News flash: Our nation's leaders are incompetent!
Last week Jeff Stein, the national security editor at Congressional Quarterly, wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times demonstrating that many of those in power in America have no understanding of the religious realities of Muslims.
The question that Stein dared to ask: Do America's leaders know whom we're attacking right now and what theologies they live by?
When he asked FBI officials and congressmen the difference between Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims, many responded with blank stares or obscuring jokes.
What's scary is that these unaware politicians and civil servants are in control of an advanced military, 7,000 nuclear weapons and the central economy on the globe.
Letting such ignorant people run U.S. foreign policy and national security is like letting a toddler fly a jumbo jet. To extend the analogy, what these leaders need is a pilot's license - by which I mean a Ph.D.
Master's degrees in business and doctorates of law are far more common in government than Ph.D.s. Is this really in our best interest? Representatives with MBAs might be prepared to work at Intel, but not at the White House, and a J.D. only offers politicians a new way to spin the truth and cover their graft.
Apparently President Bush's Harvard MBA hasn't served him (or us) well. The U.S. debt ceiling has been raised four times in the past six years. G-Dub is doing his best to run the U.S. Treasury into the ground just as he did his oil companies in Texas.
As for the attorneys in our government, we can take a look at the Justice Department. Take Alberto Gonzales, attorney general extraordinaire, whose job it is to enforce the law and give legal advice to the administration when it makes policy. Yet the supposedly well-trained Gonzales didn't recognize the simple constitutional problems in undermining the rights of U.S. citizens at Guantanamo Bay or eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants. I guess a J.D. doesn't get you so far, even when you're a government attorney.
Where MBAs and J.D.s fail to create responsible leaders, Ph.D.s succeed. Business and law degrees are professional degrees - essentially the same as a degree in automotive tech at DeVry. In those degree programs, there is no concern with critical thinking or gaining in-depth expertise in a particular field.
A Ph.D., however, is a major commitment, requiring four to seven years of dedication. Doctoral candidates go through rigorous training with thorough literature reviews and comprehensive examinations. Then they have to write their dissertations.
Clearly, in whatever field a Ph.D. takes his or her degree in, they are likely better trained than anyone else. So, if there's a job open for a diplomat, then maybe the offer should go to someone with a Ph.D. in international relations.
If the Environmental Protection Agency needs a director, how about hiring somebody with a doctorate in environmental studies?
And when it's time to elect a president, maybe the dude on the ballot should have written a dissertation on applied ethics.
Take, for example, Paul Wellstone, the late senator from Minnesota and political science professor from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
Wellstone's academic career informed his decisions while in office. Throughout his years in the Senate, Wellstone supported international diplomacy, workers' rights and campaign-finance reform, while embodying a political philosophy focused on the power of citizens at the grassroots level.
He drew from his years of education to understand the intricacies of policymaking and the disenfranchisement of the American people.
Only with more educated and thoughtful politicians who have spent years cultivating their minds might we, as a nation, have a responsibly run government in the service of citizens.
Alex Ginsburg is a religious studies senior considering getting a Ph.D. so he might become an enlightened autocrat someday. You may reach him aginsburg@asu.edu.
