Electing Guardians

When I'm getting ready to vote, especially when there are numerous local, state and national candidates up for election, I turn to the League of Women Voters for help. Our local papers publish the “Voter's Guide” and post an easy to use electronic version on their web sites. I find it very helpful. For each candidate the Guide includes a picture, lists party affiliations, age, address, email, web site, birthplace, family, education with degrees earned, professional, political, military experience and community involvement. There is also a list of group endorsements. Each candidate is asked to provide short answers to three questions pertinent to their potential position.

This information helps me understand which candidates best share my interests, experiences and political views, but I fear it is too unwieldy for the average voter. For example in my Congressional District (NY 25^th) Dan Maffei [Democrat/Working Families, incumbent] is running against Ann Mary Buerkle [Republican/Conservative]. One's a lawyer with a degree from Syracuse Law, the other has a Master's Degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. One's young, married with no children; the other is older, divorced with six children and 11 grandchildren. They are both Catholics. One was a Congressional staffer and on the Board of the Spanish Action League; the other is a Right to Life organizer and volunteers at a domestic violence shelter. While this information helps paint a fairly detailed picture of each candidate, it takes a lot of time to review, especially for all the candidates. In many cases it's pretty hard to compare candidates, kind of an apples and oranges problem. What is needed is a quick and reliable way to judge the basic competence of candidates.

Personally, I always prefer smarter candidates over those more intellectually challenged. Therefore, I suggest the League start to list every candidate's IQ in the Guide. I'd love to hear a candidate casually point out they are smarter than their opponent. “Vote Smart” could become a watchword. The League could offer free and reliable IQ testing. If a candidate refused to list their IQ, it would be taken as a sign that they are not particularly proud of it. I grant that not every Mensa member would necessarily be a good legislator, but at least I'd feel they have the potential to absorb information and make rational decisions.

Statements by certain candidates this year also have made me wonder if we ought to require all candidates pass the same US Citizenship test as is administered to immigrants. The questions are not all that hard and it would be a comfort to know that every legislator knew the basics of civics.

Finally, it occurred to me that any candidate for office ought to take a sort of civil service exam that would be scored by a non-partisan government agency like the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). OPM tests tens of thousands of civil servants every year. Everybody who takes a test for a particular position gets a score, then government employees are hired from the top score down. I'm sure a fair “legislative service exam” could be devised. Scores would be reported by the League and the voters could decide on who gets hired. No one would be disqualified by getting a low score on such a test. I'm guessing most voters would vote for the candidate with the higher score.

As I was mulling this over, I was reminded of Socrates' reflections on the education of legislators (he called them guardians) in The Republic. Plato believed that good government can only be achieved when legislators shared certain basic personality traits and knowledge. Without such a common background, they could not be expected to govern well and society would descend into a chaotic state where everyone fought simply to advance their own narrow self interest. Sound familiar?

I don't think members of Congress will ever be mistaken for philosopher-kings, but I maintain a faint hope that many actually are trying to do the public good. On Tuesday, please go out and vote. Until the League adopts my suggestions, do your best to pick the smarter candidate.