If one wants to spoon-feed pudding to nursing home residents, one must pass a written exam. In several states you have to be tested to be a florist. In fact, most jobs require testing as a pre-employment condition.
But when it comes to the people who actually control our lives and futures, we actually know nothing about their intelligence, logic, ethics, psychological health, etc.
Instead, voters must make important ballot choices based on sheer banality: yard signs, money, party loyalty, name recognition, dirty tricks and appearance.
Obviously, these same pols make the laws and they would never agree to public testing prior to an election.
A better question might be “Why don’t we Americans demand aptitude tests for office seekers”? I always thought the goal is to have an informed electorate.
The Constitution doesn’t require aptitude testing of Federal elected officeholders, and I know of no state constitution that does for state officials (other than, in some places, requiring an M.D. to serve as coroner, or a C.P.A. for county treasurer or auditor, etc.). If the electorate wants to impose such requirements more broadly, or even require testing, it may. But there isn’t exactly a groundswell of support for the idea.
Intelligence? Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously described FDR as a “second-rate intellect but a first-class temperament.” In the depths of the Great Depression, that was a winning formula.
Logic? Not too many Vulcans on the ballot around here.
Ethics? Some of the greatest leaders of world history have been liars, or cheated on their wives, or backstabbed their way to the top.
Psychological health? Both Lincoln and Churchill struggled with depression.
In this Age of Google, voters have never had more information available to them on the various candidates seeking their votes. They are quite capable of deciding what candidates they want to support, and why.
There is one already. It’s called an election.
So you would prefer not seeing test results on these men running for the most important position on earth?
Elucidate, please.
This question always is “who designs the test?” Is it possible to construct an unbiased test? Who determines what is ethical and what is unethical, for example?
Election is not a meritocratic system of appointment, regardless of what anyone says.
Nonetheless it is the only means by which people can popularly choose their representatives. Anything else which would appoint them based on an aptitude test would make it something akin to a technocracy.
At its basic level democracy demands that anybody can stand and be chosen by their fellows to represent them. The choice is down to the voters, who will not accept stringent filtering of candidates.
The very same scientists who design SAT, LSAT, ACT could easily design a test to gauge all the important elements of leadership.
Only once somebody else has determined what “all the important elements of leadership” are. You can’t leave questions like that to a bunch of guys in a lab. How do you even decide who is best-qualified to answer the question? You can’t. Ultimately, you have to rely on the consensus opinion of everybody.
So, you might as well just cut out the middlemen and let the people choose their leader directly.
Moderator Note
firstfalseNero, you have started five threads in General Questions since you joined today, none of them appropriate for this forum. Four were better placed in Great Debates; the first was moved and I have closed the other three including this one. One was moved to Cafe Society.
Before you start more threads, I would strongly suggest you familiarize yourself with the forum rules and conventions of this site. You may open a new thread on this topic in Great Debates, but ensure you frame the debate properly. Also, five debates on different subjects are too many to effectively engage in at once; I suggest you limit yourself to no more than one at a time.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator