The Case for Congressional Aptitude Testing
Among the myriad of issues plaguing the United States, there are few quite so infuriating as the anti-science sentiment that has slowly pushed its way into the mainstream. It has been eagerly simmering around the edges of every major political debate for decades, from abortion to climate change. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, anti-science bias has gained mainstream attention in the form of the bafflingly ignorant Anti-Masker movement.
It’s extraordinarily easy to point fingers at the Republicans; their disregard for the environment, their affinity for coal mining, and their widely-held belief that the earth is just a few thousand years old. Democrats, never shying away from self-branding as the party of intellectualism and reason, are not exactly guilt-free, either. Democrats are twice as likely to believe in astrology as their Republican counterparts. Both parties are deeply apprehensive of food containing GMOs, despite the fact that 90% of scientists believe GMOs are safe — a view endorsed by the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the World Health Organization. I have yet to hear either party fully and unabashedly decry the bunk science of homeopathic medicine, a multi-billion dollar snake-oil industry.
To cry “false equivalency!” at these comparisons is to miss the point. Yes, we are in the midst of an ongoing climate crisis that may render enormous swaths of our planet uninhabitable, and no, blaming your mood swings on the alignment of the planets probably isn’t hurting anyone. The point is that demanding intellectual rigor and thoughtful analysis from your ideological opposites while participating in non-scientific beliefs, activities, or industries is fundamentally paradoxical.
Enter stage left: the Congressional Aptitude Test
The test would cover a variety of subjects including, but not limited to, statistics and probability, the history and practice of public policy, demonstrated objective analysis of complex legislation, demonstrated objective understanding of the scientific method, and ability to interpret, consolidate, and summarize various provided data sets.
The purpose of the Congressional Aptitude Test (let’s refer to it as “CAT” for brevity’s sake) is twofold: first, to quantifiably measure the competency of a given congressional candidate. All CAT test scores would necessarily be made available to the public, in accordance with the The Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552. A minimum score would be required to be approved for the ballot.
The second major benefit of the CAT is to allow the public to more easily distinguish if a politician’s decisions are informed by their previously demonstrated intellectual abilities, or made due to either emotional bias or outside pressure. If we can trust our elected officials to accurately interpret data provided by experts and make rational decisions based on that data, it becomes much easier to recognize a decision that is not guided by logic. What was previously characterized as lunacy could then be much more easily classified as outright corruption. An added bonus would be the influx of potential political candidates with a background in higher education outside of strictly law and business. Positions of elected political office would be won by merit rather than cash and charisma.
The House of Representatives would not be breaking any new ground in terms of testing for the proficiency of its employees. Actually, there already exists a precedent for exactly this form of testing in the form of a variety of Federal Civil Service Examinations administered by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for some highly-skilled government positions. In fact, our government established this baseline as early as 1883 with the formation of the Civil Service Commission, led by none other than Teddy Roosevelt. The Commission “laid the foundations of an impartial, professional civil service based on the merit principle — that employees should be judged only on how well they can do the job.”
Why should we allow our public representatives to hold positions of power based on a wink, a smile, and a fat wallet? Why should the people creating the policies that shape your everyday life be exempt from demonstrating concrete expertise?
Implementation of the CAT into standard election procedure would undoubtedly be met with tremendous resistance, but it is very much inside of the realm of possibility. The U.S. Constitution, at Article I, Section 5, clause 1, expressly delegates to each house of Congress the authority to judge the qualifications for office of its own Members: “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns, and Qualifications of its own Members…” which means, in essence, that Congress has the right to self-regulate in this way. Congress can establish qualifications for its members without any approval from the executive or judicial branches. However, if you are pessimistic that Congress is interested in holding itself to a higher standard, you are not alone.
An examination such as the Congressional Aptitude Test would profoundly change the landscape of American politics forever. It is by no means a fix-all proposition. Put in lofty terms, it is a rational step forward in the pursuit of the perfection of our union. In practice, it is an absolutely desperate attempt to quell the anti-science sentiment so prevalent in American society today. To date, nearly 140,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, due almost entirely to a bungled governmental approach from an executive administration that pays no heed to experts. Most of these deaths were preventable. Tens of thousands of American lives have been culled by tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists and the politicians they voted for. The willfully, gleefully ignorant have had their seat at the table for far too long.
