You are claiming I said a lot that I did not say.

The only thing I’m claiming you said was that there should be a licensing requirement for politicians. The rest was asking about how that licensing requirement be implemented.

There is a long path between minimum standards for public service for everyone elected to a public school board and what is expected of a national representative.

But what are those minimum standards? Who decides them? Is it on a state by state basis? School district by school district? Do you have to get an updated license for every election? Who is paying for the tests to be made, distributed, collected, and scored? Is it an objective test of fact where there is only one correct answer, or is there room for subjective answers for policy decisions, since subjective policy work is effectively all that politicians do?

The licensing requirements would also necessarily have to be passed by legislatures which were voted into their positions without having to meet those same licensing requirements. How is anyone supposed to take the licensing seriously if the people that enacted it are, by their own definition, unqualified to hold their position?

Our public servants need to be proven and accountable.

Elections themselves hold public servants accountable, and public servants that get re-elected are done so because they have proven themselves to their constituents.

Also, representatives absolutely do not need to be proven before being elected. You should not have to go do something prior to being able to run for basically any office. Literally any citizen of the United States should be able to go out and campaign on a policy that they believe will help their community with effectively no barriers to the ability to do that. Politicians can prove themselves in office; that’s why people get re-elected. Voters hold politicians accountable; that’s why people don’t get re-elected.

And you said that politicians need to be licensed. You are a politician if you are running for any elected office. The solution to bad/stupid people being elected to office is to educate the populace, not make it more difficult for people to run. We need to make it easier for people to run for office, not harder.

It sounds like what you really think is that people don’t vote “correctly.” MTG and Boebert were elected by the people they represent. They are using that position to enrich themselves and bring discord to the country. But they were elected. And if they’re re-elected, that is an expression of their constituents wishes and, as a member of a democracy, you have to be able to accept that.

Same with Joe Manchin. Everyone is mad at him for being a real shitbag, but you probably shouldn’t be. You should be mad at the people of West Virginia that have kept electing him to offices for the past 35 years. The people voting are the reason shitty people get into office, not because it’s too easy to run for office.

Sure, there are a lot of issues with our voting system, and those things need to be addressed. You could argue that the only reason “bad” politicians get elected is because of some kind of gerrymandering fuckery or by the disenfranchisement of certain populations, but those problems aren’t solved by making it more difficult for people to run for office, they’re solved by getting more people involved with the entire process.