A Congress of Classmates

BY NICK SIOW

As we all know, in the American political system the people elect representatives to speak on their behalf. Elected representatives are expected to lead the nation and, above all, have the answers. Your average layman is not going to have the training or knowledge to solve the complex conflicts and problems that arise in politics. So we as the public assume that the complete spectrum of methods and the entirety of human knowledge will be used to address these problems. We assume that every option will be considered and weighed and then laid out for our approval. We assume that these people we have elected are the best people for the job.

It becomes an interesting realization to recognize that the vast majority of these elected representatives share the same fields of study, received schooling and training from the same institutions, and have the same occupations outside of their career in politics. The U.S. has a vast pool of highly educated and intelligent individuals across every known discipline, yet only a small slice of these disciplines are decently represented in the ruling bodies of our government. The disciplines studied by U.S. congressmen fall almost exclusively into law, business, and politics. Our country is a country run almost entirely by lawyers and businessmen. So the question is: are they the best people for the job?

One need simply look at other successful countries and the occupations of their politicians to see that the U.S. is the odd one out. Tony Tan, the president of Singapore, possesses a Ph.D. in mathematics. He serves alongside Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who earned the same degree. In China, eight out of the nine top governing officials possess degrees or list occupations in the sciences. The Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, has a Ph.D. in chemistry. In other countries, political leadership and a scientific background are not mutually exclusive.

As high school graduates and college students, we recognize that different intellectual challenges require different approaches in order to be solved. The way in which you would approach a challenging calculus problem does not involve the same mindset that would get you far on an in-depth literature essay or a timed pop quiz in biology.

We also recognize that our interests and focuses in schooling gradually change the way we think. There are plenty of jokes and small social observations concerning the overly-analytical perspective of an engineer as opposed to the lofty ideals of a philosophy major. Businessmen are taught in terms of profits and losses. Lawyers spend years studying interpretation of the abstract. As you spend year after year dealing with similar types of problems and studying the same school of thought, your way of thinking and dealing with those problems becomes polarized to the methods you learned. An English major is not going to suddenly be thinking with the scientific method or using first and second-order logic. Every specialty brings something different to the table. Each has its own unique way of solving a problem.

The U.S. has possibly the largest and most diverse pool of these educated, specialized people. Yet it is untapped in the political realm. Other countries are drawing strongly from bright minds of every field of study. The public does not have to look far to see differences in policy between the similarly-trained U.S. politicians and more diverse leading bodies in other nations. While Congress was slashing NASA’s budget, Germany and China were fielding extra deep-space research. The same countries are more eagerly pursuing stem-cell research and use of nuclear energy. Science, and the policies surrounding it, are simply not as developed in the U.S. It seems as though research continues and science inches humankind ever forward, the U.S. government will have neither the desire nor the capacity to help.

My particular interest goes slightly deeper than these surface differences. As I mentioned earlier, each discipline approaches problems in a different way. Each person has a mindset and way of thinking that is very much a product of their education:

What if we don’t have the right way of thinking?

What if our leaders are approaching these issues in the wrong way?

While there are a myriad of consultants and advisers for these lawmakers, the fact of the matter is that these lawmakers do not have the same cognitive processes as an engineer or scientist or doctor.

What if the economic crisis is not something that should better approached with a business or law way of thought, but rather from a methodical, formulaic direction?

What if healthcare and welfare could be better addressed by those who knew the psychological, overarching forms of thought that surrounded them?

What if the environmental problems we face require researchers and experts as lawmakers, rather than just slight collaboration between the two groups?

To answer this, you can’t simply compare the U.S. to other countries and say that it would be better or worse with a Congress full of researchers. The system of government and the individuals are much more complex than that. But for the moment, simply imagine a different Congress. A panel of lawyers and doctors and engineers and chemists and teachers and business in equal proportion working side by side. Take a few of the greedy businessmen and replace them with a few mad scientists. Take a few of the suits and replace them with a few lab coats. A future in this America would not be perfect, but it would be different. And it is a future worth considering.