GOVERNING PRIORITIES Advice for America’s President, for 2021 and Beyond YUVAL LEVIN, EDITOR AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE GOVERNING PRIORITIES Advice for America’s President, for 2021 and Beyond YUVAL LEVIN, EDITOR AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE © 2020 by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from the Ameri- can Enterprise Institute except in the case of brief quotations embodied in news articles, critical articles, or reviews. The views expressed in the pub- lications of the American Enterprise Institute are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, advisory panels, officers, or trustees of AEI. American Enterprise Institute 1789 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 www.aei.org Printed in the United States of America Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 1. Restore America’s Promise as the Crisis Subsides ................................. 5 Nicholas Eberstadt 2. Take On America’s Five Key National Security Challenges .............. 27 Kori Schake 3. Strengthen the Post-Pandemic Economy .............................................. 37 Michael R. Strain 4. Confront the Debt Challenge Realistically ........................................... 47 James C. Capretta 5. Rethink Tax Policy to Address the Long-Term Fiscal Imbalance ..... 59 Alan D. Viard 6. Revitalize America’s Cities ...................................................................... 70 Ryan Streeter 7. Make the 2020s a Decade of Reform ..................................................... 88 Yuval Levin 8. Promote Steady Administration ........................................................... 103 Adam J. White 9. “Remember the Answers” to Misguided Radicalism ......................... 116 Matthew Continetti About the Authors .............................................................................................. 136 iii Introduction YUVAL LEVIN his book is a guide for governing in an exceptionally complicated Tmoment for America. That moment is defined by not only the diffi- culties of confronting a global pandemic and its aftermath but also a range of long-standing predicaments that have tended to complicate each other. The thicket of our governing challenges is now so dense that the definition and prioritization of problems has become difficult, and our leaders clearly need some help. The president of the United States is not the only leader who requires such help. But setting priorities for policymaking at the national level often does fall to the government’s chief executive, and the beginning of a presidential term in any case offers a convenient occasion to focus on the nation’s needs. And yet, the intense polarization that has characterized our 21st-century politics and the bitterly acrimonious culture war that has increasingly deformed our national life make it difficult to rise to that occasion. When we think about the country’s challenges, we are all tempted to think in partisan terms. To resist that temptation, even if only a little, we at the American Enter- prise Institute have given the authors of this volume a peculiar task. We asked nine of our scholars (though we easily could have called on dozens more) to offer guidance in their broad areas of expertise that the president might find useful in 2021 and beyond. But we intentionally asked them to do this while the presidential election of 2020 whirls in the background, and so before we know who will win it. They therefore have to offer advice not to Donald Trump or Joe Biden but to America’s president. They have to consider not the objectives of a Republican or a Democrat but the needs of the nation. 1 2 GOVERNING PRIORITIES This book is thus an experiment in shooting straight in crooked times. Its purpose is not to ignore the political culture and partisan atmosphere of this moment in our politics; no serious policy analysis or proposal for reform could ignore those. Rather, the point is precisely to take full account of those but correct for them as far as possible, to try to filter out the clatter and think about those problems that will need to be taken up by whoever is elected president. One consequence of that aspiration for clarity is that this book does not seek to touch on every policy domain or offer advice to each government agency or cabinet department. In the course of their work, our scholars engage with essentially every policy challenge that confronts our public offi- cials. They have views they are eager to share on all those fronts. But in this collection, by stepping back a little from the general din, we aim to emphasize a few key issues that should be particularly high on the country’s agenda. Another consequence—indeed, a particular benefit—of this approach is that it can enable us to take stock of how changing circumstances might require changes in the two parties’ long-standing to-do lists. The era we are living through is a time of reconsideration and, in some respects, even political realignment. It would be easy to miss that by viewing our politics through familiar ideological lenses alone. This period is raising some ques- tions about the value of those very lenses, so it may be best judged apart from them—in ways that leave some room for reprioritizing core aims, if also for reaffirming core values. All of that, however, is not to say that this volume’s authors do not begin with their own ideals and priorities. The American Enterprise Institute has no party line, but its scholars share a broad disposition. We begin from a love of our country and an appreciation of the need to cherish what has made it lovely. We value America’s capacity to foster the preconditions for human flourishing—strong families and communities, social order and equal justice under law, dignity embodied in honest work and active citi- zenship, prosperity made possible by competition and innovation, com- passion reified in the commitment to opportunity for all, and security realized through a robust advancement of America’s ideals and a tenacious defense of its interests. These core principles leave a lot of room for debate about particular policy courses, and AEI scholars sometimes disagree with one another. INTRODUCTION 3 That much is evident even in this collection. But they always offer honest advice, rooted in those core ideals and informed by deep expertise and experience. That is what we seek to make available here to the president sworn into office in 2021. For all these reasons, the proposals in this book do not involve easy measures sure to make the president popular. They point to those chal- lenges that will be hardest to confront but irresponsible to avoid. As you will see from both the subjects taken up and the mode in which they are tackled, these chapters aim to help the president think deeply about not only the means of government but also its aims. Our politics now has real trouble coming to terms with the American pub- lic’s actual concerns and priorities and real difficulty conceiving of policy tools by which public-spirited objectives might be best achieved. This is not a new problem, of course. In Federalist 62, James Madison identified it as perennial: A good government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained. Some governments are deficient in both these qualities; most governments are deficient in the first. I scruple not to assert, that in American governments too little attention has been paid to the last. The federal Constitution avoids this error; and what merits particular notice, it provides for the last in a mode which increases the security for the first. This remains true of our Constitution, but it is not always true of our government in practice. In this moment, our public officials need help satisfying both of Madison’s criteria for good government. Our hope is to offer some assistance in both regards. The job of the president of the United States is never easy. The bur- dens of responsibility laid on that office are unmatched in the world. But the potential to do good is very great. To make the most of that potential requires careful prioritization, balanced judgment, foresight, and politi- cal courage. How the executive might cultivate and deploy these in the months and years to come is the subject of each chapter that follows and this volume as a whole. 1 Restore America’s Promise as the Crisis Subsides NICHOLAS EBERSTADT merica is in the midst of its greatest crisis since World War II. At this A writing, we cannot yet confidently tell when the COVID-19 pandemic will end. More than half a year into its US outbreak, new infections are still out of control. Since it is a novel coronavirus—SARS-CoV-2 is a pathogen with which humanity has no previous experience—this immense threat is also by definition a fundamentally unfamiliar one. When—and whether— we can create a safe and effective vaccine and how many waves of conta- gion will roll through our country before COVID-19 subsides are at present unanswerable questions. Under the terrible pressure of the pandemic (whose ration of public suffering, we must add, has been greater than necessary due to policy bungling), social, economic, and political fault lines in our country have been painfully exposed and enflamed. We endure today not only a socio- economic emergency but also an explosion of radicalized anger that has spilled into the streets. These current troubles have historical roots: prob- lems long festering and long ignored. Washington has responded to the pandemic with an unprecedented peacetime mobilization of national resources. Already Congress has authorized trillions of dollars in “stimulus” spending to support distressed businesses and households, and the Federal Reserve System has commit- ted additional trillions—with no end yet in sight.