Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature. Over 20,000 daily subscribers, 7,000 archived posts, 73 million hits and 5 million visitors.
Dawn Potter: Dear Presidential Candidates — A Modest Proposal
Dear presidential candidates:
Yesterday morning, my 18-year-old son came up with a brilliant proposal for campaign reform. He and I spent much of our day together elaborating its details; and although the concept is still flawed and incomplete, we nonetheless believe that you should consider its advantages to both your development as sentient human beings and your credibility with the voters.
My son’s proposal is that every candidate for president should spend one month working and living in an environment that is nothing like anywhere he or she has lived before. The goal is to introduce each of you to a segment of humanity that you have overlooked or derided and to put you into the uncomfortable position of (1) not being great at your job, (2) being around people with a different skill set, and (3) finding out what it’s like to live with very little money and very few resources.
To that end, my son and I have come up with suggested destinations for several of the candidates.
Donald Trump. You will spend the month in Mississippi working as a farm laborer and living in housing for migrant workers. Other people will be telling you what to do, and you will do it. Also, you will get blisters and a sunburn and be tired and dirty all the time. Let us know if the wages are too high.
Bernie Sanders. You will spend the month working as a waiter at a Denny’s in a Phoenix strip mall. Your job is to stop hollering at people and to bring them more coffee. If they order bacon, let them. Your feet will hurt, but you will still have to smile.
Ted Cruz. Much as I dislike you, I am inviting you to my own hometown in rural central Maine. You will get a series of small seasonal jobs: chainsawing in the woods, driving the plow truck in snowstorms, cutting tips for Christmas wreaths, working on cars, etc., etc. You will live in a trailer and have trouble keeping warm. So if you want to eat or buy heating oil, you’ll have to figure out how to get someone to hire you. That requires civility, by the way.
Carly Fiorina. You will spend the month living in a refugee enclave in a small working-class city–say, Manchester, New Hampshire. No one around you will speak your language or share any of your customs. You will have to figure out how to communicate with them as you work the nightshift at the local convenience store.
Mike Huckabee. You will spend the month living in a Bronx shelter and working for a social-service organization focusing on homeless youth. Let us know later if paying you a pittance to roam the streets in search of terrified kids who need dinner and some blankets was a pointless waste of government dollars.
Hillary Clinton. You will spend the month as a stay-at-home housewife in a working-class neighborhood in the midwest–say, somewhere outside of Toledo. You will be alone all day, without control of your checkbook and responsible for nothing beyond cleaning the house and preparing budget meals. The TV will be permanently set to soap operas. What will it be like to be completely powerless?
Chris Christie. You will spend the month on a reservation, perhaps in South Dakota. Probably you won’t be able to find a job, so you’ll just have to hang out in your crumbling government-issue housing. But at least you’ll have plenty of time to think about what it’s like to be crushed and forgotten.
Of course, some candidates require more basic interventions. Jeb Bush needs to enter the Witness Protection Program and learn what it feels like not to be a Bush. Ben Carson needs to enroll in any accredited 9th-grade college-prep program. And there are some overlaps. I feel that Marco Rubio and Rand Paul would both benefit from the Clinton or Huckabee treatments. Perhaps they could try out equivalent programs in desert Nevada and urban Fresno. Marco Rubio as powerless housewife has much potential. And it is always a good idea to make Rand Paul wallow in some “unnecessary” government programs.
Each candidate will receive a cheap cell phone loaded with a handful of minutes. If you want to use the Internet, you’ll have to find a public library computer. (Does your community have a library? Is this an important resource for the working poor? Also, are libraries warm and do they have bathrooms? It would be a shame if you couldn’t find a bathroom.) You will not be giving any press conferences. If you find yourself needing health care, feel free to stand in line at the emergency room. But I’m sure you’ll be fine. People who work in dangerous jobs in stressful and unhealthy environments never need health care.
You owe it to the American people to show them you’re tough enough to do the jobs they’re already doing themselves. I look forward to the reality show.
—
Copyright 2015 Dawn Potter
Vox Populi 
Wonderful anodyne for the alienation of all these uppity assholes. While never a candidate (Goldman’s Law of Electoral Politics: anyone who could conceivably elected to high public office is thereby disqualified) I have worked at myriads of the jobs suggested because of my vocationally alienated poet status, and guess what: it is broadening and necessary for a poet. I was doing right while I though I was floundering.
I take the bacon remark as chiding Bernie’s presumed health food preference. Let me be right. Because I can’t conceive of someone with such humane and egalitarian sentiment, let alone someone who writes so well as harboring anti-semitism. Please let me be right.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re right, Steve. Thanks for the thoughtful response.
LikeLike
Your paragraph about how the working poor have to rely on library internet and emergency rooms suggests to me that you would vote for Senator Sanders for President if you knew more about him. If the bacon remark is an anti-Semitic jab, that’s pretty tacky of you. But aside from that: Bernie is the *only* current candidate I’ve seen really meeting with, talking to, *listening to* regular people all over the country. He’s done it for decades in Burlington and the rest of Vermont and he has been doing it on the campaign trail. Until his campaign accelerated recently and event scheduling made it impossible, he flew Coach on regularly scheduled flights while the other candidates zipped around in the rarefied air of chartered or private jets. Bernie could easily mingle with, converse with and yes, even *serve* your hypothetical Denny’s patrons because he cares about them — he *wants* to serve them and find out how he can serve them better, so that maybe they can dine at a more affluent restaurant someday (no offense, Denny’s). He walks miles every day, to and from work in Washington DC, so I don’t think his feet will hurt after the Denny’s shifts. And when he’s done serving coffee to those customers, he might just take some food outside for the homeless vet loitering there and talk with him about his healthcare needs while they walk to the nearest store where Bernie can buy him some new socks and shoes (yes, he has been known to do this and other simple kindnesses like it). So your “uncomfortable” scenario actually plays to Bernie’s strengths. I think he could manage to thrive in any of the candidates’ settings you composed, really, except for the total isolation you assigned to Hillary.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A good idea for all of us. And maybe a little too much fun to write. I believe Chairman Mao had a similar dictum; That, no matter how high you were in the hierarchy, come planting season you would spend a month in the paddies helping to get the rice crop planted. Too many of us lack sympathy for the other fellow because we have not walked a mile in his(her) shoes. Everything looks easy when somebody else is responsible for doing it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And Gandhi emphasized engaging the humility required to do the “lowly” jobs. That which makes us humble, makes us whole.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great idea, reckon it should be a universal criteria for all politicians.
LikeLiked by 1 person