I do not like Donald J. Trump. That puts me in the company of something over half the citizens of the United States.

Trump seems to honor no one but himself. He is, by his own admission, either a serial sexual predator or a liar or both. He seems to have an insane view of the rightness of his actions.

No, I do not like Donald J. Trump.

But that doesn’t matter. He was elected President of the United States by the Electoral College. A good argument could be made that the Electoral College is a relic of a more sexist and racist time in our country, but until that argument is successfully made in terms of amending the Constitution, it’s still the way our Presidents are elected.

And the fact that I do not like Donald J. Trump does not mean that I wish him to fail. In fact, I would like to see him become so successful and effective in leading the country that we would miss him after his second term. And that’s a possibility no matter how remote it seems right now, especially since one of his first official acts was to cancel or delay a cut in mortgage insurance rates, essentially raising the cost of buying a home for some new homeowners by about $500 a year. Wouldn't bother him, but it may be a big problem for a lot of young families.

Nor will I oppose plans just because they are Donald Trump plans. That sort of nobrainer (as in the absence of the use of brains) knee jerking has been demonstrated by the Republicans throughout the Obama administration. They ceased to govern and simply opposed. I hope the Democrats won’t do that. However, I hope we examine every action the new President takes in terms of whether it is good for all our citizens or just a few of our citizens, whether it moves us ahead or back to the fifties, forties, or thirties. If the action is a good one in those terms, I hope we will support it fully. If it’s not, I hope we will oppose it with equal force.

As everybody is observing, the devil is in the details. It is not what Trump says he’s going to do, but what that means. For instance, his crowds scream and shout when he says, “Make America Great Again.” But nobody has ever defined what that means, and the affiliations of some of those screaming their agreement make me afraid that it means “make America great for some by making it less great for others.”

The same thing is true with the “America First” slogan that he invoked in his inaugural address. The slogan has a shameful and divisive history. Trump was told about that, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

Trump said a lot of things in his campaign. Some of them, from his 30,000-foot level, I could get behind. But I’ll need to see them at ground level. Here are some of my criteria:

Infrastructure investment: Because of another no brainer (again, the absence of the use of brains), we have let our infrastructure rot. It needs attention. The question is, what form will Trump’s promised infrastructure investment take. If it’s means giving big tax breaks to rich people to build private toll lanes, it’s simply giving away Federal money. If it’s providing funding to repair highways, bridges, and sewer and water lines, that’s sorely needed, and I’m all for it.

Healthcare: For seven years, the Republicans have tried to repeal the ACA, claiming that they had a better idea. If they do, God bless them. I’m for it. However, their plan has to meet their promised criteria of better and more universal coverage at lower cost. The idea of holding the cost of overall health insurance premiums without an individual mandate is magical thinking. The insurance companies can’t and won’t do it.

The ACA is far from a perfect plan, but it much more perfect than those opposing it would have you think. It did not increase the cost of health care; healthcare costs did increase, but at a slower rate than pre-ACA and properly tweaked, it might have actually stabilized the cost. The biggest problem with the ACA, in my view, was President Obama’s insistence in giving everybody a seat at the table. That made the ACA a series of compromises among greedy stakeholders.

Immigration: Nearly everyone agrees, at least in theory, we should have secure borders. How we do that becomes the argument. Trump’s “Throw the Illegals” out line was good for his base, who evidently don’t stop to think about consequences, intentional or otherwise. A substantial part of our economy depends on immigrant labor and cannot (or will not) be done by our citizens. Just ask the South Georgia farmers. We need more than bumper sticker policies to deal with such a complex subject.

Trade: As best I can tell, Trump missed Sesame Street the day when they explained globalization. He’s promised to throw up walls of tariffs, a promise that might seem good to those who have lost their jobs either to outsourcing or technology, but also a promise with all sorts of dire consequences in terms of exports and domestic prices. Perhaps eighty years ago an isolationist movement could make a case, but in eighty years, things have changed.

For these last eight years, we have experienced government by gridlock—the “I do not like green eggs and ham” approach to a process that should be full of thought and (gasp) compromise. I hope we don’t do it for four more.

But I hope we, the majority, hold Trump to the words of his inaugural address: that he will make America a better place for all its citizens.