competency

Test Legislatures (Henry I. Miller's Guest Column)

Most Americans are unhappy with the performance of Congress: Recent major polls have found congressional approval ratings in the range of 20% to 28%. But we continue to elect and re-elect scoundrels, liars and the intellectually challenged. The elusive quality of "electability" seems not to correlate with truthfulness, integrity, courage or intelligence,but only with a certain affability--and with the ability to raise campaign funds.

It's no coincidence that the intelligence of members of Congress has so often been spoofed. "Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress." quipped Mark Twain. Milton Berle observed, "You can lead a man to Congress, but you can't make him think." Will Rogers addressed the consequences of these deficiencies: "When Congress makes a joke, it's a law, and when they make a law, it's a joke."There are numerous examples of the joke being on us.

A friend of mine was seated at a banquet table with the family of then--Rep. Dan Glickman, D-Kansas. The family expressed relief at his having entered politics because none of them thought Dan was smart enough to enter the family business. (Auto and appliance shredding and scrap metal.)

I was at a conference that Rep. Tom Bliley, R-Va., then chairman of the powerful House Commerce Committee attended by teleconference. As he recited from a prepared statement, he included the "stage instructions"--such as "Pause for emphasis"--that had been inserted by his speechwriter. And where one line had been inadvertently duplicated, Bliley read it a second time. Carelessness? Stupidity? Senility? Don't voters have a right to know?

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. was sufficiently forthright to reveal last year that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD)--an inexorably progressive incurable disease characterized by wasting away of the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. Because of the behavioral changes and dimentia that accompany this condition, Domenci, announced that he would not seek re-election in 2008.I have great sympathy for Mr. Domenici, who is in the twilight of both career and life. But should the people of New Mexico be represented for another year by a senator who admits to suffering from progressive dementia? I believe he should have resigned at the time his illness was diagnosed.

And then there is nonagenarian Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the longest serving senator in American history. In his 51st year in the Senate, the 90-year-old's public utterances-as viewable on YouTube, speak for themselves. In one clip, Sen. Byrd maunders; in the second, during a 2001 interview on Fox News Sunday, this former recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan is grossly inappropriate, using the term "white niggers" several times.

As a voter and taxpayer, but also as a physician, I worry about whether such people are fit to serve. Nor are they isolated examples. All three members of Congress who are supposed to represent my own interests are dubious : Bay Area U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, who will be 80 next month and plans to retire because of cancer, and California's U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer give cause for concern. Lantos and Boxer frequently seem befuddled; and Feinstein, a multimillionaire, may look good with her expensive clothes, jewelry, hair-styling and make-up, but flaws in knowledge and judgment make her a liability.

Other states have their own candidates for legislators whom you could argue belong not in the House or Senate, but in assisted living. Perhaps we should treat dissatisfaction with our representation as a medical, rather than a solely political issue. How? By asking candidates and incumbents to volunteer for periodic intelligence and mental status testing. After all, we often demand to know whether a candidate has recovered from open-heart surgery, cancer or a stroke, and many states require elderly drivers to be relicensed. A mental status exam by an expert offers an assessment of cognitive abilities, memory and quality of thought processes. It includes assessments of alertness, speech, behavior, awareness of environment, mood, affect, rationality of thought processes, appropriateness of thought content (presence of delusions, hallucinations or phobias), memory, ability to perform simple calculations, judgment. ("If you found a letter on the ground in front of a mailbox, what would you do with it?"), and higher reasoning, such as the ability to interpret proverbs abstractly (A stitch in time saves nine.").

An intelligence test measures various parameters that are thought to correlate with academic or financial achievement. Every legislator need not be a genius, but I'd like mine to be smarter than the average person in the supermarket or Laundromat.The journalist and satirist H.L.Mencken observed, "Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels, two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons. "Testing might help us to weed out a few idiots. Getting rid of the scoundrels and poltroons will have to wait..............

whew, I didn't think I would ever finish typing this, but it was a column I couldn't resist copying for all to read!!!!!