Things We Should Be Asking Our Presidential Candidates

While I'm on the topic of politics, during the most recent Republican debate, the candidates were asked if they believe in evolution as opposed to creation.



(See Below for update and clarification) Not to put too fine a point on it, not believing in evolution is not a central flaw in a presidential candidate. It may be silly, irrational, and unscientific. However, it just doesn't impact their judgment in a lot of important policy areas. Education, yes, but the President's role in education is small and should be negligible. For the vast majority of our history, there was no federal role in education, and the schools of that time turned out a more educated, more critical, product in less time, so I find the idea of federal funding and mandates for education being beneficial unpersuasive, and the President's role in education and ability to influence its course is rather minimal. In the last several administrations, the Presidential spouse has given more apparent attention to education than the President themselves.



Let's ask presidential candidates what their economic beliefs are. Do they really believe in supply and demand? The power of the market? Capitalism?



Let's ask the presidential candidates what their diplomatic beliefs are. Do they believe in realpolitik? Do they believe in accommodation and hoping a problem goes away, or do they want to not merely deal with the problem at hand, but work to give us better options next time there's a problem?



Being President is about finding stuff out. Nobody can know everything that's necessary to run a country like the United States. Let's ask the presidential candidates who they listen to. Who are their trusted advisers? How would they go about finding the information they need to make the correct decisions, and what direction to lead us in?



Being President is, most importantly, about being a leader, and getting the country to go in the direction they want us to go. If following the crowd or the most recent poll results was what was important, we'd follow the example of Larry Niven's Puppeteers and name our most important decision-making position "the Hindmost." Let the devil take the Hindmost - the most important thing in a President is a leader. Let's ask the presidential candidates to tell us how they would persuade the country that something very unpopular is nonetheless necessary. Matter of fact, if they're anything like the vast majority of the people out there, they believe in some very unpopular truth. Ask them to pick something they believe in that is unpopular and sell us on that belief. I don't want to vote for anyone that only holds popular opinions. That way lies disaster. If that was a good way to pick a President, we'd all just gather together in one big circle and blow on a weather vane to make our decisions.



Let's take it a step further. Let's ask the presidential candidates to tell us how they would go about the process of persuading the country that something they personally find morally repugnant is nonetheless necessary. Give them a short list of topics from various areas - foreign policy, economics, law - and let each of them choose one that they specifically find repugnant and sell us on it. That way nobody can make hay on the issue without leaving themselves open. But how can we expect someone to lead the country if they can't even lead themselves?



All of this prospects for two very important other qualities that are in extremely short supply in our political classes: rational thought, and the ability to respect the opposing point of view while nonetheless persuading them that your viewpoint has merit. It's very easy to accuse someone of being evil for disagreeing with you, but it accomplishes nothing. Our modern short attention span theater of politics does not encourage either quality - but they are the very qualities we need in a President.



This stuff gets tougher and tougher, I know. But we don't spend two years to pick our most important decision maker so they can avoid solving problems. We don't spend billions of dollars in campaign contributions to pick the President because the job is easy or trivial. And some people might vote for the most popular kid in school like they did for class president, but we don't need to spend thousands of hours of broadcast time to find out who's the most popular. We spend all those resources to pick the best leader who is going to make the best decisions for us as a country.







UPDATE and clarification: Yes, someone who believes in creationism is a moron - on one specific topic and those decisions relating to it. My point is that the major presidential decisions having to do with that topic and related items are few. Bush 43 has actually had one (stem cells). Clinton didn't, nor Bush 41, nor Reagan. But I and the country can cope with a candidate who's a moron on this one fairly narrow issue a lot better than we can cope with someone who's a moron on the subject of economics, or practical applied psychology, or any of a dozen areas that are central to the major decisions a president is expected to make on a continuing basis, and on which the vast majority of the candidates out there have convinced any rational observer that they are morons.



To riff on Monty Python's famous spam sketch, we can have eggs, moron, bacon, normal, normal, normal and normal, where there's not much moron in it, but it does not appear that we have an option where there's "no moron at all."