Mr. Trump has said his focus will be on economic growth and that he will get the economy growing at “more than 4 percent per year,” and that he will balance the budget.

It is indeed true that with massive rollbacks of counterproductive regulations, the right type of tax cuts, and limiting spending (assuming a nondestructive money policy on the part of the Federal Reserve), 4 percent or more economic growth is very achievable -- and the tax, spending and regulatory reform plans that Mr. Ryan and his colleagues have set forth may well do it.

However…

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that with no major spending program changes, real federal spending as a percentage of GDP (assuming approximately an average annual 2 percent real growth in GDP) will grow roughly 30 percent over the next 30 years, and that virtually all of this growth will come from “mandatory” entitlement programs and interest.

CBO projects real cuts in defense spending and other “discretionary” programs. It also projects the federal debt held by the public to rise from the present 75 percent of GDP to 141 percent, and interest on the debt to grow from the current 1.4 percent of GDP to 5.1 percent (or $1 trillion before inflation). These numbers are clearly unsustainable.

What should Mr. Trump do?

If you had a son or a daughter who was a member of a school debate team, and you learned that your child was receiving the questions in advance and the other debaters were not, what would you tell your child to do?

Each year there are some sport scandals, usually breaking down into two different types. One is where a player behaves badly, e.g., beating up a girlfriend or robbing a store. The other goes to the very integrity of the game, e.g., a referee receiving favors from an owner, or something like “Deflategate.”

Fans, players, owners and the league usually act rapidly to mitigate the latter type of offense, because they know, if it is allowed to persist, it undermines the integrity of the game, and, if not quickly corrected, the whole sports enterprise will lose and could even fail.

What is true for sports leagues is also true for political and governmental systems.

Countries can still survive and partially prosper even if they have bad policies on tax, trade, spending, regulations, monetary policy, abortion and gay rights.

However, they cannot prosper and ensure liberty for long if they do not uphold the rule of law and have institutions with people who insist on playing by the rules, even when they have other personal preferences.

So we come to the most important question to be answered on this election day.

What is the single most important determinate as to whether a country is rich or poor? It is not the level of government spending, taxation, regulation or monetary stability — even though those factors are very important. It is the rule of law, whereby the rules are known and fair, equally applied to all, and where corruption is not tolerated.

The end of great countries and empires was most often caused by internal decay, not by foreign enemies — ancient Greece and Rome being prime examples.  History’s lesson is:

When the rule of law is lost, even great nations disintegrate.

Today, only those who are willfully ignorant fail to recognize that parts of the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department, as well as other government agencies, have not only become partisan but also deeply corrupt.

When evidence is destroyed after having been subpoenaed by appropriate congressional committees and private organizations under the Freedom of Information Act, and no action is taken to punish those responsible, it becomes the very definition of corruption.

There are many other examples, but what is disturbing is the extent to which so many journalists have gone to cover up and defend inexcusable behavior.