The most underappreciated phrase in The Declaration of Independence is not the hopeful observation about equality and pursuit of happiness but instead occurs a few lines later and is much more pragmatic, “…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

This is a harsh assessment of human abilities, stunning in its juxtaposition to the idealism which opens the document, and it applies to us right now.  Whatever political persuasion you feel aligned with, most of the people on the opposite side are good people, but we are all suffering the evils of a system which pits us against each other. 

Call it a plutocracy, oligarchy or gerontocracy; blame it on entrenched political parties, a pay-to-play democracy or social media and cable news. The problem is not us, it’s a system evolved to perpetuate itself rather than operate for the good of the country.

In the fall of 2024, like many Americans of every political stripe, I will almost certainly cast my vote for president without much enthusiasm. 

But what choice do we have? To run for president you either need a billion dollars, like Trump, or you need to spend a thousand years on the hamster wheel working your way up the system, like Biden.  And almost by definition, the people who check either of these two boxes do not make inspiring leaders. But, with rare exceptions, this is the system we have. 

So here’s an idea to shake things up. 

We need an American Idol for politics.  We need to use technology to vault little known politicians into the national spotlight.

Yes, this would be the utter merging of reality TV and politics. Oh wait, that’s already happened. And it’s not going to be undone. Currently we’re just passive victims of the worst aspects of technology–the relentless desire to exploit social differences and anger for money. Instead, we should be actively using that technology for our betterment. 

Lyrical poetry set to music, in other words, singing, is perhaps the most compelling form of human communication.  But political oratory, while not as fun or inspiring as singing, is still a strong  runner up in the popularity category–at least this has been true in human history until fairly recently. 

These days boring, focus-group-tested, over-edited, teleprompter-dependent speeches have become the norm for presidential candidates. It’s no wonder that people have lost interest. 

Among the many things we learned from the Obama and Trump presidencies, here are two relative to this idea. From Obama we learned that a single, inspiring speech on a national stage can launch an otherwise unknown politician to the presidency. From Trump we learned that a person who is willing to play without a script provides compelling video.

Politics has always been part theater and part substance. Pretending otherwise is just denying human nature. Technology has given us the tools to democratize the process of choosing leaders but it depends on exploiting the human desire for a good show. American idol and other reality TV shows have done this to great effect with the art of singing. Why couldn’t the same formula be used to inject a few dynamic, heretofore unknown politicians  into the ossified cast of characters playing on the stage of national politics?

Of course there are some huge problems with this idea. It’s not a solution to our problems–those will require actual policy choices– but it might be a way to stir new blood into the very tired, old system to which we’ve become accustomed.