I think the first thing on the agenda should be the American economy. With so many large corporations outsourcing overseas, more and more Americans are losing their jobs. The gap between the "rich" and the "poor" is closing more and more, leading to the elimination of our middle class. The new president needs to find a way to create more jobs for Americans, especially during this time of rising food and fuel costs.
We spend $23.5bn on foreign assistance, much of which is mismanaged and corrupted, and not ending up in the hands of those to whom it's intended (i.e. the poor!). The next president needs to make a concerted effort to reform our broken foreign assistance programs. We should use PROVEN models of assistance that will provide for wealth accumulation for the poor from the bottom up -- things like development of microfinance, conditional cash transfer programs, and child development accounts.
On Day One, the President should announce that the United States will begin the biggest anti-poverty program in world history by lowering all trade barriers, giving the poorest people in the world a chance to find their comparative advantages in order to participate in the world economy.
