What lies ahead for next president?

As we all know too well, there are two U.S. senators vying for the world’s toughest and most demanding job – president of the United States of America. They are campaigning all over the country 24/7 as they approach election day on Nov. 4.

Their arduous schedules are demanding, tiring and continuous. There is no letup in this marathon race to the White House. Different audiences, different cities, different messages all along the way. But none of that is anywhere near the demanding schedule the victor will inherit on 20 January 2009.

Imagine going to the office – Oval Office in this case – each day confronted with satisfying some 300 million citizens of your own country and then dealing with the leaders of nearly 200 other countries around the globe. Nearly all of which look to the United States for leadership. Here at home, you are straddled with an anemic economy, a credit and housing crisis, immigration, education and health issues of significant magnitude, not to mention the energy crisis. Your citizenry looks to you for instant solutions to any and all of these issues.

And these are just the domestic issues. Now consider the national security and foreign policy issues that require your presidential attention. The worldwide war on international terror and Islamic radicalism are at the top of your list. Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups are active in nearly every country. They all have America on their hate list.

“Energy” is not just a domestic issue, at least not when you consider that the source of much the world’s oil resides in countries like Russia, Venezuela, Iran and other Middle East countries. Diplomacy and international relations with these oil-producing states require a very delicate approach. Whether we like it or not, they can tighten, or even turn off, the spigot. Yes, folks, energy independence is a must for America for national security reasons.

How do you deal with the Israeli-Palestinian issue? Decades of mutual distrust and hatred of one another has mothered instability, bombings and war. Iran’s president calls for the destruction of Israel. Is that a real threat or simply a sop to his country’s people meant for internal political consumption? And then there is a major power like Russia reverting to some old Soviet Union habits of sending troops into another nation’s territory with the ruse of protecting an ethnic group more aligned with Russia.

Genocide, AIDS and health issues ravage the African continent, while drugs from Latin America, Afghanistan and other countries poison humanity around the globe. How do you deal with nuclear-capable counties like North Korea and Pakistan, or with an Iran threatening to secure them? These are not very stable regimes to be possessors of weapons of such magnitude. What are China’s real intentions for their very significant and sophisticated buildup of their armed forces and the implications for the Pacific and, yes, the world?

Notably, in this rundown, I did not mention our two hot wars in Iraq and Afghanistan consuming much of our national treasure and sacrifice from our military men and women. And there are many other issues and trouble spots, but by now you get the drift of the complexity and the seriousness of the task facing the people’s choice on Nov. 4.

As serious and demanding as all the domestic issues are, the nation’s security trumps them all. Without a security that permits our freedom and cherished way of life, there will be no solutions to the domestic issues – nor will there be a need for these solutions. We simply must put, as our founding fathers did, national security at the top of the president’s “to do list.”