Lest we forget, 39 years ago yesterday Tricky Dick beat it for San Clemency, fleeing DeeCee like a rat out of an aqueduct.
I was working for my first daily paper, the Colorado Springs Sun, and at the ripe old age of 20 it seemed to me that Nixon would be our nadir, president-wise. But then I had no idea that Ronnie “Hollywood” Raygun and George Armstrong Bush (Lone Star Air Force, ret.) were waiting in the wings.
Sometimes I think we’d be better served by instituting a draft for public office. Selective service. Instead of pissing away a ton of time and money on elections, a cumbersome democratic process for which we are clearly ill-equipped, we dump everyone’s Social Security number into a big hopper, and on prime time come Election Day, some Vanna White type starts pulling ’em out.
Start low, with the U.S. House (because, really, does it get any lower than the U.S. House?), and then work your way up. The last number pulled gets to be president for four years. One take, no do-overs.
Since this would be a no-choice deal, we wouldn’t have to provide any perks to attract the “talent.” So away with the fat paychecks and pensions — employees in our three branches of government will be paid whatever the median wage happens to be at the time ($827 per week in the first quarter of 2013). Away with the primo health care that none of the rest of us gets. And no more unproductive downtime spent flatbacking for campaign cash. Beggary is unseemly, especially when one sees so little return on the investment.
Ditto the lucrative post-public-service lobbying gigs. This will be defined as treason and treated as such. Please to return at once to your regular job chucking spuds at strangers through drive-up windows, Senator, if you’re fortunate enough to still have it. (This would have the salutary effect of redirecting our lawmakers’ attention from the theatrical to the practical.)
Sure, even with a random lottery picking the leadership we’re still likely to get the occasional Anthony Penis in office, texting wiener pictures hither and yon. But with campaigning for election a thing of the past, at least we won’t have to endure endless reportage about his oh-so-tricky dick.
Mad Blog Media 
As I recall, the Greeks had such a system – being a member of the governing council was a duty and an obligation, rather like jury service today. They didn’t stand for office, they served when their turn came around.
A la WFB, take the first 100 names in the phone book?
“What’s that in the mail, honey? A summons for jury duty? ”
“No, worse… I got tagged for House duty!”
Neil Degrasse Tyson has often made the point that our elected officials are all lawyers and businessmen… Not a single engineer, mathematician, scientist in the lot. Part of the reason has got to be that anybody with any brains would never run for office, because you can get a lot more job satisfaction pursuing other avenues without the worry of running for election every couple of years
This lack of mathematical reasoning and basic it here Insologic is manifested every single day in our Congress. We elect a lot of folks who can sell ice to Eskimos, but not very many people who can remember the recipe for ice.
basic it here Insologic
Thanks, Siri.
Basic adherence to logic, I’m guessing it was supposed to be.
We had a rule in my old Geology Dept. in Hawaii: Anyone who actually wanted the job of Chair of the Dept. was prohibited from holding it. It worked well, as it excluded the egomaniacs and ensured whoever was chair would make sure it was a de minimus job, rather than an onerous burden on the rest of us. Such rules should apply for public office. I like Stan’s idea.
Ditto on Steve’s comment. Most of us who are coneheads are a little bit introverted, so to speak. My first wife scolded me (after leaving me for greener pastures) that I loved my mass specs more than I loved people, including her. With such an attitude, being in the House of Reps would make most scientists about as queasy as that cat in the Pepe le Pew comix. But it would be an idea to have a few folks in high office who know more about climate change, resource depletion, groundwater contamination vs. hydrofracking, etc., than what they read in the Bible or heard on Faux News.
When I still had a racing club — the fabled Team Mad Dog Media-Dogs At Large Velo — we leaned heavily toward anarcho-totalitarianism. If you skipped a meeting, you were liable to find yourself elected president.
We could take this nationwide. Anyone who isn’t registered to vote, or who didn’t vote in the last election, their names go into the hopper. Everyone else gets to skate and criticize deeply, profoundly and loudly.
I took an informal poll of three school districts, counting the teaching areas of all of the principals and assistant principals
The final tally was something like 193 administrators, of which three came from the math department. All of the sciences combined contributed another five. Phys ed and the arts were equally negligible, leaving the rest equally split between English and social studies.
That’s half the problem. But the bigger problem is that every single school administrator is self-selected. There is no leadership development, managerial mentoring, or stepping stones to become an administrator. In other words, a principal is not selected from the best of the department heads. A principle is simply a teacher who got fed up with teaching, and was willing to put himself through grad school.
So, could we have running our schools? It bunch of teachers who did not like teaching very much, and decided that they were suited for management. On top of that, their folks who are really good at painting pretty words and explaining a possible solution, but not good at analyzing the problem and developing a solution
And I can’t help but think that our government has more similarities than differences to this model
Patrick, that was some funny shit. You ever think about stand up comedy?
By the way, can I get deferment for the duty in the House of Representatives? If you get the top job, can I be the Chief of Staff? That White House lawn would would become a outdoor velodrome, and we would have six day races every week.
Oh, God, no. I have a horror of speaking in front of a crowd. In college I dodged required presentations by turning in videos or cartoons, which kept me from soiling myself and spared my fellow students (and several professors) the shame of having to watch the puddle form.
Sure you don’t wanna be SecDef, or chairman of the Joint Chiefs?
Naw, those jobs would be boring in an O’Grady administration. Probably no wars, police actions, punitive expeditions, or other such bullshit on your watch. How about running Camp David for you? Mountain bike and cross park and .22 plinking range complete with club house and the biggest bar you can imagine.
PS: Nixon got me out of Vietnam 30 days early, and our of the army 5 months early. Gotta love the guy, even though he was a crook.
The Selective Service missed its opportunity to invite me to the party, as I turned 18 in 1972. After 17 years of living under my father’s roof I had come to think I was three years away from a half-pay pension and probably would have been deemed unfit for military service. Come to think of it, I was unfit for civilian service, too. And probably still am.
I pulled a really fine number. Somewhere around 300.
That brings back some memories! I can still remember the local FM rock station (KMET, a little bit of heaven at 94.7) broadcasting NIxon’s speech and instantly cutting to “Ding, dong, the witch is dead” from the Wizard of Oz as soon as it ended. Priceless,
As noted above, the Greeks tried this form of public service – if we did it again, how much graft and corruption would be the result? Probably the best result would be the graft and corruption would be more evenly distributed, rather than concentrated on the career crooks…er….politicians.
Remember B. Mitchel Reed at KMET in those days Larry? “Fastest Tongue in the West” or some such as I recall.
Of course! And was there a guy anywhere in SoCal who didn’t have a crush on Mary Turner?
I’d forgotten that old chant we used:
Don’t change dicks in the middle of a screw,
Vote for Nixon in ’72
http://books.google.com/books?id=VYIlca_fQVsC&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=mount+nixon+quammen&source=bl&ots=s2qDx_NHpX&sig=WieSZUC1t52N4c4cvErPkVEhmMY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2mcFUq6xCqXgiwKKkIFo&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAw
So is that a place name or a command?
Like Patrick, my eighteenth birthday was in 1972. Just in time for Tricky Dick’s re-election campaign. I suspect that both POG and I both voted for the real war hero that year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McGovern
Hey, Patrick. Seems that Tricky Dick ran support for C-47’s in the Pacific. Any chance he knew your dad?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon#Early_career.2C_marriage_and_war_service
Never heard that chant. Just remember reading Hunter S. Thompson in Rolling Stone “four more beers” and Gerald Scarfe (?) illustrations.
I’ll just leave this here – http://slokenny.com/post/17292519560/political-silly-season-i-cut-out-this-column-from
Thank you…
Remember what the sanctified George Carlin said about humanity… Remember how stupid the average person is…. Then remember half the population is stupider than that.
As a retired high school science teacher we had to remember THE LAW OF CONSERVATION OF BS “the total amount of BS is the unverse is constant, only the distribution chandes over time” the principals come & go, but the kids and teachers are constant….
I was in a department store and Nixon was on tv speaking. All the sets were tuned to the broadcast.
Works for me, oh brillant one.