Watching Congressional debates is like time traveling, most likely all the way back to the Roman Empire. It is a sad and absurd spectacle (the British Parliament is even worse); no doubt members of the Roman Assembly of Citizens indulged in the same kinds of uninspired speeches, grandstanding

and cocky posturing.

Would an employer hire someone solely on the basis of what that person says about his or her past, abilities and future ambitions? Shouldn't we do away with these painful charades, these staged town hall meetings and completely superficial presidential debates that are an insult to the intelligence of Americans, and hire politicians uniquely on the strength of their resumes?

These resumes, of course, would have to be compiled by totally objective, independent parties examining their entire careers and reporting all their actions, along with all the corresponding promises, failures and betrayals. One would think such should be the role of the national media, if its actual intent was to give relevant information rather than entertain and distract us into mental numbness.

Would it be time consuming and complex? It would be a lot quicker, simpler and cheaper than campaigning, but it might be difficult then to find anyone who qualifies. Still, it seems to me the hiring of a president should not be based on whether he or she has good hair, good religion, good marital status, good teeth and a great smile, a twinkle in the eye and a pleasant personality on camera. Obviously, Washington is not Hollywood, we all know there is more truth in Hollywood's fiction than in all of the Capitol's reality.

We need to stop looking at the package and carefully examine the contents ... perhaps politicians should be labeled like a can of soup, wearing their resumes on their backs. They already hire professional PR firms to be packaged, promoted and sold like toothpaste, so let's treat them like soap, but let's keep them wrapped to prevent their becoming slippery!

Seriously, we need to stop looking for "leaders" and worshiping power, authority and wealth as was done during the dark ages, and start demanding that these employees of the nation do their job honestly, like janitors and bank clerks.

The pomp and decorum that still plague every presidential swearing in ceremony are left over from a transition from monarchy to representational government, before the economic advances of a middle class erased a Victorian-type gap between the refined and perfumed elite and an unwashed, uncouth, illiterate, brutal, Charles Dickens-type starving and abused populace (granted, the rich keeps getting richer, but the public no longer smells).

I think that, in this 21st century, we can do away with these attempts to cause government to appear to be embodied by one person made bigger than life by these irrelevant ceremonies and this deference, and ask of these so called leaders that they act not in accordance with the demands of the corporate-banking world exclusively, or of the elite minority, but of the American public that is far more intelligent, creative and imaginative, ambitious, innovative and courageous, and in spite of it all better informed and educated than the majority of these politicians, whose oratory performances are nauseating to witness and yet the least offensive of the overall effects of their presence.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport.

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