One Day to Make a Difference

Weekend Assignment #32: Congratulations! The American People have elected you President -- for one day. You are allowed to make one Executive Order. What is it? What can you do with your executive order? Why, anything you want (which is a little more power than the real President gets) I was going to make the proviso that your executive order can't run contrary to the US Constitution or any major Supreme Court decision in the last 30 years or so, but you know what? Most of you are grownups. I'm going to make the assumption that you can handle supreme executive power responsibly. So, no limits. You make the call.

Extra Credit: The Presidential Medal of Freedom is America's highest civilian honor. Give it to someone.

The Executive Order:

This is a tricky one, largely because of the "one day" part. There are few things that can be done in a single day that can't be canceled the next day. It would therefore have to be something that's either a) very quickly achieved, b) so popular that the next President, Congress etc. won't cancel it, or c) both.

I thought about mounting a tv show in which people of every political stripe work out their differences in a calm, well-moderated fashion. Any yelling or interrupting would result in the offender's time to speak being cut back in favor of the person interrupted or yelled at. But really, there are lots of political shows and right-vs.-left interviews out there for the watching, and so far it hasn't resulted in any consensus. Of course, it doesn't help that many of these shows are predicated on the T.A. game, "Let's you and him fight." Still, even my version probably won't help, so let's move on.

I'm sick at home today. Maybe it's the flu, or maybe just a cold, but I didn't want to spend eight hours at work sniffling, throat-clearing and making other people sick. So with that in mind, let's do something about the flu shot situation. My executive order would take money from government salaries (all of my own one-day salary, plus a portion from other willing politicians and bureaucrats) to pay for a bunch more flu vaccine, from any companies worldwide that can make it quickly and safely. The FDA procedures would have to be streamlined to make it work, but there must be lots of countries that have already certified these companies' existing output.  They'd just have to make a bunch more, at the U.S. government's expense. The feds can then resell it to the usual outlets.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom: Does Walter Cronkite have one of these yet? If not, he should have. He got the news out to us for decades, reported the death of JFK, indirectly helped to end U.S. involvement in Vietnam, helped to broker peace between Egypt and Israel, helped to garner support for the space program and even got us thinking about the future in his series 21st Century, all while holding CBS News to a higher journalistic standard than most news outlets have had since that era. All hail Uncle Walter! And if he's already got one, I'll ask his advice for handing out the award to someone else who has served this country--and the world--well.

Karen

CDC: Who Should Get a Flu Shot?