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Tim Walz says he and Harris were too ‘safe’ during 2024 presidential campaign
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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politics
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The old guard (both literal and figurative) need to get the fuck out of the way for the AOC's and Crockett's who will actually speak to power instead of cowering in the corners.
The other big problem is that politics have become such a negative impact on people's lives in the US that regular people don't want to run for office anymore, which is what we really need.
It's to the point that I might prefer either a direct democracy with no representatives at all or electing reps via a lottery system. Most of the people with the desire to run for office, and all but a handful of those with the characteristics necessary to wade through the muck of special interests and campaign finance to actually get in office, are the kind of people you want as far away from power as possible.
Test potential politicians for mental illnesses and make sure they have empathy etc. Make them do mandatory counselling. I mean, counsellors and mental health workers have to do this because they're working with vulnerable people, but politicians don't??? Their decisions affect everyone, including vulnerable people.
i don't love the implication here that politicians are corrupt due to mental illness. they can be perfectly average mentally and still be corrupt because corruption is an innate and ever-present exploit of human psychology. empathetic people can be mistaken of where to place their empathy. mentally ill people can be a better option for a public office than someone else who is neurotypical, it all comes down to their platform and record of reliability. disability should not be mutually exclusive with ability to govern.
Power corrupts, yes, but you must see it in your life, and certainly if you've ever had dealings with the police or been mistreated by a teacher at school... Not all but some people in those roles are doing it precisely because they get a kick out of misusing their power, often when people are vulnerable and so can't defend themselves.
This is a character flaw at a minimum but can be part of a mental illness. I don't think the line is so definite between mental illness or health. People can have traits of illness without enough dysfunction to be diagnosed with the illness.
Disability which is incompatible with kindness, understanding, decency etc should not be allowed power over people, especially vulnerable people. Most people who were ill and were decent would not want to be in a position where they could harm people. Cluster B's and such wouldn't care. If they don't care (consistently), then they shouldn't be in a position of power over people. There are plenty of other jobs.
Looking at trump in particular the reliance on voters being good judges of character has to end, which means there must be a mechanism in place to prevent people like trump ever getting near power.
i think the second we open up the avenue for certain character traits to be banned from public office, it opens up a new avenue and mechanism for oppressive government bodies to prevent their opponents from gaining power against them. Who gets to decide what traits count as disqualifying? what measures do we use to identify who has met this threshold? where and how could someone be treated for these in order to gain back eligibility? how difficult would it be to change these rules if they were incorrect? how hard would it be for a bad actor to change these rules for their own gain? how much money would be spent on this and the lawsuits that return from it?
I'd guess a council of psychologists would administer their own tests under lie detector, perhaps a yearly lottery from an eligible pool of reputable and experienced specialists, maybe also other renowned experts. No positions being permanent could eliminate some problems. The difficult part would be deciding where the lines are drawn. Someone like trump should be easy to disqualify without any testing, just from his widely reported past record of scams, fraud etc.
Imagine a young Putin, whose service record is largely secret, not much other history to go off, who doesn't give away much, surely has information about past testing and is very smart.
So it's not going to be 100% reliable, just a tool to hopefully improve the situation. It could begin with disqualification being reserved for only the worst, and then record how candidates perform vs predictions and readjust as necessary.
As to treatment, its impossible to say, it really depends on the individual to know if it's even possible. Also whether its a good idea to let candidates repeat what are essentially aptitude tests which they could cheat.
If anyone is subject to oppressive government scrutiny it should be politicians.
i think it would be infinitely simpler to just ban the actions you don't want people to do and a better mechanism to enforce it than to try and police the amorphous qualities of their character and behavior. Like, our problem here is that the executive branch has been granted too much power by congress, corporations are treated like people and can vote with their dollars, and congress + the supreme court have no mechanism to enforce laws against the executive branch. If the system was actually segregated enough in duties and insulated from capital, it would be immune to the effects of someone even as bad as trump. It would also prevent all of the false positives and the mechanisms for abuse that would open when we start calling people ineligible for innate and immeasurable qualities.
The problem is people can get into power even when they've already done immoral things. Trump proves that the existing casual appraisal system isn't working. Every asshole who gets into power makes it easier for the next, partly because they are able to chip away at the mechanisms of democracy. Now trump is a king and its pretty much over.
There should be radical change and a much greater onus on the personal qualities of future leaders, as there used to be.
I hope you can at least agree that leaders ought to be held to the highest standards of integrity? Even in my lifetime Clinton was forced to quit over a BJ.