Thomas L. Friedman’s column in The New York Times (“Trump’s Miss Universe Foreign Policy”) suggests we’re not asking the right questions.

Friedman asked, “What are the real foreign policy challenges the next president will face?” He cited a few of them: What happens to the spillover from spewing crises in Syria and Iraq? Besides being human tragedies, they destabilize our allies in Europe and give Russia’s Putin all sorts of opportunity to make mischief.

What will happen if China’s economy runs into more trouble? Another global recession? What might that do to our own economic recovery?

What happens if wildfires in Canada and the western U.S. consume not only our valuable forests but also the funding set aside for fighting them?

What about hurricanes and rising oceans that threaten many costal areas?

The fact that crises will happen during the next presidency is a given. Candidates—all of them—owe us meaningful statements detailing how they would handle them, not just campaign pablum. They might give us better answers if we, the people, were aware of the problems and asked the right questions.