For Political Quotas

I suppose that no one would agree with me that merit has a poor home in politics. I mean virtues outside of the art of selling one's self to others. But I come by such a notion honestly, because when it comes to selling myself, there is instead just a tremendous void where finely machined cogs should be in my mental gearing. I've never seen anything tragic about that shortcoming. That complete lack has never brought on pain of any kind that I have noticed.

So, because merits of other kinds are not seen as vital for holding political office, I see no reason why our elections shouldn't be based on a quota system, regardless of the utter contempt that such a system has, especially when it comes to affirmative action. "People should be given opportunities based solely on their merits and not on their ethnicity," scream the many bitter opponents of affirmative action -- as if that solution wasn't reached only after generations had suffered through years of negative action of all kinds, when those same objectors and their predecessors were more than silent..

When it comes to actually serving in high government office, what are the merits required? Wisdom, intelligence, and decency immediately leap to mind. Yet these are not requirements that candidates have to meet when they file to run for office. Instead they just have to give testimony restricted to the commonplace, like name, address, age, and length of time as a citizen of the jurisdiction -- run of the mill qualifications that make most people eligible for public office.

So, in order to assure that all segments of the American public get a good shot at making the decisions of government, which definitely is not available to many of them now, why not have a system that ensures that people of all class, ethnic, and gender groups have representation in proportion to their numbers, instead of restricting that exercise of power mainly to people of one gender and one facial complexion. Why keep on guaranteeing that that one traditionally favored group will, in spite of all their best efforts in the case of the more reasonable among them, and with all their strongest efforts in the case of the less scrupulous among them, will behave in ways that the dispensations of government will go to the benefit of their own group first and foremost?

Lacking this quota system, unfairness and criminality, even in the most genteel garb, will continue to stain and strain American public affairs, and we will always have the TV shots of the assembled Congress at State of the Union addresses to give us the most graphic reminder -- aside from the complete pomposity of that ceremony, -- of how obscenely unrepresentative the branches of government are, when you think of how strongly the uniformity of those gatherings contrasts with the makeup of the U.S. as a whole.

I hope those who would yell in outrage at this idea have a good explanation for the present, supposed President of the U.S. and his accomplices, than whom millions of people of all sorts would undoubtedly have done a less damaging job in the same position over the last seven years. For starters, it is more than enough to say that in most cases, the U.S. Iraq, and the world would have been spared the endlessly tragic and grossly wasteful incursion into Iraq. Only fools could ever have thought that was a good idea.