Odd idea - go back to Trumps old TV show “The Apprentice”. On that show each person had to show how they would run different businesses.
Now what about a similar show for political office? Start with a low level thing like say something a small town mayor would deal with. Then work your way up to things politicians deal with say as state governor, member of congress, senator, etc…
The problem is that, if the questions are fact-based, any political candidate (yes, including Trump) will pass easily. However, no candidate, including all Republicans, all Democrats, and all "Other"s will be able to stop themselves from changing the subject to policy and delivering a stump speech.
The problem is not that politicians of either stripe do not understand the facts. The problem is that they misapply, or draw the wrong conclusions, from the facts. You fix that problem at the ballot box, not with a pop quiz.
Regards,
Shodan
I’ve actually always wanted to do this, but at the local level.
Say for member of congress:
For governor of Kansas
For president I’d add in “Name the current leaders of Canada and Mexico?”.
totally agree.
Still, it does show they know basic facts about who they are representing.
The Constitution (as interpreted to date by SCOTUS) does not allow a prior condition for election to the office of President, or Vice President. However, the Constitution has no authority to require, or allow the parties to implement such a requirement.
A test of knowledge is not likely to favor either the left or right. Too bad there isn’t a simple test for integrity. At least you would have a better chance of getting actual left or right from your choices.
Tris
I got nothin’
I’m not comfortable with the idea of an official knowledge test, but perhaps this is something that political parties and debate moderators (and networks) could collaborate on.
I think the idea of having 15-18 candidates on a stage answering random kindergarten questions from idiot moderators is out-dated. What I’d rather see is a rather large pool of questions from a panel of policy experts and moderators. Each candidate has to answer up to 10 questions that are pre-loaded into a computer system and then randomly generated by the computer. It could be as many as ten questions, but it could be fewer. Regardless, they all answer the same number of questions, and they’d have to answer a minimum in each category. This way, we don’t have one candidate having to respond to 5 questions about his DUI arrest as a college student. Most questions would be about matters of substance, but perhaps candidates could be asked one or two ‘wildcard’ questions by the media or by viewers at home. The accuracy of responses could be shown to viewers at home in real-time. Viewers could then make their own judgments about who won/lost.
It depends on what area of knowledge is being tested. Which would push both sides into trying to implement questions about GMOs or global warming, that are about policy issues, or else the questions would be about irrelevancies, like calculus.
Even factual questions are subject to this kind of slant. Several years ago, some professors were testing how much partisanship led people to believe things that weren’t true, and one of the questions was “true or false - no WMDs were found in Iraq.” The professors said the statement was true. Technically, it is false. Their problem was that they were confusing that question with the question “Were there significant enough numbers of WMDs found in Iraq to justify the invasion”, and that’s not the same question.
Well, that’s true.
Regards,
Shodan
A few years ago, I would’ve thought this a stupid idea because naturally candidates understood the basics of the Constitution, and if they didn’t, nobody would vote for them because nobody wanted an ignoramus in the White House. Then a few weeks before the GOP convention, the presumptive nominee expressed support for the Twelfth Article of the Constitution, and that along with other obvious signs of ignorance led me to throw my assumption out the window.
The Constitution would, of course, have to be amended because the Framers also assumed an ignoramus couldn’t get elected President. We have failed them. So be it.
Of course the questions wouldn’t be, “Explain how capitalism works” but the sort of basic, fill in the blank or multiple choice questions on a standard high school government class exam. How many articles are in the US Constitution? What is the role os the Executive Branch? How many votes are needed to override a presidential veto? Nobody would fail such a test because even an ignoramus would memorize the answers first, and that’s the point. Such a test wouldn’t be designed to weed out anyone but to ensure that anyone assuming the highest office in the land would have a minimal understanding of how the government works.
No, it’s not serious. I appropriated it from a bit of wordplay in Infinite Jest.
That bit from the professors is on the whole a true statement still. This is because the big lie then was that Iraq was making them those weapons right then at the time of the invasion. Finding buried past warheads from past efforts that Iraq had acknowledged before does not make it even technically true.
As for the OP, IMHO there was indeed a test made for presidential candidates and it takes place during their candidacy, it was clear that Trump failed to show basic knowledge about very important issues, but unfortunately a good number of voters ignored what Trump said or already believed that scientists were and continue to be wrong.
[Then Trump just humiliates the woman and shuts her up]
Some people don’t want their candidate to be accurate, right, intelligent etc.
They want their candidate to win, and if saying stupid and/or hurtful things brings in the votes then by ghod they will support a stupid and/or hurtful candidate. If you doubt this, listen to the roar of the crickets when you ask what what hateful and/or stupid thing their candidate would have to say for them to vote for somebody else.
Ok - I’ll accept that those questions (the last 3 in particular) are slanted, but they are slanted in exactly the right way to obtain fairly important information regarding the candidates prejudices (prejudices here meaning unscientific or incorrect beliefs that probably influence thought processes).
Considering that over 40 percent of Americans are creationist, it could also backfire on the pollsters unintentionally.