It is imperative that the next presidential administration dedicate its first year to policies designed to catalyze upward economic mobility for the millions currently left behind.
Along with terrorism, climate change, disease pandemics, and the prospect of persistently low economic growth, inequality has crept up the international policy agenda to become one of the most urgent and important issues of our time.
All four presidents from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton whose administrations’ histories have been published as part of the Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program either faced a challenge or launched an initiative during their first year in office relating to the expansion of opportunity in the service of greater social and economic mobility.
The time has come to ensure that every poor preschooler in the United States is enrolled for two years of the best educational opportunity the public can provide. Anything short of this will fail to realize the promise of early education as an equalizer in American society.
What can a president do to build a next-generation economy? How can economic growth widen opportunity for all Americans, not just a privileged few? Every modern American president has wrestled with some version of these two questions during his first year in office.
