conservative economists agree on, it’s on the quickest ways to ramp up the economy: Invest heavily in infrastructure and spur entrepreneurship by reducing occupational licensing and other regulatory barriers. These are achievable, early first-term goals.

5) REBUILD TRUST IN THE LAW

“The government cannot make us get along,” said Tim Scott (R-SC), the Senate’s lone black member, when he took to the Senate floor after this summer’s deadly violence between police and blacks in Baton Rouge, St. Paul, and Dallas. Scott is correct, but what the next president can do is to temper the flames instead of feeding them with incendiary narratives. America needs data, not emotional arguments, to factually determine how many officers are using excessive force, and whether they apply such force more often to blacks than whites. The FBI say only 3% of America’s 18,000 police departments report use of force data to the public. “Comprehensive, reliable, and timely data is the lynchpin of efforts to rebuild trust between citizens and police,” says Eric Liu, executive director of Bayes Impact, a nonprofit that encourages the use of data to address pressing public interest problems.

6) REINVENT TRANSPARENCY

President Obama has given hundreds of interviews in his eight years in office, but the majority have been one-on-ones with friendly journalists, who gave him free rein to pontificate. Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry Truman routinely met once or twice a week with White House reporters, off the record. The format enabled the president to speak openly, yet allowed the press the opportunity to probe and to build a relationship with the chief executive. The biggest media squawk in Campaign 2016 was that access to the candidates was tightly controlled and often denied. Campaign managers said they had no choice, given the proliferation of media. Can the clock be rolled back, considering we live in an age in which politicians can go over the talking heads directly to the American people via social media? It’s worth a try. Social media mainly parrots what’s being reported. Give a beefed-up White House press corps more access and real-time information, and they might content themselves with reporting more fact and less fantasy.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 634)