The best and the brightest should lead. This revolutionary idea was put forth by Plato in his groundbreaking book, The Republic. This book has been praised for over two thousand years as a masterpiece of political philosophy yet in two thousand years this concept has yet to be put into practice. Our leaders are still picked based on popularity rather than skills or qualifications. There are not even any minimum standards of education or experience needed for this position. If you are over thirty-five and a citizen of this country than you can be president. Plato outlined a vigorous program of education and personal development in order to train those who would aspire to what he termed the "Guardian Class". Their job would be to serve the people with very little benefit to themselves. His idea was to make leadership the most undesirable job in the society due to the rigorous requirements that would need to be met and the minimal rewards outside of personal satisfaction. Only those with a true desire to do good for society would want it because it would be impossible for leaders or their friends or families to profit from being in a leadership role.
The way we pick our leaders today is scarcely more effective than Kings and Queens adopting their roles through birthright. It is a beauty pageant. It's like watching an episode of American Idol. Look at the top ten movies in the country, the top ten shows on television, and the top ten albums in the country and tell me if you want the same people that made Jessica Simpson, The Osbournes, and Anna Nicole Smith famous selecting our leadership without some sort of guidelines?
But how would we go about weeding the best and the brightest from the masses of modern America? Would we just go through Mensa's roster, pick the person with the highest IQ and force him into the presidency? In all honesty I do believe that IQ should be a top priority in our choice of a leader but intelligence does not always equal competence. I speak from experience when I say that there are many highly intelligent people who are lazy, dishonest and amoral. The IQ of the average con-man is not far from that of the membership of Mensa. IQ should be one of the criterion but far from the end all be all. There should be educational requirements. A leadership curriculum comprising of political science, sociology, history, economics, law, psychology, and philosophy, would be a mandate. There should also be mandatory humanitarian internships of at least four years. These internships should be diverse and encapsulate a wide demographic of the American people. I would go so far as to say that these internships should be based on population statistics. For instance, since a large majority of the American population are poor whites a candidate should have to spend certain percentage of his time in poor white communities doing some type of social work. This is just a guess but I would assume that the next largest group would be middle-class whites therefore a percentage of this four year community service internship should be spent getting to know the concerns of this community. Then lower income Latino Americans, then Black Americans, then Asian Americans and so on and so forth. Someone more clever than I would even be charged with dividing this time up so that it would be proportionate to the population percentage. The greater the population the more time should be spent getting acquainted with that segment of the population. There would have to be a minimum population percentage necessary to mandate a candidates time in order for he or she to be able to complete these internships in four years. Such as a minimum of ten percent of the American population. This would not prevent candidates from doing "extra-credit" and spending time in smaller segments of the population as well. They just would not be mandated to do so. That would hopefully prevent it from getting too out of hand.
There should also be a minimum job experience requirement. This is practiced for the most part but it is not law. No where does it state that you have to have been governor for four years or have served in Senate, or Congress, or some type of Executive office to be considered for the Presidency. This needs to be added. They ask for your resume when you apply for a job at banana Republic and they're just selling khakis and cardigans. Don't you think we should require our president to have some actual leadership experience, and not just with running a corporation, but in actually serving a constituency and making policy?
Now where would the democratic process enter into all of this? I think that the presidential vote should be broken into three phases. The first would be an almost blind vote in which those who wish to be considered for candidacy must submit their resumes to first confirm that they have met the minimum standards of IQ, education, community service, and leadership experience, and those who qualify would have their resumes sent out to every registered voter in America for consideration.Then there would be a vote based solely on their qualifications. This would just be a vote to see who makes it onto the ballot. This would proceed any campaigning. In fact, there should be a stipulation that anyone caught campaigning during this phase would be immediately disqualified. This first vote should be based solely on merit and not popularity or charisma. This would be the first stage of the vote. This is where all that extra-credit would come in. Those with the most experience, the highest IQs, the most education, and who have done the most good in the various communities would likely hold an edge over those who just barely met the minimum requirements.
Once the candidates have been selected each of them should be given a campaign fund of equal amounts. This money should come from our tax dollars and no outside sources, allowing for all candidates to operate on an equal playing field. If we can spend billions of dollars on military equipment we never use we can spend a few million on selecting competent leadership. None of the candidate's own money could be used in the campaign and no private donations could be accepted. No corporate lobbyists would be allowed to drop millions of dollars into a candidates fund indepting him forever to that corporation. I can't believe we allow this shit to go on now. It is a direct line to corruption. There would also be a standard of ethics that would prevent mudslinging and muckraking. A candidate's record would be fair game but his personal life would be off limits.
Now, after all of this has taken place and we have selected our candidate for the office of the presidency, presumably someone with perhaps a Doctorate in Sociology and Political Science coupled with a Masters in Economics, someone with an IQ in the top 2%, someone who has maybe served as the Mayor of a major city for four years and State Governor for another four to eight years. someone who has demonstrated his moral character by volunteering at women's shelters in East LA, homeless shelters in New York, orphanages in Utah, AIDS wards in Oakland, and Community Centers in Ohio, he would have one year from his inauguration to take action on his campaign promises or risk impeachment for fraud against the American people. His State of The Union Address would include a progress report on where he is at on fulfilling his promises. The last step would be the President's salary. This is the one area in which I disagree with Plato. We live in a capiltalist country and money is the great motivator. A President's salary should be based on his performance just like the head of any major corporation. He should be incentivised for lowering the national debt, crime, unemployment, improving foreign policy, etc. The better he does at his job the more money he has the potential to make. Reward and recognition has long been accepted as the driving forces in the American workplace. We need to adopt this theory in government as well.
The best and the brightest should lead. Even if you don't agree with my ideas on how to determine the best and the brightest I trust you will agree that we deserve only the best in our leadership and that our current system of selection is not geared towards identifying and selecting those individuals. There may be something that you might add to the selection process I've outlined. There may be parts that you would omit. Still, I hope that you would agree that some sort of minimum standards are necessary. Our country is currently being run by a "C" student. How do you like the results so far?
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6 comments:
I really can't agree with this, Wrath. Having our candidates limited to an elite class really goes against the idea of a representational democracy.
In no way does having competent leadership preclude the idea of a representational government. Yes, I am talking about more than just competent leadership, I am talking about the best possible leadership. If having a set criterion for a presidential candidate interferes with the idea of representational government than it is still closer to that idea than our current system where only millionaires and there pawns have any realistic shot at the presidency. The roster of Mensa includes laborers and artists as well as doctors and scientists. Yet in our current system none of them would have any chance at leading this country unless they were lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family or were self-made millionaires or were backed by major corporate dollars. How is this representative of the American people? Our current system is far more elitist than allowing anyone with the proven aptitude and intelligence to run with money provided by the people they would lead rather than by corporate lobbyists. Especially not when we are talking about the Presidency. As for the Senate, Congress, and Supreme Court, and the idea of "no taxation without representation" I'll be addressing that in my next blog entry because our government as it exists today is anything but representative of American society. If we were to strictly apply this rule there would be large segments of the American people that were tax exempt.
I like the idea of incentive pay, Wrath. Good idea.
The belief that only certain people have "any realistic shot at the presidency" is self-defeating and self-perpetuating. The U.S. Presidential Election is NOT a yes/no question.
The U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5: No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
There is NOTHING in there that says the President must be a member of any political party, let alone be chosen from either the Democratic or Republican Parties.
When it comes to the General Election, we have 3 problems:
1. People feel disenfranchised by a system they incorrectly believe can never represent them
2. Those who do vote mistakenly believe it is a yes/no question
3. Those who vote for the candidate they actually want elected are hindered by the Electoral College
The solution is obvious - eliminate the Electoral College.
I would not use the roster of Mensa as a criteria for finding competent leadership. The incredibly intelligent are often not very bright, and intellectual narciscists rarely make good leaders. There are plenty of people not on the roster of Mensa that are nonetheless brilliant leaders. Mensa is an elite egghead social club, not an exclusive list of smart people.
"There is NOTHING in there that says the President must be a member of any political party, let alone be chosen from either the Democratic or Republican Parties."
The problem is that there is nothing in there that says the president must be anything except a thirty-five year old resident of the US which is my point. Any idiot can run provided he is wealthy enough and charismatic enough. It is the only job you can get in America, outside of the entertainment industry, that pays a six-figure salary yet has no minimum qualifications whatsoever.
"The belief that only certain people have "any realistic shot at the presidency" is self-defeating and self-perpetuating. The U.S. Presidential Election is NOT a yes/no question."
Thinking otherwise is blind, foolish, self-defeating and self-perpetuating. Thinking that the uphill climb faced by independent candidates allows for more than the slimmest chance of defeating either of the two major parties in a presidential race will ensure that our current system never changes. Allowing the deck to remain stacked against all but these two major parties because there is some infintessimal hope that an independent party might beat all the odds and defeat one of them is self-defeating and self-perpetuating. History has shown over and over with no recent exceptions that unless you have the requisite millions of dollars of campaign money unless you have the backing of one of the two major parties you have no shot. None. Zero. Zilch. Please show one single exception. Because I can find none in recent history. Not since the invention of television at the least. Ross Perot with all his money could not make the climb. Jesse Jackson with one of the largest grass-roots campaigns in history, raising millions and millions of dollars, could not make the climb. When was the last time you saw someone from the ranks of the common people rise to the office of the presidency without selling his soul to corporate lobbyists in order to raise the millions of dollars of campaign funds neccessary for serious consideration and without being a member of one of the major parties?
Still, my issue isn't really with whether the president is a democrat or a republican but whether or not he is qualified and whether or not this office is accessible to all who are qualified which it currently is not. It is accessible to all who are wealthy. Period.
Again, I already stated that IQ would not be the only qualifications needed to be a candidate. I mentioned Mensa because they have reliable intelligence quotient tests already in place. I of course did not mean to suggest that membership in Mensa was a mandatory requirement, only that you must demonstrate that level of intelligence as one of the criterion. There are people walking around right now in all walks of life with no idea how intelligent they are. Still, this would not be the only requirement. It would in fact be one of the very minimum requirements. Common sense and compassion would need to be demonstrated through community service, volunteerism and a proven leadership record. The same elitism that made the New Orleans failure inevitable would exist if we based our candidates solely on IQ. It should be one of the requirements not THE requirement. Sensitivty training in the trenches, doing social work and volunteering in various communities should also be a requirement, leadership experience should also be a requirement that way we could see tangible evidence of how he or she performs in office.
My problem with those people who look at all the flaws in our current system with blind optimism is that this almost assures there will never be reform. The belief that "we have the best government in the world so why fuck with it?" is one of the biggest obstacles facing those wishing to reform this government into something potentially better. That was my whole point in writing this. I believe that the American people are too complacent. We are so convinced that we live in the best of all possible country's when we may in fact live only in the best of all current country's and are missing opportunities to make this country, this government, better with a few simple changes.
"Thinking otherwise is blind, foolish, self-defeating and self-perpetuating. Thinking that the uphill climb faced by independent candidates allows for more than the slimmest chance of defeating either of the two major parties in a presidential race will ensure that our current system never changes."
I maintain that the problem lies in the Electoral College.
We at least agree that change is needed, if not the nature of the change. I ask you - how can we accomplish ANY change when we keep voting for the very people who are against the sort of changes under discussion?
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