15 Questions for Every Political Candidate in 2024
From Dogcatcher to President, Here's What I Would be Asking Every Candidate
Politicians typically hate answering questions.
They love the personality-driven ones. What’s your favorite ice cream?
They love the ones where they get to gas themselves up. What’s your reason for running?
But they don’t want to have to accidentally say something that’s substantive, that’s important.
Part of that is because the media is so corrupt that it takes every politician’s statements wildly out of context. Another reason is that any nuance is lost on the masses: whatever you say had better have the simplicity and subtlety of a sledgehammer.
I was recently castigated by a farmer because I said the Constitution was written to be simple enough for uneducated farmers to understand 200 years ago.
That was contorted to mean that I must think farmers are stupid. That I thought all farmers were all uneducated.
In the modern age, everyone is looking to take offense.
It’s the ticket to social currency, to social status: be professionally aggrieved. Use moralistic language in order to make someone subservient to you, to make them grovel to get back in your good graces.
They’re looking to trip up politicians into inadvertently, accidentally, tripping over their words to step on a land mine of identity politics.
The consequence is that politicians are very circumspect in what they will say. They offer vague platitudes. They give aspirational answers. They don’t give hard truths or confront challenging issues.
They still need to be challenged however. Even knowing that they are likely to give, what are effectively, ‘non-answers’ - they still need to be given the chance to impress you with their thoughtfulness.
Additionally, many political questions are about substance in two extremes: the simplistic partisan and ideological stripe, and the esoteric hyper-local type.
Are you pro-life or pro-choice? For most elected officials those labels don’t really mean anything. They’ll say whatever they think you want to hear.
Are you in favor of the millage for the storm drain off of highway 47? These are the kind of questions for local officials, not politicians.
The right questions illuminate something about a politician that animates and informs what kind of elected official they will end up being: truthful or a liar. A leader or a follower. Beholden to the lobby, or courting the grassroots.
Using questions to identify the snakes and charlatans from the occasional good guy is of vital importance.
I would ask questions that force the politician to engage, which they cannot easily side-step by saying they have no opinion or haven’t researched the issue yet, and which reveal something about them and their character.
You want the ability to suss out the insincere politicians who merely want to be elected in order to become köçeks for their lobbyist paymasters.
When asked a difficult question like this, the temptation will be to hedge, dodge, and deflect. Smart candidates will deflect with humor or self-deprecation. No candidate for office should be afforded the ability to avoid serious, respectful, questions though. It’s entirely inappropriate that they refuse to answer a persistent, pointed, question.
Anyway, here is the eclectic and idiosyncratic list I would be asking politicians in the 2024 cycle:
What power will you have in this position, and how do you intend to use that power?
Do you think that children are being ‘groomed’ in traditional public schools at the moment? If yes, what will you do about it. If no, why do you think so many believe that it’s happening?
Was there systemic voter fraud significant enough to change results in the 2020 election?
Do you think lobbying, and the system of lobbyists for companies and corporations, is a good thing for the government? Does it produce better results? If not, then how can it be limited?
Who are your top 5 donors, and what priorities of theirs are potential conflicts of interest for you later?
Do you believe there is a ‘deep state’ of unelected bureaucrats who have more control over policies and government than do elected officials?
Who do you think assassinated John F. Kennedy?
What are three non-negotiable positions, policies, or votes that you will never be swayed by? What policy positions are so important to you that you have completely made your mind up on the matter?
Do you think the January 6th protesters who have been prosecuted, nearly 1,000 of them, should be pardoned or further prosecuted?
Was the Iraq War justified in 2003? Is it justified now?
Do you believe in the “Great Replacement” theory, labeled by the mainstream media as a ‘conspiracy theory’, that says that it is the policy of our government to replace native Americans for foreign-born populations to achieve political, racial, and policy goals?
Major outlets are reporting some version of alien life or alien contact recently. What do you think about this, and why would the government hide such findings from the public?
Do you believe in term limits? If so, how many terms will you limit yourself to?
If you win, what are your plans after you leave office? Will you commit to us that you will never become a paid corporate lobbyist trading on your experience and political connections?
Did the government have the authority to shut down society as it did during the COVID pandemic? Does it have the power to mandate vaccines? Can it mandate them as a condition of employment? If it doesn’t have this power, what can be done to stop it from asserting and aggrandizing those powers?