Abolish civil forfeiture. Limit qualified immunity for all government employees especially police and prosecutors. Pardon Snowden, Assange and Daniel Hale etc. Remove the absurd restrictions of the Treasury regarding KYC and AML thus lowering the costs for the poor to be banked. Cut back on the sprawl of over 800 foreign military bases. Stop economic sanctions as a weapon against poor countries. Stop meddling in other countries affairs. Strengthen following the UN and its laws. Eliminate illegal activities like the surveillance state. Save money from the 1.25 trillion national security budget and spend it on Medicare for all. Remove a lot of the rules and regulations and onerous compliance on startups and smaller companies. Change federal procurement rules that currently favor the large elite companies and the entrenched. Limit the effects of bribery, corruption and "lobbying" in setting government rules and regulations.

Probably nowhere near as much as I intended once I find out how that office actually works. I like the things that people are proposing in this thread but I also imagine there is some unseen barrier that seems to prevent the same intelligent well meaning people from reaching that level of office.

Honest question for to your question for the people of HN. Can anyone think of a time in history where someone with the intelligent and critical thinking qualities of the people on this thread have ever attained even close to that level of office? FDR? I am not a historian but I suspect some of you are. Am I being too cynical?

Pardon Snowden and Assange.

Stop the policy of drone strike kill lists every Tuesday. Explain why it's a bad idea to make it harder for the next guy. Declassify all the cases where we killed civilians because of bad intel. (probably 90% of all strikes?)

Pardon all the whistleblowers, and make a concerted PR push as to the good they do for the country.

That's about all I could actually do, everything else would be stopped by the RepubliCratic donor class who actually control things in Washington, DC.

Depends: President of what country exactly?

Mandate Mandarin language classes for everyone 30 years old and younger. Pull another Roosevelt and buy/confiscate American gold at 5000 USD/ounce, then re tie the US dollar to gold at 10000 USD/ounce to ensure hegemony for the next 100 years..(Before China does it first with their citizens gold)

Throw away zero-sum policies. Introduce only win-win policies.

Nothing - because it's never going to happen.

I would turn areas of government bureaucracy into some sort of capitalist system, where employees of the government seek to get huge bonuses for reducing inefficiency.