cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/questions/p/1499200/why-don-t-countries-add-harder-requirements-for-becoming-a-president-like-having-a-decor
It seems to me the obvious next step.
I mean if other jobs requirements like IT and even accounting had started asking for more certifications and experience to work, then why the heck shouldn’t presidents get asked to be more qualified for their jobs?
Or, you know, maybe some basic stuff, like not having committed treason, not having been convicted of 34 felony counts of fraud or been civil convicted of rape. Little stuff.
Putin convicted Navalny of embezzlement to get him off the ballot.
The last few prime ministers in the UK have all been extremely well educated. Attending private schools such as Eton and Uxbridge and then attending top universities.
On paper they have been incredibly talented. In reality they were fucking useless.
The best leaders are the ones who seek the views and advice of experts in their respective fields. They appoint advisors based on their experience, skills and qualifications.
The shitty leaders surround themselves with yes men and sycophants
Oxbridge* mixed with Oxford and Cambridge Uxbridge is just unimportant suburb of north London. That being said Uxbridge used to be called oxbridge in 12th venture and then voxbridge and then huxbridge before taking Uxbridge in mid 15th century.
Not sure if the fact was fun, but it was definitely occupying space in my brain but adding very little value.
Thank you. On paper you would make a great prime minister.
What about on pavement?
It’s fundamentally more democratic. A president isn’t simply a job, but meant to be a representative of the people, so it should be a role that’s open to whoever the people choose.
As for the problem of horrible people becoming president, I think the better way to tackle that is to limit and distribute the president’s powers. Presidential systems suck, having so much power rest on a single person, even a democratically elected one, is just a bad idea.
Yeah grow up and get a prime minister like a real country. They’re generally pretty boring and if they fuck around we fire them immediately.
Fire netaniakhu
Yeah the populace would have to not like what he’s doing for that.
If it is important to the public, they will use it as a selection metric when voting. Otherwise, it could be manipulated by the current government as a way to restrict future candidates.
The moment you start allowing limitations on who can or can’t be president you open the door to politicians shifting the requirements to fit their political needs. The legislature would immediate start the game of updating the requirements in a way that seems benign but is primarily calculated to hurt their opponents. Within 2-3 election cycles you’d have bills up specifically targeted to exclude their most popular opponents.
What qualifications would that be, that helped in the job as president im what way exactly? A master in not-being-an-asshole? Or a bachelor in Listening-to-experts-while-deciding-in-favor-of-all-humans? Surely the US could use a requirement of a PhD in Anti-Corruption.
That snarky list aside, what makes leaders great/very good is not learned in higher education. Yes, in some situations having a bit of knowlege can help, but it is far from the most important (additionally even with a PhD you would only be expert in one field). It is not missing education, that made people like Trump, Putin, Xi or any other of the world leaders that bad. You can even be very intelligent, smart and highly educated and still be an asshole ready to through everyone in the wood chipper to gain more money and power.
Add to that, that higher education is already more available to rich, white people (especially in the US) and you essentially excluded most people from minorities with that rule. The capitalist world is already bad enough in that regard without some education requirements.
Do you really believe a degree is the main thing stopping heads of states from acting in the service of others instead of themselves?
Have you seen starship troopers? The book goes more into detail about their politics.
But the TL;DR is that you can’t become a politician without serving for three years. You’re not fit to make choices for everyone else’s good if you’re not prepared to give your own life for the common good.
A bit more grim, even. Service is required to become a citizen, it’s not by birth. Also, it’s easier for citizens to get a baby license.
As a person who has spent his entire adult life in or working for the military, I support a service commitment provided the military is not the only option
It would make sense too since POTUS is the commander in chief of the military
IIUC, Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, while Dubya Bush got an MA in Harvard.
In the fall of 1973, Bush entered Harvard Business School. He graduated in 1975 with a Master of Business Administration. He is the only U.S. president to have earned that degree.[16]
However,
wp:Abraham Lincoln#Early life and education
(my bold)
Lincoln was largely self-educated.[20] His formal schooling was from itinerant teachers. It included two short stints in Kentucky, where he learned to read, but probably not to write. After moving to Indiana at age seven, he attended school only sporadically, for a total of less than 12 months by age 15.[21] Nevertheless, he was an avid reader and maintained a lifelong interest in learning.[22]
elsewhere in the article:
He gained a reputation for strength and courage after winning a wrestling match with the leader of a group of ruffians known as the Clary’s Grove boys.[45]
…
In adolescence he was tall and strong, participating in jumping, throwing, wrestling, and footraces, and demonstrating exceptional strength.[337] Burlingame notes that Lincoln’s clothes “were typically rough and suited to the frontier”, with a gap between his shoes, socks, and pants that often exposed six or more inches of his shin; “he cared little about fashion”.[338]
I think becoming a US President, VP, and a Congressperson should be more open, including to those not born in the US and ≥18 years of age.
The idea of the president is to be naturally born. Do you see Americans become presidents/prime ministers of other countries? No, because the people of other countries, want someone who represent them. Not someone who is an outsider, who might not care about the values that the country cares about.
So if an American philosopher-king was born in Mexico, became a US citizen at 10, and spent the next 50 years in the US should nonetheless not be allowed to be a US President because she wasn’t born in the US?
(Let’s say she was born in 1968.)
You’re not making sense.
Let’s say a girl was born in Mexico in 1968. Her parents (who are also Mexican) moved to the US soon after and by 1978 become US citizens, which made her a US citizen.
She gets great grades while in school and integrates fully into American society. Let’s say she goes to university and gets a Ph.d, and later serves 2 terms in the US House of Representatives. Perhaps she could try to be US President. She’s not well known but that was true with the last 3 Democratic US Presidents (Carter in 1974, Clinton in 1990, and Obama in 2006 were relative nobodies).
Ah, but she’s not a native-born citizen and thus can’t be a US President.
Better question: Why don’t we just pull like 501 names out of a hat from the general public and let them be the “political class” for 4 years at a time? Seems all we’re doing is injecting a layer of corruption as it is.
Most of the successful countries who did this only pulled from a small elite part of society. It was like rich people jury duty.
Formal education is a shitty predictor of presidential effectiveness—one of the most academically-accomplished presidents was Herbert Hoover, and one of the least-educated was Abraham Lincoln.
Both deciding where the line is, as well as establishing who selects and changes the requirements added onto a pre-existing system seems like an extraordinary amount of additional attack surface with very few real world benefits.
Some systems don’t have hard requirements, but instead have selective systems that result in those higher qualified getting further along. Xi Jinping has a PhD in Marxism, and a degree in chemical engineering, for example. He had to work his way upward, because the system of governance in China begins from local council elections, who then send elected delegates to higher councils, and these councils elect delegates for higher councils than this. Systems that begin at the local level and fully integrate the selection process tend to place higher value on competency.
Hard limits, however, are antidemocratic, aside perhaps from limiting capitalists from the highest organs of state power.
Systems that begin at the local level and fully integrate the selection process tend to place higher value on competency.
Just because the system begins at a local level does not mean that it selects for someone with higher competency.
At least if your definition of competency is a skilled leader that wants to do what’s right for the country.
Xi is competent through a certain lens, but even maduro was competent through a certain lens.
Which competency are we talking about? One that allows you to climb the party ladder or one that allows you to be a better leader for the nation. The two aren’t mutually inclusive, and require different qualities and skills.
I never said beginning at the local level automatically means someone is competent. Xi is enormously qualified as a leader, hence his overwhelmingly high approval rating among Chinese citizens and the fact that China regularly sets ambitious targets and beats them.
Some systems don’t have hard requirements, but instead have selective systems that result in those higher qualified getting further along.
Xi Jinping has a PhD in Marxism, and a degree in chemical engineering, for example. He had to work his way upward, because the system of governance in China begins from local council elections, who then send elected delegates to higher councils, and these councils elect delegates for higher councils than this. Systems that begin at the local level and fully integrate the selection process tend to place higher value on competency.
You don’t actually say why him having a Phd and a degree in chemical engineering helps his chances of being selected for higher position. It is only implied that he started at the local level and hence was elected to higher office.
I am not saying it doesn’t, I’d like to know if that is the case.
Systems that begin at the local level and fully integrate the selection process tend to place higher value on competency.
And you follow it up with this. Which I don’t think is true. At least depending on your definition of “competency”.
My point is that Xi had to work his way up each time. Not only did he need to be elected locally, but he needed to be reelected each time he climbed by a new, successive body. This isn’t merely someone coming from nowhere and buying a campaign a la Trump, but someone who had to start at the bottom and prove himself again and again.
Dude, you are completely ignoring my comment. Lol.
No, I didn’t. It’s much easier for competent people to climb when they have to prove themselves capable of doing so. I think you may have mixed this up with me saying university degrees are necessary?
Literacy tests have historically been a way of disenfranchising minority (typically black) voters, so just think of a worse version of that. Also as other people have said most politicians are very well-educated as is. More fundamentally, though, restricting political participation in this way runs directly counter to what democracy is; the question that needs to be asked is “is there a dire problem you’re solving by compromising democracy in this way” and the answer is “no.”
Several things pop up in my mind immediately - the most obvious is, more experience in politics is very often thought of as a bad thing. If a political system has become stagnant or even has resulted in the decay of a national infrastructure, the systems therein, people typically recognize that corruption and laziness and capture from powerful often scary outside systems and people are the cause, and any politician that’s been participating the entire time is more likely to be complicit compared to a new comer. At least that’s the pervasive belief of the general populace.
Two - often higher numbers of degrees or accreditation just means harder work ethic, but not necessarily better innovation or the novel capabilities and insights needed to meet the moment for the right change necessary. A great example is Lincoln, who is hailed as one of if not the greatest President for many reasons, but most notably saving the union from fraction and self destruction. He was known as a self taught great orator, extremely intelligent but only had 10-12 months of formal education total. His entire life. Very often innovation and genius comes from unexpected places, and cutting that out as a potential source for solutions and leadership would be a very serious mistake.
Three - limitation based on achievements marked by what’s been seen by some as an elite, inaccessible to many system that is flawed in how it teaches and tests its candidates serves to keep power, access, top roles from demographics historically, a great example is how voting during the heights of racism in the US requires literacy tests to ensure minorities couldn’t vote because it was illegal for minorities to go to school and learn how to read. This applied in other ways to women as well. The same can be applied to people who can’t afford a masters or phd, or even to finish high school because they have to work to help their family survive. A higher degrees example might be how Harvard and a few other ivory league universities hold the vast majority of some occupational positions, 16 of the Presidents being one example.
It’s worth noting that 12 presidents had no degree, including Washington, so we wouldn’t have had those people or their leadership. That might be good in your opinion, but the world is different now and applying limiting tests like that today would severely limit the pool from which we could select candidates, and most people don’t want the job tp begin with, which limits it to very few, many of which you really don’t want holding that power.
