The Second Presidential Debate: What I Wish They Said

It's an old adage that in the United States of America, anyone could be President, This has rarely been so clear as it has become after the first two Presidential debates, in which we are reminded that it's not hard to find a better Presidential candidate than either of the two current front-runners.

I didn't watch the second Presidential debate Sunday night... I was returning my young cousin to Fort Bragg after he had waited out Hurricane Matthew at my house. But I did listen to it in the car on my ride home from work today. Although I'm sure many Americans heard what they wanted to hear, I wasn't one of them. I was one of the ones shouting back at the recording. [transcript] [video]

So here, with no small bit of hubris, I'm sure, is how my "perfect candidate"[1] would have responded had he been there:

QUESTION (Patrice Brock): Thank you, and good evening. The last debate could have been rated as MA, mature audiences, per TV parental guidelines. Knowing that educators assign viewing the presidential debates as students’ homework, do you feel you’re modeling appropriate and positive behavior for today’s youth?

Just to shake things up, Patrice, I'd like to start by answering the question you actually asked instead of replacing it with irrelevant talking points. As you say, the last debate could have been rated for Mature Audiences only. I'm saddened to point out that the campaigns themselves have only gone downhill since. And what I'd like encourage you in the audience, as teachers, and parents, and guardians of impressionable young people to do is to not let this teaching moment pass. Our young people can recognize bad behavior, even when it's committed in public by "important" people.

What our students should be reminded of, Patrice, is the nature of our government. Something baked into our Constitution which we have forgotten for far too long is that our country was never designed to have rulers. It is as Abraham Lincoln re-asserted, a government "of the People, by the People, and for the People". Our elected officials are civil servants. Servants.  And while the President of the United States may set an example, the President does not set the standard. That standard is set by the People of the United States, and it is the responsibility of every elected civil servant... but most especially our judges, Congressmen, Vice President, and even the President... to live up to that standard.

[What followed was a long exchange about sex talk; deleted emails; and whatever misdeeds the Republican and Democrat could throw at each other. The answer to all of these is the same...]

I'll wait for a policy question. I'm sure my opponents have their hands full explaining their own questionable actions.

QUESTION (Ken Karpowicz): Thank you. Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, it is not affordable. Premiums have gone up. Deductibles have gone up. Copays have gone up. Prescriptions have gone up. And the coverage has gone down. What will you do to bring the cost down and make coverage better?

Increase competition. One of the biggest problems with the unfortunately named "Affordable Care Act" is precisely that it stifles competition, and the increased cost and reduced coverage is directly attributable to that. Insurance companies no longer provide the policies that you once preferred because they are prohibited from doing so by law. What we have proven is that lawmakers know exceptionally little about the insurance industry. And that is a sad state of affairs, because the insurance industry is one where costs and risks are analyzed in excruciating detail.

And now we have the bizarre situation where we have people paying premiums even higher than the deductible that can never reasonably be met by an even moderately healthy human being. In effect they're being told, "Pay for your healthcare out of pocket and throw even more money into the system for no return." It makes no economic sense even when you take a broader view. The incentive is then to avoid the system because you're going to pay for your treatment out of pocket, every time; and you can't afford to do that because you've already been bled dry by payroll deductions. So instead of even expensive care, many people actually receive no benefit themselves, even while they are forced to pay for others. It makes for a sicker nation, specifically among those who are most productive. We know that because it's happening.

COOPER: You’ve said you want to end Obamacare. You’ve also said you want to make coverage accessible for people with pre-existing conditions. How do you force insurance companies to do that if you’re no longer mandating that every American get insurance?

At the risk of sounding like a purist, there is a definitional difference between actual "insurance" and coverage for pre-existing conditions. It's clear, though, when you look at any other insurance. Imagine walking into an insurance agent's office and saying, "I have no homeowner's insurance, and my house has already burned down. I want to buy homeowner's insurance and I want you to pay off my prior losses, now." That's what pre-existing conditions are. It's immediately obvious that this is unfair to private insurance companies because it is not insurance. There is no system that avoids indigent care. The question is how we handle it.

Insurance isn't the only way to deal with such costs. One way to do it is with payment plans. Another way is to fund a corps of physicians who work a term of public service at flat salary in exchange for medical training specifically to address indigent care, or to encourage hospitals to fund such programs. Another way is with charitable funds or surcharges. And here I'll hold up as an example the 22 Shriner hospitals that deliver exceptional care to children without regard to their ability to pay. But we do ourselves no favors when we disallow competitive systems of delivery that drive the costs of care down, or insist that all patients be surgically made to fit the same Procrustean bed.

QUESTION (Gorbah Hamed): Hi. There are 3.3 million Muslims in the United States, and I’m one of them. You’ve mentioned working with Muslim nations, but with Islamophobia on the rise, how will you help people like me deal with the consequences of being labeled as a threat to the country after the election is over?

To start with, if I were elected President, you would not be labeled a threat after the election is over... not by your government, unless you were legitimately a threat. My administration would treat peaceful, law-abiding people as equal under the law. That said, we cannot be blind to the fact that although most Muslims are peaceful and kind, most terrorists are or claim to be Muslim. It's an unfortunate reality. So there are things that you can do to prevent being mis-labeled; one of which is to be vocal in your opposition to hatred and violence done in the name of Allah. Allowing more non-Muslims to see more Muslims as ambassadors of peace would help deflect those labels, and I would happily assist in providing a platform for such ambassadors.

QUESTION (Spencer Maass): Good evening. My question is, what specific tax provisions will you change to ensure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share in taxes?

To ensure all people pay their fair share, you need a fair tax code. And that means a simple one. Politicians like to pretend that loopholes are accidents, and they are not. They are written into the tax code. They are a combination of economic whips, prods, goads, and lures that are very deliberate means of encouraging people toward specific behaviors. The very intent of such legislation is to take advantage of the fact that people will choose to do the things that benefit them the most, tax-wise. And then when people actually do what they were prodded into doing, other politicians call the prods and lures "loopholes" and pretend with the very best acting ability that the people who did what they were prompted to do and follow the letter of the law are "tax cheats".

To the politicians who make such claims, if you can't keep up with the laws you wrote, there's no shame on the taxpayer. The shame is on you. I will urge Congress to adopt a simple and fair tax code. There are a number of approaches that could work better than the convoluted mess we have, and I look forward to opening a dialog with our lawmakers as to which ones best fit our country's needs. One thing that absolutely does not fit our needs, though, is this antiquated obsession with controlling our citizens' every action. This government needs to remember who's boss.

RADDATZ: The heart-breaking video of a 5-year-old Syrian boy named Omran sitting in an ambulance after being pulled from the rubble after an air strike in Aleppo focused the world’s attention on the horrors of the war in Syria, with 136 million views on Facebook alone. 

But there are much worse images coming out of Aleppo every day now, where in the past few weeks alone, 400 people have been killed, at least 100 of them children. Just days ago, the State Department called for a war crimes investigation of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and its ally, Russia, for their bombardment of Aleppo. 

So this next question comes through social media through Facebook. Diane from Pennsylvania asks, if you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? Isn’t it a lot like the Holocaust when the U.S. waited too long before we helped? 

While the property damage has been extensive, between 300 and 500 civilians have died in the city of Aleppo, counting both sides of the city. You do the math and tell me if it's "a lot like the Holocaust". I say this not to minimize the importance of any individual life, but to remind you that there are matters of scale, and that war is never "sanitary". Syria is in the middle of a multi-sided civil war. In principle, I do not favor interventionism to change the outcome of that war any more than I would have favored whole scale foreign intervention in our own.

However, there is a plain difference between a national policy of regime change and humanitarian assistance. Human beings have a moral obligation to aid the defenseless, if it is with their power. That does not mean that we necessarily have to bring those people here, or even remove them from their own homeland. We could, for instance, assist in the establishment and defense of neutral areas to which civilian refugees could be located.

Regarding Russian intervention, which I oppose, it's important for us to understand why the Russians are intervening, and what they hope to accomplish by their indiscriminate bombardment. Without that we can't effectively negotiate. The full scope of that would take us beyond my time limit, but remember that the al-Assad Syrian government is Russia's sole remaining ally in the Middle East. The Russian bombardment seems calculated to drive the non-jihadi and jihadi rebel forces together so as to leave no credible alternative to the pro-Russian Syrian government. Knowing this gives us a basis for an devising an outcome involving neither civilian casualties nor an escalation to war with Russia. But this is something that we have to negotiate... given the Russian veto power in the Security Council, the UN is powerless.

QUESTION (James Carter): My question is, do you believe you can be a devoted president to all the people in the United States?

Yes.

QUESTION (Beth Miller): Good evening. Perhaps the most important aspect of this election is the Supreme Court justice. What would you prioritize as the most important aspect of selecting a Supreme Court justice?

Any Justice I select will know, understand, and embrace the intended role of the Supreme Court, which is to ensure the Constitutionality of any law brought before it for review. It is not the role of the court to legislate from the bench or to opine on whether or not a law is a good idea. It's not their role to judge based on whether they would have passed it. It is not their role to undo the legislative will of the people based on any political agenda. The People of this country elect their Congress to enact legislation, and it is the role of those nine Justices to ensure that it is in compliance with the highest law of the land and nothing more.

QUESTION (Ken Bone): What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs, while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers?

We'll start by setting aside emotion to apply some common sense and solid science to the problem. Good policy is not made without engaging your head. And it happens very often that when people discuss energy policy, they blindly rule out anything that makes practical sense. Our energy production has to meet our demand, and there are finite limits to which we can reduce that demand. The lower limit remains prodigious. At the present it is beyond the means of wind and solar combined, so we must continue to rely on more conventional generation even as we employ alternatives where it makes sense. It does not necessarily follow that a change to the environment is a change for the worse; so I would push to use clean, effective sources of energy where practical, and these must include hydroelectric and safe nuclear power. In particular, most of the objections to nuclear power are based on obsolete arguments when faced with contemporary reactor technology, and I would encourage educating the public in that regard.

Our larger challenge lies not in the power plant, but on our roads, and for that we look to the expertise and innovation of our private sector. The rewards for success here are astronomical, and we as a capitalist society must understand the basic economics of innovation. We must understand the true purpose of patent laws as well as the purpose and benefit of the limitation of their scope; and we must not allow government over-regulation to stifle innovation by removing the market rewards that have historically propelled us to world domination in technological invention. The market incentives are naturally there; the government does not need to tax or print money to provide them. Instead, the government should get out from between the innovators and and those incentives.

QUESTION (Karl Becker): Good evening. My question to both of you is, regardless of the current rhetoric, would either of you name one positive thing that you respect in one another?

Neither Mr. Trump nor Mrs. Clinton shy away from the challenging and often embarrassing task of representing the views that they believe are in the country's best interests. We disagree on what those interests are, but their willingness to serve is noteworthy.

---

[1] Note that I make no attempt to represent the views of Gary Johnson or the Libertarian Party here... or any political party, for that matter. Though I support Johnson for President, there are a number of views on which we differ, and I've made no attempt to identify them prior to answering these questions. These are the answers of a hypothetical candidate I would be comfortable supporting.