Presidential priorities

What values should commander in chief hold most dear?

The Post and Courier

There's a big election coming up. Many observers are characterizing it as a turning point in American politics. They say the world is on the cusp of a huge economic transformation from an oil-based system to one that is sustainable. Some believe that the political influence of the religious right has ebbed. Some say the Republican ideal of small government has been radically subverted by the Bush administration.

Observers note the links between wars abroad, mass immigration globally, the shifting balance of power, the rise of Asia as an economic force, the degradation of the environment, the insidious effects of global poverty, the great wealth of multinational corporations, the threats of terrorism and nuclear proliferation and the common need to repair the world.

No single individual can solve these problems entirely. But of the leaders in the world, the U.S. president wields an extraordinary amount of influence.

The country faces a choice between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama, two candidates who differ from one another in dramatic ways. One will emerge victorious Nov. 4.

What are the values the next president should hold most dear? What ideals should be his guide? What kind of society should he promote? How should he prioritize his to-do list? How can he accomplish the most while serving the interests of all Americans?

First things first

For Jews, there are no deeds valued more than education and charity. We live in a country that has no shortage of opportunities to strengthen our public schools, reduce unemployment and help the underprivileged to get back on their feet. However, if there is one thing that Jewish history has taught me, it is that acts of persecution and aggression should never be considered isolated occurrences. After Tzarist Russian pogroms, Nazi Germany, Sept. 11 or repeated attacks against Israel (and now the looming nuclear threats of Iran), there is one foundation that must be concretized prior to effecting any change in America, and that is the safety and security of our nation.

Sure, there are many sexier topics that we can put on the top of our list, such as finding alternative fuel and energy sources. But let's not kid ourselves, there is a bigger picture. I look at it in the same way that airlines counterintuitively instruct you to "first put on your oxygen mask before helping others." Logic would tell you to first help those who cannot help themselves, and then you can take care of your own needs. However, the reality is that if you don't ensure your own safety, you very well may not be around to help other people.

The same holds true for the future of America. We can spend all day talking about and prioritizing Social Security, education, health care reform, taxes and same-sex marriages, but if we don't first protect and ensure the basic survival of our country, all of these hot topics will be terribly and tragically irrelevant. Only with a proper focus on homeland security can our economy thrive and our American way of life succeed. I wish I had the ability to promise my children that the events of 9/11 were only a one-time attack on U.S. soil. I don't think anyone can make such a promise.

I do not view myself as an alarmist, but simply a student of history, or what others might call a realist. I am certainly not in any way an advocate of war, but we cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the realities of the ever-growing terrorist world we live in.

Although education, social reform and charity are the guiding principles in my life, I think it is time that we shift some of the focus from trying to fix the rest of the world to investing in our future. By putting on our own proverbial oxygen mask first, and securing our own existence, we will be in a better position to bring about much-needed change.

Ari Sytner

Rabbi, Brith Sholom Beth Israel

...

The best idea

Inspire the need for individual sacrifice in the interest of the greater good for all of humankind. Or, stated more briefly, unselfishness — the best idea any of us ever had.

Alex Sanders

Former chief justice of the S.C. Court of Appeals, former president of the College of Charleston, chairman of the Charleston School of Law

...

Biblical advice

The next president of these United States will be challenged to secure our nation and protect our people. To be successful in meeting these challenges, I believe the next president must develop a comprehensive energy program that leads us to independence from foreign oil. He must make health care accessible and education affordable. And he must lay out a vision for the future that restores people's faith and confidence in our nation and each other.

On energy: He must have an energy policy that increases domestic production, enhances alternatives to oil and provides a smorgasbord of sources that includes wind, solar, biofuels, cellulosic ethanol and nuclear.

Health care: He should move immediately to ensure the coverage of all children under SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program), followed by the coverage of all senior citizens under Medicare. He should complete the health care coverage with a public/private program that is accessible to all.

Education: The next president should expand early childhood education, totally revamp "No Child Left Behind" and make postsecondary education more affordable. Something is very wrong when we are producing less than 100,000 engineers a year and India and China are producing 300,000 and 650,000, respectively.

The next president needs to value the American dream, which has become a nightmare for far too many. The next president ought to embrace the biblical admonition (Matthew 25:40), "Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me."

James E. Clyburn

U.S. representative

S.C.'s 6th District

...

Best and brightest

I feel very strongly that the most important value our next president has is intelligence. The next president must have an innate will to do good and an intellectual curiosity that helps him to understand as much about all the cultures in the world as possible.

With all the many challenges you mention, he must not only be strong, but tolerant of other views as well. He has to be able to build consensus and inspire others to work together for the good of mankind. Idealism is great, but he must be open to views that might be different from his own and have an intellectual curiosity to forge coalitions that help the common good of all mankind.

Great leaders inspire others by challenging them to think beyond their comfort zone. The world is a scary place at times, but we live on one small planet and it requires the future leaders to surround him or herself with the best and brightest from all walks of life. Our very future depends on intelligent decisionmaking that is only reached when the best and brightest put their heads together. Not for a political agenda but with the idea that each decision made holds mankind in the balance.

David Stahl

Music director, Charleston Symphony Orchestra

...

Turn the tide

Like most Americans, I want the next president to have the same values I have. When I speak of values, I dismiss the terms "Christian values" or "family values," but embrace the all-inclusive "human" values ideology. Our current corporate creed is failing most Americans. A president who believes all humans are of value will exhibit those values in his decisions. Such a president will slow the push to war — especially the unnecessary ones — and favor negotiation and communication.

We are disturbed that our troops are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not getting the needed care and support once home. We are dramatically impacted by high gas prices, unaffordable health insurance and CEOs making obscene wages while cutting jobs and moving more work overseas. At the same time, we elect officials who work in opposition to changing these crippling problems.

Reordering our current priorities toward valuing Americans and all human beings demands rethinking our fears and our arrogance. The next president can begin to reverse the current tide of corporate power and greed. The people of our great nation deserve it, and we deserve to hold more rights than any business or corporation.

A more unheard-of ideology is that all Americans deserve food, housing and all basic necessities that a human wage would provide.

I'm realistic enough to know that in today's climate these values cannot exist in the current presidential candidates. But I believe in the positive direction our next leader can take our nation. So we do what we haven't done, we vote for the candidate that comes the closest to promoting our interests, or our values.

Merrill Chapman

Community activist

...

Back to the best

Health, education, pride to work, strict firearms control.

Health will give the citizens peace of mind. The resentment because of social and racial differences will lessen, and citizens will do their job without distractions. Healthy workers and healthy students perform better and do not miss hours of work due to sickness.

Education will give each citizen dignity and the ability to work and compete in the labor market. Education will make everybody aware and caring for the environment. It can eliminate violence if physical education is increased in schools and educational institutions at all levels. Youngsters busy with homework and sports will have no time to get involved with gangs and firearms. It will eliminate misconceptions about the rest of the world and make each person think for themselves instead of being fed by a radio or TV.

Work: Citizens have to relearn to be proud of a job well-done rather than doing a job fast and without care with the only purpose of making money.

Arms control: A serious effort would eliminate violence and take arms away from the streets.

The value system has changed in the last 30 years or so. The rhetoric of the presidential candidates has to change from what citizens can get from them when they win the election to what citizens can do to help them get this country to be the best, as it used to be.

Never forget that "well-fed people are peaceful people."

Maria Cordova

Dentist, Hispanic advocate

...

What benefits all

Liberty. The freedom to live our lives in pursuit of our own happiness without interference was not simply one of the founding principles of this country, it was the founding principle. Protection of our freedoms forms the skeletal structure of our legal system through our Constitution, which is unique among nations.

The freedom to interact with others in our society by voluntary agreement — with no royalty or aristocracy to wield arbitrary power against us — and to prosper by our own efforts has made us the wealthiest nation on Earth.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety," said our wisest statesman, Benjamin Franklin. He warned us not only that giving up liberty to gain a measure of security is dangerous, but also that there is great temptation to do just that.

The U.S. president is neither a king nor an emperor with arbitrary power to run the country or to fix all the wrongs of the world. Yet the American people seem to attribute such power to him. They praise him or blame him for every trend in the economy, over which he has virtually no control. They see him increasingly as an all-powerful monarch.

In truth, the president by himself can do little about a sustainable oil supply, the rise of Asia as an economic force, the insidious effects of global poverty or the wealth of multinational corporations. The current president might already have done more than is necessary to counter the threat of terrorism by cutting too deeply into our freedoms and our privacy, promising the safety we crave, but perhaps at too high a price.

The next president should strive for certain values: keeping the nation safe in his role as commander in chief of the armed forces and, in his role as chief executive, maintaining the integrity of government, in part by protecting our freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, and in part by using the persuasive power of his office to induce Congress to abandon the delusion that it was elected to repair every problem of every constituent who can cast a vote.

But the president's highest value should be vigorous pursuit of the one and only thing that benefits every single one of us, without exception: protection of our freedom to live our lives for the benefit of ourselves, our loved ones, our friends, our neighbors and, ultimately, our nation. Liberty.

Dr. Robert Sade

MUSC heart surgeon and director of the Institute of Human Values in Health Care

...

Bridges and principles

The value the next president should hold most dear is judgment, having the ability to negotiate between two conflicting legitimate ends. When a president leads effectively, he will need to build a bridge to convince others to also give up something or make a sacrifice in order to put together the best combinations for the end result. The next president should be able to balance ideas with practicality without becoming an ideologue or selling out principle. The new president should be able to recruit and utilize the best people available to help build his team. That should certainly top his to-do list. Ronald Reagan had a sense of vision, but he knew how to compromise. He made people feel as though they were part of the solution and part of the team. The next president needs to remind Americans that they are, first and foremost, Americans, whether they are free-market, anti-trade, English speaking, or if they speak another language. Bringing the right people together to form the president's Cabinet and administration in order to provide vision is not just a value, it is an art. There are no hard-and-fast ways to do it. You cannot read about it, you have to learn it over time.

Andre Bauer

Lieutenant governor of South Carolina

...

Put ideas to test

Our next president needs to believe — really, truly believe — in the value of American democracy. Fairness and justice must be extended to all, even in times of hardship or crisis. The immense power that rests in the hands of the president must be exercised with responsibility.

In recent years, we've witnessed a drastic expansion in presidential power and a shocking disregard for some of the most basic American values. As Americans, we have always held ourselves to a higher standard. In a time before 9/11, one could hardly imagine an America that tortured its captives or held Kafkaesque courts where a prisoner could go years without seeing a lawyer. We didn't spy on our own citizens with illegal wiretaps or secret searches. Other nations might do these things, but not the United States.

Some Americans support these harsh measures in fighting terror. But as a democracy, we grapple with these difficult issues through our elected members of Congress, not a president who decides what's best, often in secret. A president who both disdains Constitutional rights and avoids the democratic process is indistinguishable from the kind of monarch from whom our Founding Fathers declared their independence.

If the next president values our American democracy, then we all have a voice in charting our future. With the threats facing our nation, the president must be a strong leader with his own clear ideas. Yet he must be willing to test those ideas against the oldest of American values — freedom, liberty and the Bill of Rights.

Graham Boyd

Interim executive director, ACLU South Carolina

Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postandcourier.com.