The Lief Reservoir of Simple Truths and Smart One-Liners

[muon2]

The way I see it, politics doesn't have any qualifications. Sure, a lawyer needs to have a law degree to practice, and a doctor needs a medical degree, but in those two professions, you need to be able to know basically everything about the specific task you are supposed to be performing, whereas there is no possible way that anyone could know everything about running a country, even ex-Presidents. It's much less of an exact science and much more of a set of good and bad choices.

Also, more to the point, political office is one of the very few 'professions' (if you can call it that) that requires absolutely no formal qualifications at all, so the comparison is absurd.

Since the thread has gone for many posts now debating one posting of a "simple truth", I'll put my thoughts in, too.

Political office has one very important qualification - getting elected.

Getting elected is not easy and requires definite skills. A successful candidate for office has to be able to convince a majority of the electorate to give them their vote. Just as lawyers may succeed by different skills, such as excelling at trials or in crafting strong contracts, politicians can succeed with different skills, too. Some may succeed by being well known and trusted from their resume. Some can craft and deliver a message that matches the political views of the voters. Some rely on their ability to connect with voters on a personal level. Most succeed with a blend of skills like these, but tend to lean on just one or two primary skills to make their case.

[muon2]

Political office has one very important qualification - getting elected.

Getting elected is not easy and requires definite skills. A successful candidate for office has to be able to convince a majority of the electorate to give them their vote. Just as lawyers may succeed by different skills, such as excelling at trials or in crafting strong contracts, politicians can succeed with different skills, too. Some may succeed by being well known and trusted from their resume. Some can craft and deliver a message that matches the political views of the voters. Some rely on their ability to connect with voters on a personal level. Most succeed with a blend of skills like these, but tend to lean on just one or two primary skills to make their case.

"A job has one very important qualification - getting a job offer."

"Getting a job offer is not easy and requires definite skills. A successful applicant for a job has to be able to convince an employer to hire him or her. Just as lawyers may succeed by different skills, such as excelling at trials or in crafting strong contracts, job applicants can succeed with different skills, too. Some may succeed by being well known and trusted from their resume. Some can craft and deliver a mission statement that matches the work plan of prospective employers. Some rely on their ability to connect in job interviews on a personal level. Most succeed with a blend of skills like these, but tend to lean on just one or two primary skills to make their case."

None of this tells me anything about who should do a job, or how I should match job applicants with job openings.

It's in the nature of simple truths to be trivial when taken from another perspective, but your post seems like a very good description of how things are - of how things must be in any real democracy - that says nothing about what Antonio and others are disputing, which is how things ought to be, and how our actions as participants in democracy ought to reflect those prescriptions.

If elective office were by appointment only, then your analogy would work. In that case there would be one or small group of interviewers to make an offer. That offer would be made in significant part by the interviewers comparing the applicant to the job description and the duties involved. As a member of a job search committee, I'm expected to make my hiring decision one of my top, if not my top priority during that process.

Appealing to an electorate is a very different matter. In any real democracy the large fraction of voters have and arguably should have other matters on their minds that are higher priority than whom they will vote for - issues of family, work, health, etc. How to reach those voters is entirely different than applying for a job.

So to the other point about how voters should act as part of a democracy, I'll start by referring to the previous paragraph. Each individual voter's life has issues that may or may not coincide with an election cycle. If a voter has the time and inclination as part of their life's priorities, then by all means they should try to be well informed to vote. But there's nothing wrong with noting that there are many others whose lives will not pause to consider all the information as an election approaches. Yet they still have every right to vote as participants in a democracy, and no less than those whose lives permit them to be better informed. For those voters there may be other reasons like party loyalty and the opinions of family and friends that drive their decisions at an election.

[muon2]

I think that a coerced vote would certainly be a bad answer. I also think that a vote cast and later regretted by the voter could be perceived as a bad answer, but I would also claim that the later regret wouldn't necessarily change the views when the vote was cast. I think my point is that the resources available to a voter must necessarily differ, since the voters attention to an election must differ. I don't think that elections should demand voters reprioritize their attention, though they may choose to. Voters who cannot use a wider set of information are still making a valid decision given their life at the time.

And having been on both ends of both job searches and campaigns, I can only say from my experience that they are nothing alike.