One of the biggest mistakes modern Americans make is believing that elections are popularity contests. They are not. Plain and simple, elections are job interviews. The office is the position. The candidate is the applicant. The voter is the employer. When viewed through that lens, many of the decisions being made by the American electorate become difficult to understand. In virtually every other area of life, people want the most qualified person for the job. Businesses look at experience, work ethic, judgment, character, and past performance. Homeowners carefully select contractors because a bad choice can cost them thousands of dollars. Parents carefully choose babysitters because they are entrusting someone with the well-being of their children. Yet when it comes to positions that can influence entire communities, states, and even the nation itself, many people seem more interested in slogans, personalities, emotions, and popularity than the qualities that would matter in almost any other hiring decision. This would be troubling enough if the positions being filled were insignificant. They are not. The people we elect make decisions that affect schools, businesses, communities, families, public safety, infrastructure, taxes, and countless other aspects of daily life.
Part of the problem begins with the language we use. For decades Americans have become accustomed to referring to elected officials as “leaders.” While it may seem like an innocent choice of words, I believe it has done tremendous damage to how people view government and those who occupy elected office. The people in Washington are not our leaders. The governor is not our leader. The mayor is not our leader. The city council member is not our leader. They are our representatives. There is an enormous difference between those two concepts. A leader determines direction and expects others to follow. A representative is chosen to carry the concerns, priorities, and interests of the people into government. A representative works for the people. The people do not work for the representative. Somewhere along the way many elected officials began viewing themselves as leaders rather than representatives, and many citizens began accepting that idea without question. The result is a political class that increasingly behaves as though it exists above the people rather than in service to them.
That distinction matters because it changes the entire conversation. Once you understand that an elected official is simply an employee hired by the public to perform a specific job, the questions become obvious. Would I hire this person? What qualifications do they possess? What evidence have they demonstrated that they can be trusted with the responsibility they seek? Have they shown good judgment in their own lives? Have they successfully managed responsibility? Have they sacrificed for others? Have they demonstrated wisdom? Have they owned the outcomes of their decisions? These are the questions that should dominate every election cycle, yet they rarely do. Instead, elections increasingly resemble popularity contests where candidates compete to tell voters whatever they want to hear in order to secure the job.
One of the most important qualities I look for in anyone seeking public office is something that has become increasingly rare in modern society: ownership of outcomes. Ownership of outcomes means understanding that decisions have consequences and accepting responsibility for those consequences. It’s about accountability. It means recognizing that solving today’s problem is not enough if doing so creates a much larger problem tomorrow. Unfortunately, many people never develop this way of thinking because they have never been placed in circumstances that require it.
Parents understand this concept better than most. Imagine a child spending a month with a well-meaning aunt who has no children of her own. Every morning the child wants candy for breakfast. The aunt knows that giving the child candy is not the best decision, but she also knows that refusing will result in whining, crying, complaining, and resistance. Eventually she decides that giving the child candy is simply easier on her. The child is happy. The whining stops. The immediate problem is solved. The next morning the same thing happens. Then the day after that. By the end of the month the child has learned exactly what behavior produces the desired result.
Then the child returns home.
The parent now has to deal with the consequences of what the aunt allowed. The parent has to deal with and correct the behavior that she helped create. The parent has to endure the arguments, the resistance, and the frustration. If the unhealthy habits allowed by the aunt were to secretly continue and develop into larger problems later in life, like obesity or diabetes, the parent will continue dealing with those consequences long after the aunt has forgotten about the entire situation. The difference is simple. The aunt solved today’s problem by creating another one that she would never have to solve, or even deal with. The child returned home. The parent remained. The aunt moved on with her life while the parent was left to deal with the consequences of decisions they she made, not them. The aunt did not own the outcome, even though she helped create the issue. The parent did. Sound familiar?
This example explains far more about society than most people realize. Increasingly, we are placing people into positions of influence who think like the aunt instead of the parent. They seek immediate solutions, immediate praise, and immediate gratification. They want the applause that comes from making people happy today, while giving little thought to the consequences that will emerge tomorrow. The reality is that doing what is easiest is rarely the same thing as doing what is best. In fact, the best decisions are often the hardest ones because they require telling people what they need to hear, rather than what they want to hear.
This is where wisdom enters the conversation. Modern society has become obsessed with knowledge, while paying far too little attention to wisdom. There is an old saying that perfectly illustrates the difference. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit cocktail. The reason that statement has endured for so long is because it captures a profound truth. Knowledge is information. Wisdom is understanding how to apply that information. A person can memorize facts, earn degrees, quote statistics, and repeat talking points without possessing an ounce of wisdom. Wisdom is earned. It is earned through experience. It is earned through failure. It is earned through sacrifice. It is earned through responsibility. Most importantly, it is earned through living with the consequences of your decisions, good or bad.
That is why I become concerned when people with very little life experience seek positions that allow them to influence the lives of others. I am not the same person I was at twenty-three years old. Thank God. At twenty-three I thought I had many of the answers. Thirty years later I realize how much I didn’t know. Marriage teaches lessons. Raising children teaches lessons. Building a career teaches lessons. Managing finances teaches lessons. Experiencing setbacks teaches lessons. Life itself teaches lessons. A person who has never had to place someone else’s needs above their own, never had to assume responsibility for the livelihood of another as an employer, never had to sacrifice for a spouse or child, and never had to live with the long-term consequences of difficult decisions simply lacks experiences that tend to produce wisdom.
One of the great ironies of modern society is that the very qualities that often make someone highly qualified to serve are frequently the same qualities that prevent them from seeking office in the first place. The parent raising children, the business owner managing employees, the husband and wife building a family, and the countless individuals carrying real responsibility throughout their communities are often too busy fulfilling those responsibilities to pursue positions of influence. Nature abhors a vacuum. When qualified people do not step forward, someone else inevitably will. The question is not whether the position gets filled. The question is by whom.
Consider two hypothetical candidates running for a local school board position. The first is a thirty-six-year-old married mother of two. She went to college. She started a career. She met her future husband and decided to build a family. She has navigated the challenges that come with maintaining a marriage. She has learned how to balance a household budget. She has made sacrifices for her children. She has attended parent-teacher conferences, school functions, doctor appointments, birthday parties, and countless other events that consume the lives of parents. She understands what it means to place someone else’s needs ahead of her own because she has been doing it every day for years. Her children attend schools within the district, and she decides to run because she believes educational outcomes are suffering.
The second candidate is a single woman in her mid-twenties living rent free with her parents. She has never raised children, never managed a household, never employed anyone, and never carried the responsibilities that often force a person to mature through experience. She dyes her hair outrageous colors and has numerous face piercings. She has worked part-time jobs to earn spending money, but has never had to fully support herself financially. She possesses strong opinions, most of which had been influenced by outsiders telling her what she should think and how she should feel, about how schools should operate and believes she has all the answers that previous generations somehow missed. She is passionate. She is vocal. She also is looking for a job and her district pays the school board members. She decides to run as well.
Most people reading this already know which candidate I would prefer. The reason has nothing to do with appearance. It has nothing to do with personality. It has nothing to do with whether one person is more likable than the other. It has everything to do with demonstrated life experience. One candidate has spent years dealing with the practical realities of family, responsibility, sacrifice, budgeting, planning, compromise, and long-term consequences. The other has opinions. Opinions matter, but they should never be confused with qualifications.
This example highlights another irony that seems to be increasingly common in modern society. As I mentioned before, the very qualities that often make someone most qualified for public office are frequently the same qualities that prevent them from seeking it. The mother raising children, the father working overtime to support a family, the business owner managing employees, the husband and wife maintaining a marriage, and the countless responsible adults carrying the burdens of everyday life are often too busy fulfilling those responsibilities to pursue elected office. Meanwhile, those with fewer obligations frequently have more time to attend meetings, organize campaigns, seek attention, and pursue positions of influence. The result is a system that often rewards availability rather than qualification.
Another point worth mentioning is that, unfortunately, not everyone grows. Some people simply age. There is a difference. Every decade should leave a person wiser than the decade before it. Yet many people become trapped in a perpetual state of stagnation. They continue viewing the world through the same lens they used twenty or thirty years ago. They are unhappy. They are unfulfilled. They never advanced mentality. They blame the same people. Repeat the same mistakes. Embrace the same grievances. Refuse to take responsibility for the outcomes of their own decisions. Their bodies grow older while their thinking remains frozen in time. That may be unfortunate in everyday life. It becomes dangerous when those individuals seek positions that allow them to influence the lives of others.
One of the biggest mistakes society has made over the past several decades is confusing standards with oppression. Historically, the goal was to help people meet standards. Today, the goal often seems to be eliminating standards that people find difficult to meet. Standards exist for a reason. We expect doctors to meet standards because lives are at stake. We expect engineers to meet standards because bridges cannot be allowed to collapse. We expect pilots to meet standards because passengers expect to arrive safely. Nobody finds those expectations unreasonable because everyone understands the consequences of lowering them.
Yet in many other areas of society, the very existence of standards is increasingly treated as the problem. Instead of encouraging excellence, we celebrate mediocrity. Instead of rewarding achievement, we focus on feelings. Instead of helping people rise to expectations, we lower expectations until everyone qualifies. The result is predictable. Lower standards produce lower outcomes.
Education may be one of the clearest examples of this phenomenon. The purpose of a school is to educate children. It is not to act as a political organization. It is not to function as a social movement. It is not to serve as an ideological training center. It exists to prepare children for adulthood by teaching them the skills necessary to succeed in life. Reading. Writing. Mathematics. Critical thinking. Communication. Problem solving. Those are the foundations upon which every successful society is built.
Yet many parents increasingly feel that schools are drifting away from that purpose. They look at declining test scores, falling literacy rates, increasing disciplinary problems, and graduates who struggle with basic life skills, and they naturally begin asking questions. They wonder why educational outcomes seem to be moving in the wrong direction. They wonder why so much energy is being devoted to issues that appear unrelated to academic achievement. They wonder why institutions that were created to educate children increasingly seem focused on shaping beliefs rather than developing minds.
What makes this especially concerning is that teachers occupy a position of tremendous influence. A parent may raise a child for eighteen years, but a teacher spends hundreds upon hundreds of hours with that child during a single school year, many times without any additional supervision. Children trust authority figures. They absorb information. They are influenced by the adults around them. That influence can be incredibly positive when used responsibly. It can also become problematic when teachers in public educational institutions begin viewing themselves as social justice warriors instead of the purveyors of foundational education.
This is where the ownership of outcomes discussion returns. A teacher influences a child for a school year. A parent lives with the outcome for life. A school board member votes on a policy. The family lives with the outcome. An elected official passes a law. The citizen lives with the outcome. Time and again, we see decisions being made by people who are insulated from the very consequences those decisions create. Just like the aunt who gave the child candy every morning, they solve today’s problem by creating a completely new one they will never have to solve themselves.
That mindset extends far beyond education. It appears in government spending, where elected officials can spend money that future generations will be forced to repay. It appears in public policy, where programs that sound wonderful on paper often produce unintended consequences in practice. It appears in immigration policy, economic policy, criminal justice policy, and countless other areas of society. Again and again, we encounter individuals who are far more concerned with appearing compassionate than with producing positive results.
One of the most dangerous mistakes a society can make is believing that good intentions are a substitute for good outcomes. They are not. An idea can sound wonderful. It can receive applause. It can generate headlines. It can make people feel good. None of that matters if it fails in practice. Reality does not care about intentions. Reality only cares about results. History is filled with ideas that sounded fantastic on paper and failed miserably when implemented. The question should never be whether an idea feels good. The question should be whether it works. And when it doesn’t, do something else.
At first glance, many of the issues facing society appear unrelated. Parenting. Education. Government spending. Immigration. Public safety. Welfare. School boards. Local elections. National elections. Most people treat these as separate discussions. I do not. Every one of those issues ultimately involves people making decisions that affect the lives of others. The common denominator is not the issue itself. The common denominator is the person making the decision. A person who understands responsibility will make different decisions than a person who does not. A person who understands sacrifice will make different decisions than a person who does not. A person who has spent years owning the outcomes of their actions will approach public office differently than someone who has spent years blaming others for theirs.
For decades we have lowered standards, lowered expectations, confused opinions with qualifications, confused representation with leadership, and convinced ourselves that intentions matter more than outcomes. We have spent so much time asking whether someone feels qualified that we have stopped asking whether they actually are qualified. In doing so, we have allowed many of the very institutions responsible for preserving our society to drift away from the purposes for which they were originally created.
The truth is that societies rarely rise above the quality of the people entrusted to represent them. Every law, every policy, every budget, every curriculum, every regulation, and every institutional priority begins with a decision. The quality of those decisions is directly related to the quality of the people making them. If we continue selecting representatives based upon popularity instead of qualifications, emotion instead of wisdom, and ideology instead of results, we should not be surprised by the outcomes we receive.
Perhaps it is time to remember that elected officials are not leaders. They are representatives. They work for us. They are applicants seeking employment. We are the employers conducting the interview. The question is not whether we like them. The question is whether we would trust them with the responsibility they seek.
The future of our communities, our schools, our institutions, and our nation will ultimately be shaped by the people we choose to hire. If we want better outcomes tomorrow, we must become far more selective about who we place in those positions today. Because when the interview is over, when the speeches have ended, and when the campaign signs come down, the consequences remain.
And unlike the people who helped create many of those problems, we are the ones who will have to live with them.
