Test them

In the long history of a republic growing into its own clothes — growing into its constitutional devotion to free speech and religious liberty, into its celebration of individual lives and equal rights for those of any race, sex, religion, ability or upbringing — we’ve never proposed basic standards for our leaders in this endeavor.

Why not? We have standards for so many other professions less complex than leader of the free world, or governor, senator or representative of a free state, or state legislator, or county commissioner, or mayor in a free town.

To meet the rules of the road, for example, you need a driver license. And you don’t get it without a test.

To serve in uniform, you need to test out of high school, at least, and then take subsequent tests to

determine your fitness level, talents and mental acuity.

To practice medicine or law or teach in public school, you have to take tests and be certified. To sell stocks, to account for somebody’s money or to build somebody’s house, you have to pass tests and be certified or licensed.

To shampoo somebody’s hair in a salon in Tennessee, you have to have 70 days of training, you have to take not one but two exams, and you have to pay a fee, according to Foxbusiness.com .

Don’t laugh, ’Gator. Some states require interior designers to be licensed. You can’t just show up with canned beer in a cooler and say, “put the couch against the wall across from the TV, put the coffee table in front of it, and we’re good.”

Nope. In four states you’ll need six years of education along with an apprenticeship to become an interior designer. To add to that burden here in the Sunshine State, it helps to be registered.

Then if you’re ever interrogated by a government committee of men who couldn’t design their way out of a matchbox, you can answer appropriately.

“Are you now or have you ever been a registered member of the Communist Party?”

No, sir, I’m a patriotic American.

“Are you now or have you ever been … a Practicing Interior Designer in Florida Untested and Unregistered?”

You could, of course, take the Fifth Amendment, part of our constitutional apparel. Sen. Rick Scott, formerly head of the giant health care company Columbia/HCA, took the fifth 75 times to avoid incriminating himself when deposed in a civil lawsuit alleging his company broke a contract, while Columbia/HCA was under investigation for criminal fraud. He resigned, and the company ultimately pleaded guilty to 14 corporate felonies, paying fines totaling $1.7 billion — a national, probably international, and possibly interplanetary record.

For the record, therefore, I don’t consider being a non-felon a basic standard, let alone a test of who should qualify to run the country or its communities, once elected. Clearly, plenty of non-felons should be felons — just look at our last president. So we have to find some other standards.

So far, our elected leaders have had to meet only a single great standard to secure jobs as presidents, senators, representatives, mayors, judges, sheriffs or any other elected position in local, state or federal governments: They have to have big mouths and glad hands.

Traditionally they had to be white and male, too, but that’s changed as we made progress.

Finding great leaders is a crapshoot, as my father used say, with factors like clubby rich friends or nowadays Super PACs playing a sometimes too-significant role in elections.

But we can change that with a test, as a correspondent friend, Mike Luzzo, has long suggested to me, and I’ve pointed out before.

I’m bringing this up again because we’re about 200 days from the 2024 presidential election.

First, any leader should have to memorize — and prove it by recitation — the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Also, to show some historical nuance, each should know Dolley Madison’s original recipe for ice cream.

Second, every leader should know which of the Founding Fathers and which presidents owned slaves — just so we know where we started, something some people seem to want to ignore. Hint: Ten of our first 12 presidents were slave owners. Those who weren’t both had last names staring with an “A.”

Third: The principle “walk a mile in another (person’s) shoes” should be immediately resurrected and required of every leader.

Unless he (or she) has already tested out of the experience, therefore, any person seeking the White House or a federal office should have to do the following. A: Live at the federal poverty line as a single parent of two for six months; B: Work in a fast-food restaurant for six months; C: Inhabit an urban apartment in public housing for six months; D: Spend a single year commercially growing green beans, tomatoes, or a grain, and either apples or citrus, showing a modest profit: E: Demonstrate a knowledge of basic science and the applications of fact-based medical research; F: Endure 10 weeks of boot camp in one of the services, or a reduced period for those over 50; G: Demonstrate an intimate knowledge of the stoic philosophers, including Marcus Aurelius, and the novels “Don Quixote de la Mancha,” “Moby Dick” and “Huckleberry Finn”; H: Be bilingual; and finally, I: Demonstrate a fact-based understanding of climate change and its consequences.

If Americans insist our leaders pass such tests, even with average marks, by mid-century the nation might actually begin to fit its elegant and adaptive constitutional finery. And it may then be easier for our children to weather the challenges the rest of this century is about to throw at them. ¦

— A version of this column first appeared April 13, 2022.

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