''I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.'' President Bush.
Based on that statement, Paul Krugman, in his column today (or yesterday in the New York Times) characterizes the president as thinking that being with out insurance is no big deal. Krugman goes on to suggest that the President has little understanding or empathy for poor people. I'm sure Krugman is right, but Bush is not the first president to have little knowledge of the world that even the middle class inhabit.
That got me to thinking about a better way to pick presidential candidates. The obvious answer is a reality tv show. I should have known that Mark Burnett would have beat me to the punch, as described in this article. But he wants to limit his show to independent candidates. Why stop there? Why not use reality tv to pick the Republican and Democratic nominees? Why should any old Mitt, Barack, or Hillary get to be president without some proof knowledge of the real life of their constituents? If you played this thing right, it could generate as much interest as American Idol, and just like American Idol, we might discover talent that we never knew existed.
My ideas for tasks for the candidate-contestants:
1) work and live for one week on minimum wage, while caring for two young children;
2) do manual labor in a factory, preferably one that has been regularly cited for OSHA violations;
3) deal with the fall-out of identity theft that results from yet another case of stolen personal data;
4) compete for admission to college and figure out how to pay for it;
5) get from point A to point B, using public transportation only;
6) find a dentist that accepts Medicaid and get in and out of a simpe check-up without having to miss half a day of work.
Those are just for starters, I'm open to other ideas.
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3 comments:
I like the minimum wage idea, but a week isn't long enough. They should be given certain bills (like a real-life family) that they have to pay throughout the show. But the catch is--their budget is only minimum wage for a 40-hour work week. You could do it like Big Brother, sorta, where they just live on it and do those tasks. That way, they learn both what it's like to live on minimum wage and fiscal responsibility.
Maybe they should just spend a week with Mike Rowe and Dirty Jobs. I would trust Discovery to report more accurately how the candidates did each day.
Hillary and S. Brownback in the same house, Big Bro style. Sparks could fly. And I like the idea of politicians dirtying their hands, legally.
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