"So, Tell Me A Little About Yourself....You Know, Something I Might Actually Believe..."

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

So, here's a seemingly desperate measure for you.

Limit the process of nominating the major party candidates for President strictly to those individuals who have a minimum of five years experience as personnel managers.

Here's the madness behind the method.

Seasoned personnel managers, by training, experience, even instinct, have a grasp on something that those outside their profession do not.

The awareness that those who excel at the interview don't necessarily bring that excellence to the performance of the job itself.

Political campaigns, by their nature, are really nothing more, or less, than job interviews.

And if you take away the glam, glitter, frenzy and fracas that goes along with any major political campaign, what you are left with, at its essence, is nothing more than candidates who are trying to convince you that you should hire them for the gig.

Unless you were born into a wealthy family (and if you were, the odds on you being a reader of my work are fantastically infinitesimal or are under the age of, say, fourteen, then you have, at one time or another, been interviewed for a job.

And, let's cut the crap while cutting to the chase, we both (all) know that we have all conducted ourselves pretty much the same in that situation.

We have done our very best to portray ourselves in the very best light, done our best to convince ourselves that we answering every question honestly, regardless of consequence, while, if only subconsciously, inevitably telling the interviewer what we think the interviewer wants to hear and done our best to deal with any possible exposure of our weaknesses or lack of abilities by pivoting to the aforementioned best light and/or what the interviewer wants to hear.

And there are many people who are absolute masters when it comes to the "selling" part of selling oneself to others.

Whether or not they turn out to be abject failures once they make the sale.

Think about it.

If the ability to sell somebody on our virtues matched our ability to deliver on those virtues, one business would disappear overnight.

Divorce courts.

One, obviously, does not, in fact, guarantee the other.

So every four years, we find a line of applicants waving resumes' and posters at us and doing their best, via media interviews, town hall meetings, televised debates, et al to put themselves in the best light while convincing themselves that they are answering every question honestly, regardless of consequence, while, in fact, if only subconsciously, inevitably telling the interviewer what they think the interviewer wants to hear, at the same time doing their best to deal with any possible exposure of their weaknesses or lack of abilities by pivoting to the aforementioned best light and/or what the interviewer wants to hear.

Or as we have come to call it more commonly...

A presidential campaign.

Personnel managers are, by the aforementioned training, experience and/or instinct, are much better prepared to see through the interview razzle dazzle/bullshit and determine whether there is genuine potential for superior job performance.

So why not take advantage of those skills and let them weed out the weasels before putting a couple of names in front of us in the voting booth in November?

Depending, of course, on how the personnel managers themselves got their gigs.

There's that pesky "say what you gotta" thing again.