Mr. President, welcome to the overwhelming responsibility and the awesome opportunity of leading the world’s richest, most powerful nation at a time of global change and trial. I am offering you advice today from a Canadian perspective—a perspective that I fear you will have received from few of your advisers.

In my lifetime, two dates stand out in my memory above all others: November 22, 1963, and September 11, 2001. I will never forget where I was and what I was doing the moment I learned of the assassination of President Kennedy and of the planes hitting the towers in New York. After both momentous days, the sympathy of the world for the U.S. was overwhelming. But the moral authority and global political capital acquired from both events, along with the goodwill of the rest of the world, were dissipated.

Your first task, Mr. President, is to restore that moral authority…

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John Manley is currently counsel at McCarthy Tétrault LLP in Toronto and Ottawa. Between 1993 and 2003, he served as deputy prime minister, minister of foreign affairs, minister of industry, and minister of finance of Canada.