As we approach another election, I have been thinking about how we choose a president, and how we got to the point that our choices are Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The process of choosing a president based on TV advertisements and debates seems quite silly to me. I think that we could get a much better idea of who the best candidate is through a set of tests and challenges. The tests could be general knowledge, and US specific knowledge. For example, basic questions on science, math, and the geopolitical state of the world. I'm not expecting these guys to know tensor calculus, but I would certainly like to know if the guy I'll be voting for doesn't know how to compute an average, what 15% of 50 is, or what causes the seasons. Similarly, questions based on the US like what is the estimated population? What is the average income in the United States? What percentage of people have used unemployment in their lifetime? Which areas in the country have the highest levels of crime and poverty? What about per capita? How have those statistics changed over the last 20 years? And so on. Once, complete, we are given all their answers and scores.
They could be given challenges that require more than a 3 minute answer - there is a nuclear meltdown in Pennsylvania. What do you do? At each step along the process, introduce new variables/outcomes and have them respond - this could be a month long process where for 2 hours once a week we get to watch the candidate attempt to handle the issue. Of course, this isn't a perfect solution, but it certainly seems better than our current one.
I was thinking about this, then thought about what it would be like watching Donald Trump and Joe Biden go through this process. As a US citizen, knowing the rest of the world would see, it would be quite embarrassing - maybe its not a good idea and they should just argue on stage instead.
