Most people don’t think of it this way, but every election is a job opportunity. Incumbent candidates have a job review while others are interviewing for the job. Looking at elections as job reviews and interviews would be quite healthy for Americans.
Every person in an elected position takes an oath or affirmation to support the constitution of their state and the United States. In a way, that makes these documents their employee handbook. So, as the time for voting approaches, how about we review those incumbent candidates based on their employee handbook and decide if they’ve done their job and fulfilled their oath?
Let’s look at the resumes and the interviews for those new job candidates as closely as we would when hiring a new employee. Perhaps if we started treating our elections as job openings, we’d hire a better class of public servants.
Every couple of years, the American people hire representatives at all levels of government. We call these hiring binges elections. However, we don’t treat these bi-annual events as job reviews or even job interviews; instead, we treat them more like a sports draft, where we try to choose people who will help our team, the Donkeys or the Elephants. What if, rather than casting our ballots based on our team and hoping for the best, we actually looked at those asking for our votes as either current employees up for review or new employee interviews?
This may seem crazy, but think about it. The constitutions of most of our states say that all power is inherent in the people and that we delegate to governments some of that power for common use. If we are delegating authority to the government, then we have a right to oversee how that government works. If we are hiring people to represent us, then we should treat them as employees. If we saw those in elected office as employees rather than leaders, then maybe we’d get a better class of public servants.
The Constitution Study with Paul Engel on America Out Loud Talk Radio can be heard on weekdays at 4 pm ET. Listen on iHeart Radio, our world-class media player, or our free Apple, Android, or Alexa apps. Listen to other episodes of The Constitution Study, available on podcast.
