The Lack of Qualified Candidates

OK, so maybe we don’t have the freedom of choice we thought we had in our political process. Is that really such a problem? What’s wrong with the Democratic or Republican candidates we do have to choose from? After all, they’ve been selected by people with lots of political “experience.” Wouldn’t these parties nominate only those people who can do the job? Wouldn’t these parties select only the best qualified people to run for office? No.

Why should they?

The T.O.S.S. Party takes the position that candidates from these two parties are generally NOT the people best qualified for the offices they seek. In fact, we don’t think qualifications play much of a role at all in selecting candidates. The vast majority of candidates are chosen for reasons having little, if anything, to do with their ability to effectively serve the public. Rather, they’re chosen for their ability to get elected in the first place and their willingness to do what they’re told once they’re in office. Whether they can—or will—faithfully execute the duties of their office isn’t all that important, because they’re not in office to serve the public. They’re there to serve other interests.

Whose interests?

First and foremost—the interests of their own political parties. Parties that carefully selected them to run for office. Parties that helped finance and run their campaign. Parties that, above all else, want to get their candidates in office and keep them there. Parties that want to gain and keep control of government. To use the power of government to advance their own agenda while denying the rival party an opportunity to do the same thing. It’s all about having power—not using it to accomplish something useful. If something useful gets done occasionally—well, so much the better. If not, so what? As long as their candidates keep getting reelected, it doesn’t matter to them. We don’t matter to them. The voters don’t matter to them.

You don’t matter.