The Rolling Stones lied to us

"You can't always get what you want...you get what you need."

This statement actually does tend to be pretty true. However, for this political season, the second part of that statement is more accurately: "...you get what you deserve." I'm sorry, fellow Americans, but we have brought ourselves to a place where neither major party has a clearly exceptional candidate for president. This is evidenced by the fact that the best arguments being put forth are which one is worse or likely to do more damage to our country.

So how did we get here? That's a long and complicated answer, which I don't claim to be able to fully explain. I do put forth some common sense barriers that we have erected, keeping out the best choices for the job.

First: who, but an egotistical narcissist, would willingly run for President these days? Let's consider what these people have to go through:

• Intense public and media scrutiny, including often conflicting and vocal opinions on what action, in hindsight, should have been taken on a number of issues going back as far as they can get records to go by
• Intense scrutiny of formerly private affairs and family members (you may be willing to go through this, but is your wife or husband or son or daughter or extended family?)
• Immediate dissection of and backlash for any perceived missteps (i.e., tone deaf or unintentionally offensive statements)
• Need to focus simultaneously on attack and defense against other candidates

Second: this two party system has devolved and become unsustainable. Consider, the figure below, borrowed from this article on increasing polarity of Democrats and Republicans: 

Notice how far apart the groups have become? The only way any president can now hope to be productive, is to also have a favorable majority of the same party in Congress. For more on why Congress is broken, see this thoughtful, though fairly long explanation here.

Finally, we have allowed our politics to steer away from the most pressing issues and instead have allowed ourselves to be focused on whether a candidate aligns with our personal views on topics that are not as pressing as things like being able to pass an actual budget and make decisions for the continued solvency of the country as a whole. Yes, these are more nuanced and difficult topics than espousing a stance on abortion or on religion or the climate, but we should demand more concrete information on their plan to tackle these, outside of fluffy language soundbites.

So, as much of the country (and the world) looks around wondering how we got to this place, I recommend we take a cue from the King of Pop: "I'm starting with the man in the mirror, I'm asking him to change his ways."

Job Testing for Politicians

Think back to the last time that you applied for a job - what did that process look like? There are an almost infinite number of combinations for the typical steps that might be part of that process. One thing that remains the same: most likely, at some point in the process, you were required to pass some form of an assessment (especially when we include interviews).

Now, consider that candidates for political office do not face a similar set of job-related hurdles or assessments. Meaning, the information that we use to determine who to vote for is the carefully crafted "platform" and statements relating to stance on specific issues. In addition, we weigh the "dirt" that the opposition uncovers and uses to dissuade us from voting for a particular candidate. The end result of this process often leaves voters with very little objective, job-related information to use when determining which candidate is best. Doing your own research on each candidate's track record in their previous offices (if any), provides relevant information when the candidate is running for re-election, but not necessarily when that person is running for a new office. 

So how do we improve this process? I would argue that creating a "day in the life" simulation of realistic scenarios faced by individuals elected to that office (i.e., congress, senate, president) and videotaping candidate responses would serve multiple purposes. These include:

1) providing party leaders, voters and campaign donors with more relevant, job-related information about about candidate future performance on the job,

2) providing the media with job related and relevant talking points to debate candidate performance (hopefully reducing some of the focus on negative compaigning), and

3) providing candidates with job-related information to use in ad campaigns (include a clip of a particularly strong response to a challenge).  

For these reasons, candidates for political office should be given an assessment consisting of realistic, live-action, "day in the life" type scenarios. Their responses should be video-taped and broadcast on TV or made available for viewing online so party leaders, voters and campaign donors can see the candidates performing the job.  This will improve the election and voting process by providing job-related information on which voting decisions can be made. 

Update: Over a year ago I started a change.org petition on this very issue. After watching the presidential race politics play out over the past year, I am even more convinced that the current system needs to be re-evaluated. Unfortunately, at this point, it seems we are all stuck with the options we brought on ourselves. Good luck out there.