Qualified For The Job

There was a time that, to be considered for a job, a person had to be qualified for it. One had to have some training, skills, or education in the field; in fact, as a young person starting out, it was a bit frustrating, since, being a young woman in the days when the Classifieds were organized into "Women Wanted" "Men Wanted" and "Couples Wanted", and my typing was, not excellent, I was lucky to be living where I could qualify for a job with the Federal Government doing non-typing--and poorly paying--work. But it was work and for a girl hoping to earn some money, it was all right.

No one in those days expected, nor did they expect anyone else, to take work they didn't qualify for. So that brings me to the point of this piece. Lately it appears that one of the best ways to convince someone to send a potential legislator to the city government council, the Statehouse, or, heaven forbid, Washington--on any level--is to claim lack of experience in government. I'm not even going to start with whether or not these folks have any idea of what government is, or how it works, much less the history of their local, state, or national--or anyone else's--government. I suspect many have learned it from Wikipedia. Or comic books. No disrespect is intended to either source, by the way.

My point is this: it is no longer the 1800's, and our world is more complicated. We don't travel to the UK in several months' time, nor even several weeks' time. we can send a message to friends, family, or another head of state in a matter of seconds. Life is more complicated. Along with the miracles that keep us healthy for longer, more comfortable in bad weather, able to enjoy foods we never could before, explore places we never went to before, we have also simply expanded as a group--there are more of us, and we are different, of course, from each other.

With all these complications, and the larger group, have come great things, true. But we have great problems, too. We don't see each other as we once did. How could we? And we learned new, terrible ways to kill each other. We may have learned to get along in many ways, but we also learned to hate in code. What do you say when one's representation continuously makes a ceremony of repealing a law which is helping many to have equity in health care? And that group doesn't ever need to worry about their own health care? Is it, perhaps, that they do not know what they are supposed to do there? Do they know anything about their job? The rules of etiquette? Do they know where to go to find out about different laws, who is in charge of farming, of finances, of all the other programs, and who should be helping them sift through the things they need to know to get things done and prospective bills written? Are they wasting time as well on other things?

There have been members of both houses of Congress who, others would have said, should have gotten the boot. But they were continuously reelected. Why? Because, no matter what party they came from, their constituents felt that the job they did called for their being hired back again and again. They learned the job and knew what to do.
No one was interested in someone who could say they were "not part of Washington". And I would bet, if there were still Statehouses and city councils that could do the same thing, there would be people there with the same track record. In my opinion, it's not where you aren't from, it's how well you do--or don't do--for the people who hired you. So speak up, please, In my opinion, a person who wants a government job representing his or her fellow citizens should be qualified, and that means knowing government.