Rigorous Screening for Presidential Candidates

We’d like to briefly share our vision for the ideal next political system and discuss whether it’s a legitimate future or mere fantasy.

We believe a new political system should run not on money and influence but on expertise and benevolence. Instead of the president being the person who can wield the most financial power, influence (or brainwash) the most people, and manipulate the democratic-capitalist system, the office of president (and other critical positions) should be reserved for the competent and the benevolent.

Competent means the person has a long history in politics, economics, finance and other related fields. Benevolent means they genuinely work for the good of the people rather than to line their pockets and bolster their Machiavellian ego. The principle of no-harm underlies everything they do. Bribery and lobbying cannot shake them.

There are potential problems with this: how do you establish an objective measure for competency and benevolence?

And is imposing the ideal type of learner really a democratic move? Isn’t it just one segment of society imposing over another segment? Surely the democratic system already takes this into account by letting us decide who is competent and benevolent?

We’ve hit our head against the wall with these questions many times. We wonder whether it’s biased. We wonder whether it’s feasible. We wonder whether it’s another form of dictatorship.

And we’ve come to the conclusion that democracy, though a priori built on the principle of letting the people decide, actually does a bad job of doing so. Sure, we decide what box we tick on voting day. But the candidates themselves don’t arrive to their station democratically.

They often bully and manipulate their way there, like dictators or medieval kings, then we choose which bully is the best. Not to mention the fact that they invest a lot of money into swaying public opinion, like marketeers or salesmen, often lying through their teeth to gather up more votes. That’s not democratic at all. It makes a mockery of the entire democratic process.

We’ve also concluded that we have to define an objective standard at some point, and that current democracy does so but does so poorly. The objective standard is defined by those who meet it: those who have money and the influence.

Think: isn’t it truly tragic that you can buy your way to US president, and in doing so eliminate the truly competent and benevolent candidates? It is highly, highly undemocratic and remarkably damaging to our country. We need an objective standard because our current one is highly flawed and heavily fixed.

The solution is to create a filter for candidates. We test them for the attributes of competence and benevolence before letting voters decide. They can’t just buy their way in to the running. We’ve had political leaders of this ilk in recent times: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, even Barack Obama to some extent. They all shock history, and most of them didn’t reach their station via the democratic process.

How do we measure these attributes fairly? At school and university we go through several exams and are thoroughly tested on our subject knowledge. If we don’t match up, we don’t get the certificate. The same thing should happen to presidential candidates, who are applying for the most important job in the world. If they can’t demonstrate subject knowledge and benevolence under rigorous scrutiny and testing, they shouldn’t be allowed to run. It’s quite simple.

Do they have a clean history? What is their track record? What motivated that track record? What level of psychological development are they at? What level of moral development can they access? What is their worldview? Are they growing psychologically? Do they engage in spiritual practice? What is their character like? This is just a short snippet of all the areas we could analyze, and they’re all objectively measurable.

We round up the most benevolent, competent psychologists, political figures, activists and influential people of our time, and we let them decide by consensus who gets to run and who doesn’t, using competence and benevolence as their measure. Surely the charlatans, maniacs and Donald Trumps among us would never get through such a screening.

And though we often lose hope of this possibility, we remind ourselves that though political landscape appears static and stagnant in the short term, in the long term it undergoes remarkable, unimaginable transformation. We trust that the same will happen to our flawed democracy, and that small changes, like screening for presidential candidates, could bring enormous change.