For the 47th U.S. president, 11 herculean labours lie ahead

There was, in a shocking and unforgettable evening, a glimpse of an American political fixture in sad, piteous decline. There were, twice, assassination attempts on a presidential candidate. There was, for a month, the agonizing process, conducted in public and in tactful private meetings, of persuading a lion of American politics to abandon a dream he had cultivated for a lifetime. There was, in an instant, the coronation of a nominee by a desperate, despairing party in sudden need of a standard-bearer. There was, in the course of a frenzied fortnight, the ascendancy of that fresh candidate, Kamala Harris, who in time would accomplish what no one had been able to achieve: unsettle Donald Trump in a public debate.
Also there were indictments, promiscuous blasts of profanity, a blizzard of contradictory polls, some US$3-billion in television and digital advertisements, charges and countercharges, thrusts and parries, red states nudging into purple territory, blue states leaning the other way, and then the final appeals before the vote.
No matter who wins, one thing will be true: the remarkable size of the task that faces the next White House, or what historians often have called the “glorious burden”. Here are some of the elements that already are on – or should be on – the agenda of the leader who will become the 47th president.
A Gallup Poll conducted this fall found that 90 per cent of Americans believed that the economy would be an “extremely” or “very” important influence on their vote.
The inflation rate (2.4 per cent) and interest rates (the Fed in September set the target federal funds interest rate to a range of 4.75 per cent to 5 per cent) have been the customary measures of the economy in the 2020s. Inflation has decreased measurably but has not been stanched; the costs of food and fuel rose 3.3 per cent over the past 12 months, and anguished memories of price hikes persist.
No president’s reputation can escape the vicissitudes of the economy, even though presidents cannot fully control the course or fate of the economy. But they have to try, and the next one must.
These are grouped together here because they both come under the purview of the powerful House ways and means committee, where changes in each of these matters must originate and where the ultimate composition of the House of Representatives will be of enormous significance.
The party that controls the House will also control this body, and will either have a veto over, or be the starting point for, any tax or trade measure for which the new president will advocate – a matter of grave importance for Canadians, by the way.
There will be debates over whether to increase the federal income tax on high-income Americans, part of the wrangling over how extensively, if at all, the tax law that Congress passed in Mr. Trump’s presidency will be retained.
One top question: Should the current cap be retained on how much of their state and local taxes Americans can deduct from their income as they prepare their federal tax forms? There also will be a debate over whether to make interest on automobile loans tax deductible – and whether tips, which comprise a large portion of many workers’ incomes, should be exempt from taxation.
No issue has been more divisive in the United States in the 21st century than immigration – so much so that three out of five Americans identified immigration as “very important” to their vote, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Currently, immigrants make up nearly 14 per cent of the country’s population, just under the historical national high of 14.8 per cent, which was reached in 1890. Those immigrants and their American-born children account for more than a quarter of the entire population of the United States.
By far the largest source of migrants is Mexico, which accounts for about a quarter of those entering the country. At the heart of the campaign debate were the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally and the many thousands currently seeking to enter the United States either legally or illegally. If there is broad agreement that control of the country’s borders is an essential element of national sovereignty, and ultimately of national security, then swift, decisive and effective action is required.
The next president must address this question with urgency – and the next administration must recognize the multiple dimensions of it, which include dealing with the often-ignored but massive group of those who have overstayed their visas (a group larger than those who have crossed the border illegally); the huge backlog (more than 4 million) of those seeking family- and employer-related immigrant visas; and the humanitarian issue of those seeking asylum.
The twin hurricanes that ravaged Florida in recent months, combined with continued fires in Western states, have served to underline the importance of the climate-change issue. The next president cannot turn a blind eye to pressure to address this matter, which has enormous economic and cultural implications. One way or another, the big US$391-billion Inflation Reduction Act, which was the biggest climate measure in history, will be affected.
This issue, which has religious as well as social implications and has been part of American politics for six decades, will not be settled by the election results. Right now, as a result of the Supreme Court ruling in the 2022 Dobbs case, the question is a matter for the states. But there still will be pressure in Washington to take the principle of Roe v. Wade and enact it in law. Settling the issue, at least temporarily, will not settle the passion surrounding it, nor keep it out of the courts.
This is a philosophical issue that has geopolitical, economic and cultural implications. Neither of the two major-party candidates addressed in even broad terms the important question of what role a mature democracy with the most powerful military and largest economy in the history of the world will play in global affairs in the third decade of the new century – and beyond.
The implications involve, but are not confined to, the future of NATO and other bilateral and multilateral defence agreements that the United States sponsored after the Second World War and maintained in the eight decades that followed. At stake is whether the United States plays a leading, activist role in the world or whether, by either major steps or by small, incremental steps, the reigning superpower retreats from the role played by predecessor presidents – especially Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush – in world affairs and global financial matters.
This question affects the American role in Ukraine. But it is not confined to that. It spills beyond Europe to Asia and Latin America, where longstanding multilateral security alliances have been in place for decades, which also has implications for Canada.
No one is pleased with Joe Biden’s record on the Gaza war; even Democrats consider the President’s policy on the conflict his greatest foreign-policy failure, according to a survey released this fall by the Institute for Global Affairs. A separate poll, taken in the spring by the Institute of Politics at Harvard, found that more than three out of four respondents under 30 disapprove of the Biden Middle East policy. The Gaza war will be nearly 16 months old by Inauguration Day. The new president must have a new direction ready by then.
Another philosophical issue from which so much flows, this is one of the signature questions in American life, dating from the Constitution, which delegated some roles to the central government, reserved some for the states, and provided for concurrent roles that both levels of government could play.
The 19th-century Republicans embraced a strong federal government, but the 20th and early-21st-century Republicans have advocated for a far smaller role for government. Meanwhile, the Democrats, once the small-government party, have been the party of an activist, engaged government since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, which began in 1933.
This is one of the those American questions that never is resolved fully. Republicans want a weak government in economic affairs, except perhaps when raising tariffs, and a powerful government in social issues, especially involving sexuality and gender. The Democrats, by contrast, want a strong government in the economy but a weak one in the bedroom and schoolyard. The next president will be no less inconsistent, but still must articulate, particularly in the first budget, due only weeks after Inauguration Day, a guiding philosophy.
Some 47 million households containing older adults are “financially struggling today or are at risk of falling into economic insecurity as they age,” according to the National Council on Aging. But the coming crisis may be even greater.
A National Institute on Retirement Security study puts the country’s “retirement savings deficit” at between US$6.8-trillion and $14-trillion. The group found that the average American working family has virtually no retirement savings and that 92 per cent of working households “do not meet conservative retirement savings targets for their age and income.” This is, to borrow a phrase from the American author James Baldwin, the fire next time.
This is related to the above issue. Americans often consider Social Security their retirement nest egg – even though the program, which began in the New Deal era, was considered a retirement supplement, not a retirement pension. The Social Security Administration announced a 2.5 per cent cost-of-living increase for next year, the smallest adjustment in four years, with the result that beginning in January, the average annual disbursement will reach US$23,712 a year, an increase of $288 annually over this year, a figure that is only US$2,468 over the 2024 federal poverty level for the 48 contiguous states. (As much as 85 per cent of Social Security benefits are taxable, though far less for those at lower income levels.)
But that’s before the Social Security crisis itself is considered. The Social Security trust fund reserves will be erased in 12 years, and at that point the program will depend on the contemporary influx of taxes, which are expected to cover only 76 per cent of benefits. This is an urgent issue for Congress and the next administration.
On the horizon: the same issues involving Medicare, the federal health care program for the aged, with a budget of about US$1-trillion.
Some 56 years ago, during his second presidential campaign, Richard Nixon traveled to Deshler, Ohio, where Vicki Cole, then in Grade 8, held aloft a hand-printed placard that said “Bring Us Together Again.” That became one of the leitmotifs of the 1968 Nixon campaign.
In many respects the two candidates in this year’s election represented two Americas, two different conceptions of politics, two separate views on the major issues. Those divisions will not end with the conclusion of the campaign.
But the great mystery following Election Day is whether the next president will speak in the kind of idiom that an earlier president, Abraham Lincoln, employed 164 years ago at a similar time of division, when the country was being torn apart:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
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