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The Deficit: Facing Up to Reality

It’s hard to overstate the willingness of presidents past to ignore the red ink on the government’s books. But circumstances may require the next occupant of the White House to address the mountain of Treasury debt and the budget shortfalls that add to it by hundreds of billions of dollars every year.

The Economy: More Trouble Ahead

The task at hand is both short-term and long-term. The next president will be confronted with the immediate questions of how to restore economic growth and promote employment, and the more fundamental problem of how to re-create the nation’s financial regulatory system and prepare current and future workers for jobs in a changing world.

Energy: The Price of Being Green

Judging from the polls, it would seem that the high price of gasoline is the most visible — and some would say urgent — energy issue facing Washington in the coming year. With pump prices at the top of voters’ concerns, the new administration could face extraordinary pressure to respond.

Health Care: An Urgent Need

With one in six Americans younger than 65 lacking any form of health insurance and millions of others who have coverage struggling to pay medical bills, it’s little wonder that a comprehensive overhaul of the health care system has emerged as a major issue in the presidential campaign. But will it morph into a marquee item on the next president’s agenda or become a problem that’s too expensive and complicated to solve in anything but piecemeal fashion?

Immigration: The Jobs Factor

The new policy landscape will afford the next president an opportunity to recast the immigration debate in some significant ways — even as he will have to tread carefully in assembling new coalitions in Congress and upgrading the White House’s administrative handling of immigration policies.

Infrastructure: Approach With Caution

The next President will quickly be drawn into a tough policy fight about a crowded, overstressed transportation system that many experts say is quickly becoming obsolete.

The Wars: Withdrawal and Escalation

Amid the electorate’s continued clamor to end the war, the next president’s challenge will be deciding accurately when the roiling mix of ethnic and political instabilities, mostly beyond his ability to control, has settled down sufficiently to make a big troop withdrawal appear rational, not rash.

Military: Rewriting the Doctrine

The relentless focus on Iraq policy during the presidential campaign has obscured equally daunting military challenges awaiting the next commander in chief: how to repair a structurally fraying war machine and a Pentagon that’s in the midst of an identity crisis.

Taxes: Living With a Legacy

The tax cuts George Bush championed as a candidate in 2000, and pushed through Congress as president in 2001 and 2003, will expire at the end of 2010. That leaves his successor with a multitrillion-dollar decision about which elements of Bush tax policy — chiefly reduced rates on both wage income and investments — to try to maintain into the future.

Intelligence: Reorganization Fatigue

The next president will take the reins of an intelligence community at yet another crossroads: Still not up to snuff by almost anyone’s standard, but at the same time exhausted by a lengthy, balky and difficult period of transformation that doesn’t appear near an end.

U.S. Image: Deep Repair, Tight Budget

The new administration will be trying to do more with less: containing expenses while expanding foreign assistance and diplomacy to repair America’s image and status.