When President Obama was sworn in as President in January 2009, he was confronted with a severely damaged economy, resulting from the sudden economic collapse in the waning days of the Bush Administration. As a result the Obama administration was forced to expend a vast amount of political capital and in excess of two years of his first term simply trying to salvage our smoldering economy and trying to repair the damage the collapse had caused. This caused many of his preelection priorities to be deferred, delayed or abandoned, due to the need to expend time, money and personnel on that effort.
If a Democrat wins the next election, they will inherit an infrastructure of governance that has been severely damaged by the actions/inactions and policies of the current administration — AND the largest yearly budget deficit in our history (approaching a deficit of a Trillion dollars per year).
Government agencies and institutions, big and small, both national and international have been weakened, neglected or misdirected under the Trump Administration, and/or suffered major brain drains and loss of expertise and historical knowledge. From the foundational institutions like the FBI, Homeland Security and State Department, to the essential domestic governance agencies like the Agriculture Dept., FDA and EPA, to major international institutions like NATO, to major treaties and trade agreements, the infrastructure of governing has been hollowed out, abandoned, intentionally disbursed and de-populated, with major brain drains having resulted from the assault on traditional instruments of government and governmental led scientific research.
The question is: What are your specific plans and priorities for repairing, reconstituting or restructuring this essential infrastructure that you will need to govern effectively, and how are you going to re-recruit, or find the often narrowly specialized expertise to fill the many vacancies, that allows our government to function effectively? How will you fund this infrastructural rebuild and how will you re-prioritize your own agenda to deal with the realities of having to expend a large amount of time, money and political capital to get this essential job done?
What experience, training/education or expertise do you have that will allow you to effectively reconstitute an infrastructure that is composed of dozens and dozens of agencies, employing over a million people nationwide, as well as the international organizations that look to us for leadership?