Donald Trump claims that he is going to “make America great again.” Now it’s true that he didn’t offer any concrete proposals beyond simply making “better deals” but I take him at his word that he has a plan for American renewal.

National greatness can mean many things, of course, but I think fair-minded Americans can agree that key elements of a great nation might include the ready availability of jobs, fiscal discipline, few or no casualties in overseas wars, widespread access to medical care and the performance of the stock market (which most of will rely on to fund our retirements.)

Metrics that capture these indicators are concrete and readily available—so why not use them as a yardstick to measure Donald Trump in his avowed goal of returning America to its lost glory? I am proposing an “American greatness" scorecard that includes five simple measures:

The unemployment rate

The budget deficit

American fatalities in oversea wars

The number of Americans who have health insurance

The performance of the stock market

The proposed scorecard tracks these metrics from the start of the Bush administration to the start of the Obama administration, and then from the start of the Obama administration to current values. These current values will serve as a baseline going forward to measure the effectiveness of the Trump administration.

The scorecard is not especially sophisticated. It presents absolute numbers without calculating rates of change. It is not meant as a tool for nuanced analysis, but rather a snapshot of progress. If these numbers continue to improve over the next four years, then this may be evidence that Trump's deal making savvy is working for America. And if the number worsen, we may see confirmation of a trend begun under Bill Clinton where deep-rooted national problems are solved by Democratic administrations and then are quickly undone by Republican administrations.

So will Donald Trump and his merry band of tax cutting friends have the answers? Time to let the numbers do the talking.