America is facing a crisis of leadership. The problem is not a lack of leaders, but rather the manner in which America chooses leaders. Last week, news broke that former congressmen Eric Massa of New York City’s 29 district lied to America about the catalyst behind his resignation. Initially, Massa claimed that congressional Democrats forced him out of office because he refused to vote for the health care bill being pressed by the Obama Administration. Massa said that the pressure to vote in favor of health care was so severe that Presidential Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel confronted him in the congressional showers. According to Massa, Emmanuel, fully unclothed, pointed a finger at Massa’s chest and sternly told the New York congressmen to vote in favor of health care. Massa declined to do so and thus ignited the backroom campaign to remove the New Yorker from office. Massa feels the health care legislation, as it stands now, does not do enough to reform the health care system. Massa wants a full single-payer health care system and refused to mortgage this position as collateral for future political favors. Despite the fact that Massa wants even more government intrusion into the health care system, conservatives pounced on the opportunity to paint the Democratic party as a politically coercive force that expels free-thinking individuals. The Massa controversy had the potential to not only sink the health care reform bill, but also destroy 2010 and 2012 prospects for the  Democratic party. The perfect political storm was brewing and on path to destroy the Democratic majority that rests on the most fragile of foundations. And then, to the chagrin of conservatives, Massa foreclosed the real reason for his departure from congress. Massa, like far too many other politicians in recent years, had been under investigation for ethical and sexual misconduct.

The fact that yet another politician is a little on the handsy side is not per se surprising, but the manner in which this particular ‘controversy’ unfolded exacerbates the lack of confidence Americans have in elected representatives. Words cannot do justice to how loony Massa sounded explaining himself to conservative commentator Glenn Beck and CNN hallmark Larry King. I encourage all who read this column to search either interview on YouTube. On both programs, Massa babbled and rambled incoherent platitudes and apologies to the American people. Massa’s explanations were so mind-numbingly stupid that Glenn Beck actually apologized to America for wasting an hour of their time. Ironically, Glenn Beck’s sixty minute interview with Massa might have been one of the most important interviews in the history of the Glenn Beck Show. Because the impact the lunacy of Massa’s statements have on the public is magnified by the fact that Massa was an elected official; one of 535 people who vote on what legislation becomes law.

The most troubling aspect of the Massa controversy rests not in the fact that Massa has a propensity to act unethically. While Massa’s tendency to “grope male staffers” is surely an unsettling thought and is not acceptable behavior in any setting, Massa’s rationalization of his actions and the lines of logic he used to explain his behavior reveals an unsettling fact about the nature of American politics. Our electoral process has degraded so far that it is no longer a good judge of rational capacity. American elections have become the Theater of the Absurd. Politicians are rarely held culpable for gross errors in reason or logic, simply because Americans rarely require politicians to explain rationals behind decisions. And in the rare cases where politicians are forced to explain decisions, the representatives who speak so eloquently on the campaign trail degenerate into babbling buffoons blindly grasping for palpable lines of logic. Not all politicians are as dimwitted as Eric Massa, but the simple fact that Massa made it to Congress is reason enough to drastically alter the way in which political elections happen in America.

The largest problem with elections is that the inmates run the asylum. The opposing political campaigns are the ones who determine the structure and nature of debates. Politicians pass the laws governing how campaigns are to be conducted and both parties have skewed the electoral process to diminish situations that reveal the rational incapacity of candidates. I am not sure of the exact solution that will solve the woes of America’s electoral system, but a serious discussion about how to better the election process so that voters can better understand how candidates reason must take place if America is ever going to climb from under the morass of incompetent government. The fact that a person of Massa’s incompetence level has a hand in deciding the future course of this nation should cause all Americans to pause and reconsider this funny thing called politics. These are our leaders. These are the people charged with running this country. And we currently have no way of telling if these people have the intellectual capacity to solve or mitigate the myriad of crises waiting to befall America in the next twenty years. This, gentlemen, is the stuff of nightmares.

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