Leadership

Many times you can hear people decry those in power, whether they are leading a household, business, municipality, or even the country. “What a bunch idiots! Now I have to pay more taxes because those fat cats up in Washington can’t get their shit together,” can occasionally be heard from the mouth of frustrated voters.”  Well, there is probably a pretty good reason that the fat cats are such idiots.

One would hope that the most capable and intelligent people are the ones who are running for and getting into office, this is not really the practice that we as humans are able to implement. In the United States, to get elected first you need to run and, more often than not, you need to receive votes. Neither of these are actually good indicators of ability. First the best and brightest individuals many times would rather go into professions such as engineer or doctor that; takes a lot of education and dedication. Many times when one goes about getting this education they would rather put this education to use in their desired profession, and not into the public sector, which might grant them little to no pay. The reason they do this is, like I said, their smart, and when weighing whether they want to hold an immense amount of responsibility, generate little to no income, while receiving a good amount of ill will from their constituents many of these intelligent people will respond with anything from a polite and tactful “no thank you” to a hearty “go fuck yourself.”

Another reason the best and brightest aren’t usually candidates  is because in the time that they spent studying and working and achieving, more often than not, they had to choose between socializing, studying, and eating or sleeping. As such they were not as able to socialize, which both inhibited them from socializing, and might have fostered an alarming addiction to video games, Mountain Dew, and Family Guy re-runs, which voters might see as a negative for someone in the role of President of the United States.

This being said politics has turned into something more like the Dating Game and Less like Jeopardy. This being said the next time you see a charismatic, endearing, and likeable candidate for political office there is a good chance that he was the guy who you see doing a twenty second keg stand at a party, the nice young lady doing blow in the club bathroom, or the person who left your party with a lampshade on his head and somehow ended up in the hospital with a broken hand, a warrant for his arrest in two states, and fifty cracker packages from a local diner. These are the kids who partied the night before the test, and turned binge drinking into a way of life. Now they’re adults so the drinking has changed from malt liquor and PBR, and the parties feature more suits and less kegs. Are they incapable of running the country? No, but they probably were C students, getting passable grades in classes in things like political science, ethics, and economics. So get out and vote.