A Modest Presidential Election Year Platform

As we enter 2016, a year in which Americans will elect their forty-fourth president, the low theater of “debates” abound, and, on the eve of the Iowa Caucus, little seems clear (or, perhaps, what does seem clear is too disconcerting to acknowledge in published prose). Rather than hazard predictions or projections, with ten months until election day, now is a good time to begin to establish a common presidential platform by identifying issues and positions each candidate can adopt. In the same way that beginning with a presumption of liberty can lead to a more carefully articulated scope of governmental authority, beginning with a voter’s platform of presidential issues and positions can lead to a national and federal agenda driven more by the electorate than the candidates and parties. In that vein, this post proposes a working draft platform:

1. Declare Super Bowl Monday a national holiday
2. Open the books on extraterrestrial research
3. Declare the first Thursday and Friday of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament national holidays
4. Devise a plan for the regulation of environmental externalities
5. Reform federal law enforcement, including both conventional criminal law and immigration law
6. Address student-loan debt
7. Simplify the federal tax code
8. Clarify a reasonably transparent foreign policy that addresses both the surveillance and killing of civilians, both citizen and non-citizen
9. Initiate the updating of the federal domestic infrastructure (e.g., roads, bridges, and railroads)

Feel free to add your planks to the peoples’ platform or suggest revisions to the foregoing in the comment section below.

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