Choosing Our Leaders | 26FA Class #20 Full Lecture
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Overview
Sam Richards uses an election discussion with students from the United States, Colombia, and Kuwait to examine whether voters can choose leaders effectively when many people lack political knowledge, follow party identities, or are influenced by biased media. Students weigh civic participation and democracy against proposals for trained, wise decision-makers, while exploring practical obstacles including succession, corruption, campaign wealth, policy tradeoffs, and the long-term stakes of climate change, AI, and economic security.
Key takeaways
- Voting alone does not ensure informed leadership: Richards cites figures that 35% to 40% of Americans cannot name the vice president, about 60% to 65% cannot name their U.S. House representative, and roughly 55% of eligible voters may skip the upcoming midterms.
- Young people may have greater long-term exposure to decisions about climate change, AI, economic inequality, and Social Security, yet students describe both strong political engagement and exhaustion with politics that seems unable to change.
- A leader must sometimes balance universal needs against scarce resources: Richards’s example of $100,000 in proposed medical tests illustrates why governing requires difficult prioritization rather than promises of unlimited care.
- The proposal for trained, wise leaders faces two structural dangers: corruption can persist even under strong anti-corruption campaigns, and every system must determine how power passes to a successor.
- Party identity can override candidate-specific evaluation, while third-party voting may signal demand for new ideas even when the candidate is unlikely to win.
- Political systems vary in how they organize competition: Colombia uses a first-round field of multiple parties followed by a runoff, while Kuwait bans formal political parties and selects a monarch from within the ruling family with parliamentary input.
Chapters
- For three upcoming remote classes, students are told to start the posted lecture at 4:35 and take a three-question Canvas quiz after it ends.
- The quiz is available from 5:45 to 5:55, and once opened it allows only two minutes.
- Students who miss the quiz must complete a class-reflection video assignment to receive attendance points.
- Irvin Moore entered prison in 1969 and spent 52 years incarcerated, including watching the 1969 Moon landing from inside prison.
- After his release in 2021, Moore had never used a cell phone or computer, but quickly learned to make a meme on his new iPhone.
- At age 80, Moore is finishing an undergraduate degree; students are asked to bring questions to his upcoming Q&A.
- Sam Richards opens the election discussion by questioning whether voting works when many voters know a candidate’s name but not the issues or local conditions.
- Students introduce varied perspectives, including a former Penn State University Park Undergraduate Association president and students from Kuwait and Colombia.
- Richards asks students to speak from personal experience rather than claim to represent their entire generation.
- One student says municipal elections can offer more direct influence than national elections.
- A former student-government president argues that voting is a civic duty, while emphasizing that incarceration and documentation status can restrict access.
- She points to uneven access to government and civics electives in high schools and proposes stronger civic education.
- A Kuwaiti student says voters there must be 21, suggesting the three years between ages 18 and 21 may affect political judgment.
- A Colombian student describes her first vote as a presidential election shaped by a sharp contest between left- and right-leaning candidates.
- She says some teenagers in Cali followed the campaign closely, while some older voters focused mainly on removing a party from office.
- Richards connects younger voters’ long-term interests to climate change, AI, economic inequality, and the future of U.S. Social Security.
- A Kuwaiti student describes losing interest after politics seemed to circle without progress, including the repeated dissolution of parliament.
- Other students describe becoming more politically involved in college through advocacy, while Aiden says his peers see polarization and lack a candidate or movement they can rally around.
- Students debate whether leaders should prioritize constituents’ needs or broader national interests.
- Richards uses healthcare spending to illustrate scarcity: a routine checkup produced a proposed list of tests costing about $100,000, more than one person can afford.
- A Colombian student says candidates may promise to solve problems such as guerrilla violence or inequality even when those problems cannot be quickly fixed.
- Students discuss political advertising and propaganda, with one saying he avoids CNN and Fox News when researching election issues.
- Richards warns that spending an hour online does not amount to serious research because reliable conclusions require synthesizing complex information.
- The exchange highlights the difficulty of finding accurate, balanced political information rather than simply trusting a preferred source.
- Richards compares political parties to teams and inherited religious identities, arguing that many voters remain loyal to a party across candidates.
- He proposes replacing elections with leaders trained from a young age to make informed decisions for citizens, nature, and other nations.
- Richards distinguishes this idea from a simple meritocracy, emphasizing developed wisdom and resistance to bribery rather than credentials alone.
- A Kuwaiti student says conversations with his father can overturn weeks of independent reading with a single insight.
- A student supports the concept of highly qualified leaders but warns that humans can exploit concentrated power.
- Richards cites Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaigns as an example of how even extensive state action has not eliminated corruption.
- A philosophy student connects Richards’s proposal to Plato’s philosopher king and cites Marcus Aurelius as a leader educated for rule.
- The student argues that even a capable ruler creates a succession problem: an heir may be unfit, while handpicking a successor leaves power unstable.
- A Kuwaiti student describes Kuwait’s monarchy as elective within the ruling family, with parliament offering an opinion on the next leader.
- A student argues that voting for a third-party candidate is not wasted because enough such votes can signal that political ideas are changing.
- A Saudi student questions whether the U.S. president’s two-term limit allows enough time for long-term economic policy, citing Lee Kuan Yew’s 35 years leading Singapore.
- A Colombian student describes a shift from the right-leaning administrations of Álvaro Uribe and Iván Duque to Gustavo Petro, and explains how Colombia’s first round includes many parties before a two-candidate runoff.
- A Kuwaiti student explains that political parties are constitutionally banned in Kuwait, though representatives can share views and initiatives without forming formal blocs.
- A former student-government president says she supports Zohran Mamdani’s policies despite coming from an upper-middle-class background that could be affected by his proposed taxes.
- Richards closes by urging leaders to consider the interests of the whole country, using BYD’s fast-charging electric-car batteries as an example of technology that governments may need to respond to.
Transcript excerpt
0:00 SOC 119 schedule. So next Tuesday is Irvin Moore and The Infamous. Then we have exam two, and then we have three classes in which you won't be coming here. You'll just be watching a video of the class. And we'll send you the link to the video earlier in the day. Not too early, but we'll send it to you. And it will be posted on Canvas and the website and everything. Yo, we'll send you more information about this. But here's the most important thing. So I need 100% attention right now, 100%. The way this works is as soon as you get the link, you can watch the video if you want.
0:47 It doesn't matter. I suggest, however, that you just assume that you're in class, and you start the video at 435. And then as soon as the video is over, you're going to go to Canvas and take a three-question quiz on the video. That's how you're going to get your attendance points. So if you're not paying attention in the video because you're hanging out with your friends or whatever the case is, or if you watch it hours earlier, you might forget. So and then that link and the questions won't be available until later, until right after the video ends. And then the questions will be right at the end of class time.
1:38 So the video will be ready at 545, and then it's going to close at 555. And then that's it, man. If you don't do it in that time, then you're going to have to do the class reflection video assignment to get your attendance points. Is that cool? And if the quiz won't be available until right after the video is over, OK? Oye, mira, también, once you open the quiz,
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