19 Oct The Presidential Quest

“‘May you live in interesting times’ is a curse, and the next four years are likely to be the most interesting in human history.” – The Lonely Realist

Although running for President in 2024 looks like it would be fun – after all, you get to fly around the country on a private jet, give speeches to cheering crowds, and kiss babies –, the next four years will be daunting whether America’s next President is named Harris or Trump…, and don’t let Candidate rhetoric mislead you. Although historians will focus on the outcomes of the next Presidency, the sad reality is that the deck has been stacked against the next President by decades of American policy failures. “Interesting times” lie ahead…, and do not bode well!

At the domestic threshold is expiration of the tax cuts passed by the Trump Administration in 2017 – they will end on December 31, 2025, a date that is politely termed the “fiscal cliff.” If the next President wants to avoid a public lynching massive electoral losses in 2026, she/he very much will want to address America’s fiscal-tax cliff. Unless he/she has a clear majority in both houses of Congress, that will be a neat trick. In fact, it will be a neat trick even if she/he has such a majority. There are so many disparate constituencies pulling and pushing on members of Congress that amassing a like-minded tax majority will be a challenge. Resolution will require Presidential time and focus and a Congressional willingness to compromise, the latter a quality that has been lacking in American politics for decades. Whatever the composition of the 118^th Congress, Candidate Harris has promised to continue the 2017 gravy train tax cuts for those earning less than $400,000/yr., which The Economist reports would increase America’s deficit by ~$3.5 trillion over the next 10 years. Candidate Trump has promised to pile on more tax cuts and add tariff barriers, which The Economist reports would increase America’s deficit by ~$10 trillion over those 10 years. (The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget forecasts that Harris’s proposals would increase the deficit by $8.1 trillion over those 10 years and Trump’s proposals by $15.15 trillion.) Neither Candidate has expressed an interest in reducing America’s deficits, which will exceed an economically unacceptable 5% of GDP/yr. under both Candidates’ proposals (the US deficit today, at 7.2% of GDP, is the 3rd highest in history), or the ticking time bomb of America’s ~$36 trillion national debt. Such continuing fiscal profligacy is not likely to be maintainable over the next four years.

This is merely one of many budget pressures. Tax cuts and tariff policies, as well as proliferating Congressional earmarks, FEMA obligations, and voter-buyingfriendly entitlements, necessarily will constrain America’s defense spending at a time of WWIII increasing geopolitical conflict. American interests are being contested in the Middle East, Western Europe, and the South and East China Seas (as well as in South America and Africa). Can America’s defense spending rise to those challenges? Or will America continue falling behind the Axis of the Sanctioned in its efforts to maintain a semblance of Pax Americana and American military and economic advantage? Among other things, the next President will be compelled to make historic decisions regarding Ukraine and Russia. Will she/he walk away from America’s NATO commitments and leave Europe to confront Vladimir Putin, or will he/she commit to further support for Volodymyr Zelensky and the defense of Western European Ukrainian sovereignty? Neither Candidate has made her/his position clear. What is clear, however, is that the financial and geopolitical cost of inaction will be high.

The next President also will have to decide whether Iran will have a future nuclear future and what Israel’s place in the world will be. Will he/she continue America’s passive financial support for Israel’s continued existence? Doing so will have long-term budgetary consequences. Will she/he instead deepen America’s involvement in the Middle East’s Forever Wars by directly confronting Iran? That would have greater short-term budgetary consequences and would demonstrate a commitment to a Reaganesque internationalist policy. Or will he/she instead choose isolationism and appeasement, which would have a lower financial cost and a higher geopolitical one? How will the next President juggle those competing fiscal and geopolitical considerations…, along with all the others?

America’s defense establishment soon will be compelled to address an inevitable Chinese invasion blockade of Taiwan, which Chairman Xi has promised no later than 2027. With the Communist Party experiencing strong economic and social headwinds, the next President should anticipate immediate Chinese nationalist pressures. China already is committed to spending heavily on military hardware and technology as well as nuclear weaponry and delivery systems. This at a time of continuing Chinese hacking of American technology, its increasing espionage activities, its sponsorship of TikTok, and its successful monopolization of strategic goods and materials (including via its mercantilist solar and electric-vehicle industries).

Domestically, both Candidates have committed to immigration reform…, but any reform will be elusive without both Senate and House majorities. The sad fact is that America has not meaningfully reformed its immigration laws since 1990, with the consequence (as The Economist has pointed out) that America’s “creaking, inflexible system is ill-equipped to find the workers America needs.” Candidate Trump has promised to deport millions of illegals (and, according to the Department of Homeland Security, there are at least 11 million of them) and broadly restrict asylum applications. Congress cannot fund more than token deportations and will find it challenging to fund any. Candidate Harris wants Congress to adopt the bipartisan bill that supporters of Candidate Trump quashed in May. That, too, appears unlikely. Whither immigration policy?

The foregoing frames national security and domestic challenges that closely resemble those of the 1930s, as well as a fiscal cliff that both Presidential Candidates have ignored, all of which threaten America, American values and Americans’ standard of living. These realities have been glossed over by simplistic partisan sloganeering. The drumbeat of 2024 is that Democrats are Progressive woke-socialists and Republicans are MAGA Trump-worshipping fascists, exalting Party (with a capital “P”) over country (with a small “c”). Neither Candidate and neither Candidate’s supporters have presented Americans with serious policies designed to address actual challenges facing America. “While the ayatollahs applaud student encampments on American campuses, Vladimir Putin is delighted to see President Volodymyr Zelensky’s trip to an arms-manufacturing plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, provoke partisan outrage, threatening future aid.” The next President will be pressed from every quarter. Voters want to believe that their Candidate is up to the task, although the insubstantiality of 2024’s campaign confetti evidences the contrary…, leading The Lonely Realist to lament on the loneliness of his focus on reality.

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Finally (from a good friend)