Opinion columnist for the New York Times, Bret Stevens, offered some advice to the new US president, ahead of the announcement of the election results held yesterday, Tuesday.
At the beginning of his letter, he said, under the title “To Whom It May Concern,” without writing any name at the front, that some advice would serve the next president, whether he was… Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.
He addressed the president-elect, saying that his first piece of advice is that he owes his victory to his opponent as much, if not more, than he owes it to himself.
He added, “If Kamala Harris is chosen, she should be grateful that she does not have to face Nikki Haley – who withdrew at the last minute from Trump in the Republican primaries – or any other Republican.”
If Trump wins, he should feel grateful that he faced Harris, who did not have a great chance of being chosen as the Democratic Party’s nominee in the primaries after Joe Biden.
The writer directed his speech to the Republican candidate, saying, “Frankly, apart from your hard-line supporters, most Americans, if not most of them, do not like or trust you and will not easily give you the benefit of the doubt.”
The second piece of advice he gives to Trump if he wins is, “You do not have a mandate to bring about comprehensive change, even if your victory is greater than what opinion polls expected before the elections, or if you win a majority in Congress, or even if your analysts and thinkers praise you and consider you the savior of democracy…” .
He continued his advice, asking: “What happens to presidents who think they have a mandate when they do not have it? Look at Joe Biden, who promised the Americans that he would be a transitional president and then wanted to be another version of President Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1945), but he did not succeed.” With positive support since September 2021. Or look at George W. Bush Jr. after his re-election in 2004, when he promised comprehensive reforms on the issue of immigration and other social programs, but he did not achieve any of them, while he sank into the quagmire of Iraq and the financial crisis in 2008. .
His third piece of advice to Harris is that skeptics “fear that you are intellectually empty, culturally extreme, and unwilling to face the challenges of high office, especially those related to foreign policy.”
In Trump’s eyes, the fear is “not only of being a fascist at heart, but of ruling like a tyrant.”
In Trump’s view, the fear is “not just that you will be a fascist at heart, but that you will rule like a tyrant,” adding that Harris can alleviate these fears by significantly increasing the defense budget and choosing a Homeland Security secretary with a good reputation for security thinking. Perhaps Trump could appoint a Republican to this position, such as Senator Jim Lankford of Oklahoma, and reform criminal justice.
The fourth piece of advice is for the next president to work to establish an office for common sense reform, operating directly from the White House, with a legal limit of no more than 30 employees, to prevent it from turning into another permanent and bloated bureaucracy. It is also recommended to assign the task to either Philip K. Howard, author of “The Death of Common Sense,” or Cass Sunstein, who worked on regulatory reform under former President Barack Obama.
When it comes to foreign policy – which is the fifth piece of advice – the wisdom lies in seeking to banish nightmares more than trying to achieve dreams, by organizing priorities.
He went on to address the president-elect, “America’s security and your standing as leader of the free world will rise if you begin to confront the imminent threats” represented by China’s attempt to seize Taiwan, or Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb, or preventing Russia from invading Ukraine, “instead of wasting your energy in a futile attempt to achieve… Peace between Israel and the Palestinians, or the denuclearization of North Korea, or addressing the root causes of migration from Latin America.”
The sixth and final piece of advice is that the new president must know that what Americans want from their government, despite their demands for change, is not social transformation or moments full of excitement, but rather efficiency.
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