Mr. Trump,
Congratulations on winning the electoral college. You have truly upended the political norms by winning this election and you must be congratulated for the victoryre. While you ran on a GOP ticket, it would not be a stretch to call you America's first Independent President. That is truly historic.
I would however also like to point out that even though you won the electoral college, you would end up losing the popular vote by more than 2.5 million votes. I bring that up not to delegitimize your victory but to highlight the feelings of majority of the country. This dichotomy puts additional burden on you to run an inclusive and conciliatory government in next four years and win over the majority of the country.
While many in media are rooting for your failure and some on the other extreme are rooting for retribution, I am hopeful you would live up to the essence of your campaign, that is to work tirelessly and "Make America Great Again". With legislative majorities in both Chambers of Congress and GOP dominance of Governorships and State Legislatures, you have a historic chance to cement your place as one of America's truly transformative Presidents. Not many have had that chance.
You have a choice to make - you can choose to use the next four years to enrich your family and further divide the country along partisan lines. Or, you can choose to bring change that many in the past have promised but failed to deliver.
America, as you mentioned in many of your campaign speeches, needs a new direction, a new sense of optimism and needs to renew its faith in its institutions and their capabilities. Here are some ideas for you to focus on early-on in your Presidency that can bring the nation together and "Make America Great Again."
Tax Reforms: Don't make cutting taxes your primary focus but focus instead on reforming the code. Everyone agrees American tax code is too long, too complex and ineffective. This is a subject where need of comprehensive reform is bipartisan. Vested interests have however ensured no comprehensive reform bill has been brought to a vote in a long while. As an outsider who is not influenced by lobbyists and donors interests, I urge you to make this your top priority. America is losing its corporations to overseas jurisdictions while individuals and small businesses struggle to keep pace with the overly complex code, spending billions on accountants' / lawyers' fees for compliance. We need a simple code that promotes domestic investment and ensures a fair, progressive distribution among various economic classes. Earned Income Credit is one of the best measures to fight poverty and I would urge consolidating various welfare payments into a simpler EIC style incentive.
Immigration Reforms: As a legal immigrant who is in line for citizenship soon, I have participated in the immigration debate with a lot of interest and exasperation. I hear you when you say we are a country of laws and those who entered the country illegally are automatically subject to deportation. But pls. look at the practical, human and economic aspect of the issue as well. People you plan to deport are here because the country needs them. Many industries, from construction to farming depend on them. They currently live in the shadows and are not able to contribute their fair share to the society, nor realize their true potential. For all the rhetoric surrounding this issue, I would urge you to look at the reform unveiled by the 'Gang of Eight' in 2013. Their plan was tough but fair. It eventually got nowhere but as an Independent, you may be able to rally both the Parties in a direction that is humane, practical and preserving of the great legacy of this country built by immigrants. There is a lot of anxiety among the immigrant community after your victory and some calming words of reassurance would go a great distance.
Electoral Reforms: You have won the election and you have one more election to win. You won this election on the back of a great reengineering of race based voter turnout strategy. You can aim to win the next one on the back of your record. Voter turnout in the US trails most developed economies. Reasons for that are not hard to find - most common being complex and different laws across states. A good start would be to build consensus across the country on declaring voting day as a national paid holiday. Next would be to ensure a common set of guiding principles agreed to by all states on early voting procedures, timelines and number and location of voting stations. Different states adopting different voting laws that are often driven by partisan objectives to suppress voting or turning out a specific set of voters defeat the very purpose of our democracy. A common set of principles to ensure higher voter turnout and easier, safer voting process would go a long way in ensuring faith in our democracy.
Bridge Income Inequality: During the campaign, your views on the condition of inner cities were largely driven by rhetoric but essence of your message was that our inner cities need help. To ensure help, I would urge you to do a deep dive into what makes our inner cities center of crime, poverty and drug addiction. Its decades of subtle discriminatory practices institutionalized across the country, lack of good schools and heavy handed policing that has killed upward social mobility from vast tracts of America. A genuine plan to revive inner city communities would focus on investments in schools, infrastructure, affordable housing and policing that's rooted in reformation, not extortion.
I can go on to list many other initiatives your Historic Presidency should focus on but I hope you get the gist. You ran a divisive campaign and won. That's alright because one needs to win an election before one can govern. You have now won and its time to govern. You have an opportunity to go down as one of the finest Presidents or as a greedy individual who could never see beyond his own petty self interests and squandered the opportunity of a lifetime. I sincerely wish you choose to be the former.
With sincere hopes,
A Concerned Resident.