This summer, my father asked me what three topics I thought were the most important in the presidential race (and in the world) for my generation. I surely can’t speak for my generation, but the answer was easy for me:

1. The environment
2. The US geopolitical situation (including the massive need to repair our brand, getting out of Iraq, addressing the petropolitical situation in the Middle East, an overall overhaul of our approach to international issues)
3. The economy

This list is so intuitive and so immutable as to be fact in my mind. Listening to Paul Friedman’s latest, Hot, Flat, and Crowded is only making me more convinced of the primacy (and interconnectedness) of numbers 1 and 2.