Tuesday, April 17, 2007

One more thing on politics

It is interesting to me that anyone can just pick to be a candidate for a political office. Then we are given the list of people who want to hold that position and we have to pick one. In most other areas of life people are put in leadership positions because the people around them want to follow them, not because they were the best of the 3 options available. For example in large companies people don't campaign to be CEO or CFO, the board of directors finds the person they think will be best at the job and offers it to them. Similarly on sports teams a team captain is generally chosen by the team and the person chosen will either be one of the best players, or a guy with other qualities that the team values in some one who is supposed to lead them. Yet for some reason our political system is more like a talent show, anyone can sign up and whoever gets the biggest applause wins and gets to have a hand in ruling the most powerful country in the world. I'm not sure where we got off track, but my understanding of the first presidency is George Washington was asked to serve as president because everyone felt he would be the best man for the job, not because he did the most commercials. Let me know what you think, is our system effective for putting the best person in office, or are the greatest presidents and other political officials never being elected because no one ever asked them to serve?

2 comments:

T-Dub said...

You're probably right, but I doubt that it would ever be like that. People these days are driven too much by greed to offer bigtime posititions to random worthy people. You do make a very good point though. I wish that there was a group of people who wanted what's best for the country and put people in office that could make those things happen. I'll pray that somehow we may reach that sort of a government.

Anonymous said...

I think times are so different and the fact of the population being so big I do not know how we could do what was done in the days of Washington. It was certainly a time when a person would be noticed for their character and ability and appointed for the task.
I think the canidates should have to submit a paper on all the top issues and this would would somehow be made available to all.
Then when they travel around the items in the paper would be the topics of discussion.
If they change their mind they simply must say that. This would give us info to determine what they are about, they would have to actually say what they think. If some issues come up while the election is in progress the canidates would have to put in writing what they feel about it.
mike miller