How to qualify for office

Every presidential election season seems to begin with a lot of talk about who is the most experienced, most energetic and most enthusiastic candidate for the office of President of the United States. But I dare say that none of these qualities are necessarily attractive when it comes to choosing the next commander-in-chief.
Experience is a fine thing when one is applying for a job. But a candidate for elected office should not be equated with a job applicant, no matter how often politicians like to use the analogy. While I submit that experience is appropriate for some elected state offices, it should not be so heavily weighted for elected representatives. For instance, a person with a law degree and who is a lawyer would be more qualified for the office of attorney-general than someone who doesn’t or isn’t. But just because a candidate has a law degree and is a lawyer does not mean he or she is more qualified to represent the people than someone who doesn’t or isn’t. I once read a letter to the editor that suggested our elected lawmakers needed to be qualified, meaning they should all be lawyers. Well, according to state and federal constitutions, the only qualifications to serve as a legislator are age, citizenship and residence. So, as long as you are a U.S. citizen, are of age to hold elected office, and you reside in the district from which you seek office, then you are qualified. This applies to candidates for city council all the way up to President of the United States.
There are no other qualifications. I cringe when I hear some media pundit, politician or voter question a candidate’s qualifications for office as though having a college degree and professional experience somehow raises their stock. Have you ever looked closely at your state’s voter pamphlet and the candidate biographies therein? Everyone lists their education, work experience and civic memberships first, as if being more educated or professional makes them a better candidate. Their ideas are always last on the biography.
That doesn’t mean these qualities can’t or shouldn’t be considered when voting for a candidate. Community involvement, leadership, work experience, and education are all feathers in the cap, and these virtues can often mean the difference in a close race or difficult decision.
However, in my humble opinion, the most important qualities of a political candidate are his or her ideas, beliefs, values, principles and opinions. Most people will not vote for a representative whose ideology and values are not congruent with their own. That is just a fact.
Why is it so important, then, for a politician to be “qualified” for the office he or she seeks? As long as a candidate meets the constitutional requirements for holding office, those should be the only qualifications we ought to be concerned about. Everything else merely contributes to the total package.
If you want to vote for a candidate because you think his or her law degree gives him or her an edge, then so be it. But please don’t insist that our lawmakers be qualified with the proper education or professional credentials, because it isn’t necessary, and it certainly isn’t a constitutional requirement.
America’s founding generation specifically designed our constitutional republic to be truly a reflection of the people by having “the people” elected to represent their own. That’s why the only qualifications to hold office are age, citizenship and residency.
A person with only a high school education is just as qualified to legislate as someone with a Juris Doctorate. Our founders believed that “the people” were entirely capable of representing themselves, and that they didn’t require people specially trained or educated to lead for them.
As such, the farmer and the cowhand are just as qualified to represent his or her community in elected office as the banker, the lawyer or the doctor.
Some may ask: Would I want a farmer making policy decisions for my state or the country rather than somebody educated in the law?
My answer to that is…heck yes!
I’ll vote for somebody with more common sense than formal education any day of the week over somebody with a dozen advanced degrees and more academic theories on the brain than practical sense.
Common sense isn’t learned in the classroom. We learn it through everyday living. Experience is the best teacher, or so the old saying goes.
But beware of experience. Only the right kind of experience provides common, practical sense. The wrong kind gives us the type of people who are running our communities, states and country now.
The wrong experience can lead to elitism and corruption. Experienced politicians, for example, can be dangerous because they know exactly how to say and what to do for re-election. They are skilled at pulling the wool over our eyes by telling us what we want to hear and erecting smokescreens between us and reality. They are adept at concealing their activities apart from their constituents and doing things under the radar of the electorate. And they artfully use verbiage and language that create loopholes for them in their campaigns and in the bills they propose.
And the scary thing is that most of these people are highly educated and well credentialed. They are just a little bit deficient when it comes to personal ethics and character.
The problems that often develop from experienced politicians are the very reasons why America’s founders settled on very basic qualifications that even common folks could meet. They wanted to encourage average people to serve as citizen legislators as a check and balance against the professional politicians, whose involvement and permeation into government even the founders understood would be inevitable.
Citizen legislators provide a counter balance to the public officials who are particularly skilled in politics, and who use those skills as a means to their own ends.
Unfortunately, there are too many voters who have bought into the false notion that a candidate for elected office is somehow less qualified if he or she doesn’t either have adequate education or proper experience. Modern culture deems a four-year college degree to be the minimum of adequate education, and civic involvement or prior public service to be the minimum of proper experience. It seems like the more political experience one has, the more attractive one appears as a candidate for higher office.
I don’t understand that mentality. It is as though the electorate is gradually reverting back to nobility and royalty, when Americans were ruled and governed by a monarch instead of an elected legislature of fellow citizens.
By expecting our candidates to have a minimum of a college degree and prior public service experience, we are adding qualifications that aren’t really there while alienating those citizens who don’t meet these expectations. We are essentially distinguishing between the privileged and the under-privileged by giving the former an edge over the latter.
Not everyone has a college degree, and not everyone has experience in public service or civic memberships. Some of us are just hard working, taxpaying citizens, residents and neighbors. We are raising our families and being responsible, productive members of society. Should we be written off or disqualified because we don’t have the expected amount of education or experience?
Elected office isn’t a job; it’s a leadership position. As such, the same expectations or qualifications required for employment shouldn’t be the same for leadership posts. Character, values and ethics ought to count more for public office than formal education or experience.
When the people lead, then leaders will usually follow. And where people lead, the leaders will often follow, too. But when the people leave leadership up to the leaders instead of taking it upon themselves, then all we ought to expect is calamity caused by political corruption.
When the cats are away the mice will play, so goes the old axiom. My suggestion, then, is more “cats” in the halls of Congress to keep the mice honest and in check. Because we all know how mice breed, don't we?