I had an interesting thought on the way to work today.  Part of it was spurred by the announcement that MTV and BET would be "producing" a Town Hall meeting for youth with President Obama, part of it is just my general disdain of current politicians.

People always ask the "issue" questions such as "What is your stance on abortion?" or "Will you raise taxes?".  The unfortunate reality of the answers to those questions is that they are pre-determined and spun for whatever they think will get them elected.  The questions in Town Halls are typically pre-screened anyway since almost all politicians can't even think on their feet.

I propose that instead of asking the "issues" questions which will receive a non-genuine answer, we ask realistic common sense questions.  If we were able to come up with a good 10-20 common sense questions to ask our current/future elected officials, I'm almost certain the results would be shocking.  Not only would it require the candidate to use their brain, but I think it would show exactly how distanced politicians are from the American people.

The first question that I would ask would be:

"If you were in serious debt, would you stop spending uncontrollably?"

Could you imagine the answers you'd get to that?  They'd turn it around into some mess of political jargon and whatnot.  Keep in mind the question is not worded as "If the COUNTRY is in serious debt," it's poised as a direct question to the hopeful.  The person that would have the guts to answer that question directly would likely get my vote.  OF COURSE YOU SHOULDN'T KEEP SPENDING IF YOU ARE IN DEBT!

The distance between politicians and the people they represent is growing rapidly, it almost seems like all that is done is pouring money into a smear campaign against their opponent and hope they get enough votes.  Why can't they be honest with us?  Why can't they admit their faults?  No one is perfect, we don't expect them to be, but we do expect them to represent us properly.  We're tired of the rhetoric, we're tired of the debt, we want the government to govern, not control.  Until we change the way we "feel out" our elected officials nothing is going to change.

I'll admit there's a lot of generalization in this post.  I also believe that most of the generalization is true.