Confronting Mediocrity

Watching the current crop of politicians pursuing the Republican presidential nomination is very much like watching a reality television show where there are no qualifications required to participate.  That may be fine for the Kardashians but shouldn’t there be slightly higher standards for running for president?

Maybe it would make sense to have a simple qualification test that all candidates would have to pass in order to run. I would want any president to be able to score 100% on the following quiz without the assistance of staff or Wikipedia!

This should be “walking around” knowledge for not only any aspiring leader of the free world but for any person running for federal elected office.  I suspect that few candidates would score 100%.

1. Identify the countries on the map.
2. What is the Commonwealth of Independent States?
3. What is the difference between the Congress and the House of Representatives?
4. What is quantitative easing?
5. Who is Hu Jintao?
6. Put these US presidents in chronological order: Jimmy Carter, Woodrow Wilson, Andrew Jackson, Harry Truman, James Buchanan, Ronald Regan.
7. What is the Bill of Rights?
8. Put these wars in chronological order: War of 1812, Revolutionary War, Mexican American War, World War 1, Korean Conflict, World War 2, Vietnam, Spanish American War, Civil War.
9. Name five Supreme Court Justices.
10. Is Puerto Rico a country?
11. Does oil obtained from drilling in US territory belong to America?
12. What is the Laffer Curve?
13. What countries are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council?
14. What is NATO and who are the members?
15. What is the eurozone?
16. Rank these countries from highest population to lowest: United States, Nigeria, China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia.
17. What does the term “great society” mean?
18. Define a regressive tax.
19. Compare taxation for S corporations versus C corporations.

Answers:

1. Country identification:
   1. Iraq
   2. Saudi Arabia
   3. Iran
   4. Afghanistan
   5. Pakistan
   6. India
   7. Turkmenistan
   8. China
2. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is an interstate association of the former republics of the Soviet Union. http://en.rian.ru/infographics/20100821/160274561.html
3. Congress is the bicameral legislative body composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
4. Quantitative easing:  A government monetary policy used to increase the money supply by buying government securities or other securities from the market. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/07/130408926/quantitative-easing-explained
5. Hu Jintao is the current Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China.
6. Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Regan
7. The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.
8. Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican American War, Civil War, Spanish American War, World War 1, Korean Conflict, World War 2, Vietnam.
9. Supreme Court justices: Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, John G. Roberts, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan.
10. Puerto Rico is not a country it’s a commonwealth of the United States.
11. Oil from United States soil belongs to the oil company that drilled it and they are free to sell it to anyone on the global market. It does not belong to America.
12. The Laffer curve is a controversial graphical representation of tax revenue as a function of the tax rate.
13. The permanent members of the United Nations Security Council are China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States.
14. NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and consists of Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Rep, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States.
15. The eurozone is seventeen European Union (EU) member states that have adopted the euro (€) as their common currency and sole legal tender.
16. In descending order of population: China, India, United States, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia.
17. The “Great Society” is a set of domestic programs in the United States targeting racial injustice and poverty and championed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
18. A regressive tax takes a larger percentage of income from low-income groups than from high-income groups. http://www.irs.gov/app/understandingTaxes/teacher/whys_thm03_les02.jsp
19. An S corporation is a pass through tax entity where the profits of the corporation are passed to the shareholders and taxed as individual income. A C corporation is taxed directly.