Instead of Elections, Perhaps Political Candidates Should Mud Wrestle

If you want to become a firefighter, police officer or paramedic, you have to pass some fairly rigorous physical, technical and knowledge-based criteria. That’s not a bad thing. It insures that qualified people get hired which benefits us all although even with all the educating and testing, some less than capable people still get through.

It’s the same with doctors, lawyers, dentists, teachers and even TV weather people who go through even more intense and extensive periods of learning just to qualify for the opportunity to enter their chosen professions.

Maybe it's long past time that we took a similar approach to politics.

Think about that. Politics is the one area of endeavour where you don’t need any experience, knowledge, aptitude, ability or even ethics or principles in order to get elected and then participate in making billion dollar decisions that affect us all.

For some reason, we have evolved a society that blithely turns over management of our national resources to people who have no demonstrated qualification to manage them. To be sure, there are more than a few lawyers and economists in politics but that is hardly reassuring. There are more than a few lawyers in prison too.

Apparently, all you need to go into politics is a glib tongue with an ability to talk for an hour without actually saying anything, flexible principles and an ability to schmooze your way through a thousand or so election campaign events with potential voters. The ability to kiss really ugly babies, smile when you’re talking to stupid people, flip burgers and flapjacks at community events and a willingness to eat just about anything at some campaign function pretty much makes you a shoo in.

None of what it takes to get elected actually prepares or qualifies someone for governing and that is the real problem these days. We are governed by people who mostly know as little as we do about the issues and in too many cases, know even less.

Just to compound things, most politicians hire bright young people fresh out of university who have crisp haircuts, trendy power suits and the life experience of a fruit fly. These young assistants are the ones who staff politicans' offices and meet with the bureaucrats, protect their politico’s image and who prance around filled with self-importance as if that was an appropriate substitute for actual knowledge and experience.

I think we should have the same kinds of criteria for potential politicians that we have for other professions (I am using the term profession somewhat loosely here in reference to politics).

I think that potential politicians should be required to attend some kind of course at a college or university and then pass an exam. Even car salespeople are required to do that now before they can become licensed to sell cars. 

When I hear a candidate, like Michelle Bachman, stand in front of her country during a national debate and demonstrate that she is unaware of the fact that Libya is in Africa, it pretty much underscores the state of things. Geography is important in determining foreign policy and there probably should be some geography criteria for national would be politicians, along with some rudimentary economics, ethics, law, strategic planning and even simple arithmetic.

Perhaps we could toss in a criminal background and a credit check as we do for many other professions. It might even be a good idea to consider a minimum age restriction as well.

Having a 19 year old sit in Parliament seems a little strange to me. As sincere and well-intentioned as he or she might be, I am more than just a little uncomfortable with the idea of handing over participation in billion dollar decisions to someone that most insurance companies still consider high risk when it comes to car insurance. It takes some life-experience and understanding of how the world actually works to even begin to comprehend the complexities of the issues modern societies face today and I have no confidence that someone who six months earlier was still in high school has that life experience.

Of course, I could be wrong. We have lots of former lawyers, accountants and economists elected to office and that hasn’t worked out to well for us either.

Maybe instead of elections we should just have potential candidates mud wrestle on national television and the winners get to decide how to spend all of our money.  Before you dismiss that as an absurd idea, remember that these guys throw so much mud at each other that they're literally already half way there.

Honestly. Wouldn’t you rather watch Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama or Stephen Harper and Thomas Mulcair mud wrestle in little Speedos than suffer through interminable and obscenely expensive election campaigns? 

It probably wouldn’t ensure better government but I doubt it would give us government that was any worse and it would certainly be more entertaining than all that repetitive and redundant  televised campaign coverage.

If we handled like they do the Olympics, we could sell sponsorships and even make a few bucks to pay down some of our horrendous debt created by all those politicians who didn't have a clue before or after they got elected.

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