Curley: Want better leaders? Start with better-educated citizens

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

It’s good for the king, probably not the best for the subject, especially when the king says, “Hey, listen, I’ll lead the army. I got one eye, I might be able to hit something. Don’t ask me to make a three-foot putt.”

There are problems when you only have one eye.

So, in the blind voter, in our sort of fictional world of the One-Eyed King, this is what Plato was concerned about.

See, 2,400 years ago, the famed Greek philosopher didn’t have a lot of good things to say about democracy or one-night stands. He was not a big fan of get-out-the-vote. Sorry. [Insert name of movie star or musician here.]

The public was, as far as Plato was concerned, collectively not smart enough to make the right decision. They were easily fooled to choose the liar over the leader, the charmer over the honest, the charismatic over the competent.

People will vote for the people who they think, well, we’ll give them everything that they want, and then end up not giving them anything or just taking more of what they have. See, promises benefits without cost, and the skilled manipulator will always win the crowd.

A 1950s film that still rings true

Now, if Plato were alive in the 1950s, he would have given five stars to this movie. It was a dark and disturbing film that Elia Kazan directed. It’s called “A Face in the Crowd.”

Andy Griffith plays a country boy who has enough charm to knock a buzzard off a gut wagon. And Griffith plays this guy named Lonesome Rhodes, and Lonesome Rhodes is the radio host who finds himself influencing powerful men, quite possibly all of America. He understands how to influence the public.

Rhodes understood he had some great strength. In fact, he was able to influence a whole bunch of people, eventually getting power over the White House, major corporations, and they all wanted him to deliver the message until one fateful night … not gonna ruin the movie for you. Came out in the 50s. You missed it, it’s too late.

More than, I don’t know, 10 million, 25 million people who were listening to him at any time were able to catch old Mr. Rhodes with the microphone open.

The truth is revealed and lost. Lonesome’s true character comes out, breaking the spell that held the public stupefied.

Lonesome Rhodes is the character that Plato feared the most, whom voters would fall for every single time. He said poor people should not vote, and uneducated people should also not vote. Now that’s nothing that would fly in the United States or probably anywhere else in the free world. So how about educating or enlightening the citizen to be more astute and more discerning, more discriminating, less likely to be fooled, conned, or manipulated?

Civics education could fix what ails us

Let’s all be like Switzerland, the land of army knives and cheese that goes great with ham, which also has the highest government stability and the most trust in government. They’re at 68%, while the U.S. is struggling at 33%.

Maybe we don’t trust our elected officials because we’re conned and duped and swept off our feet. We are blind, right? We get invited to the P Diddy party and wonder, “Why is there so much baby oil?”

The Swiss educate their young little Swissies with civics that are woven right into most of the classes. The students have a firm grip on what the government can and cannot do. Now, when it comes to U.S. high school students and the rest of us, 70% of adults fail basic civic literacy quizzes.

The country needs better leadership, and it can all start with better-educated people.

Thomas Jefferson, with an IQ of 160, said it best: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in the state of civilization, it expects what will never was and will never will be.”

We have to get smarter if we would like to have a better government.

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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