Americans love their country, yet we understand that election time often strains our friendships and even family relations. Also, we believe in free speech and the right to hold contrarian political views.
Still, 2024 has been a tough test and a rough ride for this nation. Most of us are sick and tired of trash-talking and political smear jobs. We wonder why we can’t be more civil and respectful with one another regardless of our differing political ideologies and competing proposed policies.
The story of the United States is an exceptional one. The American economy and its current pace of technological innovation are the envy of the world.
Our American elections should be a model for democratic republics throughout planet Earth. And we have made major strides in that direction. But, alas, we are not there yet.
We do not know at this writing, several days before Election Day 2024, who will be the next president of the United States. But here are a few things we do know:
About 80 million voters will cast their vote for former Republican president Donald Trump. About another 80 million voters will vote for the Democratic candidate, our present vice president, Kamala Harris. And perhaps as many as 82 million eligible American voters will not vote at all.
So whoever wins will only be winning one-third or less of eligible voters.
Here are a few things we need:
First, regardless of who wins the 2024 elections, we will need a period, or even a season, of national healing and unification. We will be a strong country and a strong people only if we respect one another and come together and make the compromises needed to achieve our common national aspirations.
We may hold differing political opinions about abortion, the war in Ukraine and immigration reforms, yet most of all we want America to be a prosperous and innovative country where everyone can find a good job, aspire to own or rent an appropriate home, and have freedoms and social lives that are fulfilling.
National leaders must set the tone and example. They must listen and bring out the best in all of us. They must urge us to come together, work together, and to find common ground to guide future actions.
Second, regardless of who wins the 2024 elections, Americans deserve a bipartisan spirit from everyone in our nation’s capital. We would hope that the new president will recruit advisers and Cabinet officials from both the opposition party and from political independents.
No political party has all the answers. Total one-party rule would violate the spirit of contemporary America.
Third, regardless of who wins the 2024 elections, our country needs to come together and more tightly secure all our borders. Deporting illegal immigrants who are drug dealers and gangsters makes sense. Mass deportations are not needed. Yet secure borders are a necessity, and Americans are unified on this issue of needing more secure borders.
There is clear bipartisan support for appropriate, sensible, and immediate initiatives to meet this challenge. We need more border security agents, more judges to decide immigration cases, and much tougher laws to punish those who bring illegal drugs into the country. And tough rules against those who come here illegally.
Fourth, regardless of who wins the 2024 elections, the American government must become more efficient and declare war on fiscal waste, bloat, cost overruns and sweetheart subsidies.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk volunteered to chair a commission to eliminate wasteful government spending. Trump approved this idea. We suggest that several major business leaders, like Mark Cuban and Bill Gates, who support Democrat Kamala Harris for president, join such a bipartisan national commission, whoever becomes president.
A top priority for a new national commission would be to find ways to stabilize and secure financially the integrity of our wobbly Social Security system. It should also be used to reduce our national budget deficit, which is both a domestic and a national security priority.
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Fifth, regardless of who wins the 2024 elections, we need to recommit our nation to a strengthened North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This U.S.-European alliance is crucial to our national defense. This has been the most effective and successful military alliance in modern world history. We need to work even harder, along bipartisan lines, to make it even more effective.
Sixth, regardless of who wins the 2024 elections, every leader in our government and in our private economic sector needs to step up efforts to combat the corrosive antisemitism that has surfaced in our country.
This should be done in conjunction with similar efforts to eliminate racism and anti-Asian prejudice.
We remain “a nation of immigrants.” We have come a long way in encouraging tolerance and respect for diversity. Yet we will be a stronger, more resilient nation if we can eradicate all prejudices and become a model for the rest of the world.
Seventh, regardless of who wins the 2024 elections, the economic innovation in the U.S. is the envy of the world. The Economist magazine just released a special report that argues that U.S. investment in technology, both private and public, is greatly outpacing the rest of the world.
High consumer confidence and impressive U.S. stock market returns also are very encouraging.
But regardless of who wins the presidency this Tuesday, we need to acknowledge that there is greater income inequality in the U.S. than in any other major rich country. Ninety percent of the wealth of the U.S. stock and bond market is owned by just 10% of our population.
Twenty-five percent of our population lives paycheck to paycheck. Sixty-two percent of likely young voters in a recent New York Times survey said they favored a major overhaul of our political and economic system.
The point is that, while the American economic story is an exceptional story, a large minority of Americans believe they are being left behind. They fear that the American dream of economic and social success is not a possibility for them.
The United States has made considerable progress at providing social safety nets for those who are economically challenged for whatever reason. But more needs to be done, and it must be done in the bipartisan way.
Eighth, regardless of who wins the election in 2024, the national government and leaders in the private sector must aggressively work on creating regulatory guardrails to prepare for the disruption and the particularly negative side effects of the artificial intelligence revolution.
People who do not understand the potential negative side effects of AI should read “Nexus,” the best-selling book by futurist philosopher Yuval Noah Harari. Any Democrat or Republican who fails to plan for the inevitable challenges posed by AI will be condemned by history.
Finally, we propose a national commission on American constitutionalism. It would tap the skills and experience of talented bipartisan leaders such as Liz Cheney, Nikki Haley, retired Justices Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy, Sen. Mitt Romney and retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig to revisit the U.S. Constitution and its strengths and deficiencies.
We Americans love our constitution, yet we need to think carefully about how it might be amended to strengthen it and our country for the next 250 years.
Our constitution has served us well, but it is not perfect. Any changes to it need to be carefully worked out and crafted to strengthen our republic for what we hope will be a long secure and prosperous future.
We have a much longer list, but this will have to do for today.
Finally, let us pray for our country — and for the wisdom, health and leadership of our nation.
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Publish date : 2024-11-02 19:00:00
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