Why wait to find out that you elected a rat? If you’re going to get one anyways, at least go for the honest one!
I have been nominated by the Scientific Results and Delegation Party as a new choice for Americans in 2008. We hope that a politically conscious and diligent public will consider the issues that are raised in the coming election, but more so to pay attention to what methods the nominees offer to employ in solving these issues, and what reasons he has for choosing the issues and methods. History has shown immoral men to create policy that has given us great fortune, and it has shown moral men to create laws which caused hardship for generations to come. Ultimately, the worth of an elected official is not in their character, but in what they can and do accomplish while serving their electorate. And so I urge you to not become swayed or distracted by character attacks on myself or any other candidates, and to instead to make this race be about ideas and solutions–for this is what is going to effect the future of this great nation.
Now, while the Scientific Results and Delegation Party has positions on all issues that currently effect the United States, our primary focus is on education.
Perhaps it is not widely known, but there is a purpose to a proper liberal arts education; it’s not just to keep kids busy doing make-work for thirteen or seventeen years. 
Beyond the teaching of basic skills like reading, writing, and math, our schools are meant to improve the minds of our children–to develop it like a muscle by exposing it to things which require critical thinking and problem solving. And as American business continues to become international business, these are going to become the skills most needed if the United States is going to maintain its lead in both business and research. For while you can teach anyone a basic skill, no matter how old, to create a populace who is creative, logical, and pro-active requires starting when a person is still young.
In my mind, the liberal arts education of the United States has, by and large, lost sight of the purpose of what a liberal arts education is, losing even some of the principal topics that used to be part of the standard curriculum, namely debate and rhetoric.
When we teach history, instead of teaching it as a liberal arts study, we teach it as, well, history. Where a teacher should focus on teaching his students about how historians debate and search for evidence to prove or disprove hypotheses on what went on in Mankind’s past and why the players would do so, instead he focusses on teaching a list of dates to be memorised.
When we teach science, we teach Mankind’s discoveries–which while not bad to know–is nowhere near as important to our youth as learning the scientific method. And by that I do not mean just the process of developing a hypothesis and testing it, but also such things as peer review, reproducability, methods for reducing bias like double-blind testing, and correcting methodology when it is learned that initially unconsidered influences must be taken into account.
When a person has a passion for determining the truth, you do not need to teach him dates and names, for he when he wants to know he will research this for himself. So while any education should still include the teaching of our past as we understand it and our understandings of the world as it currently lies, before any of that, children need to be taught skepticism, debate, all the fallacies and biases that appear in an issue, and reasoned research so that he can come to an answer that is wholely his own, original, and creating something new for the future of mankind.
And as I said earlier, of course our party does have opinions and solutions for most issues currently debated in the United States, and even ideas on topics not under debate, but we feel that all of these are secondary to that of education and critical thinking, as with a population who takes a critical approach to the problems of our nation, all these issues will eventually be taken care of.