I like many of my millennial counterparts are looking into third party candidates and realizing that this is quickly becoming "The 2016 Election: Everything NOT To Do If You Want to Run for President."
From the media constantly bringing up Hilary Clinton's email scandal to most things that Donald Trump says (Seriously do a quick Google search of "Literally everything Donald Trump has said" and you'll get over 39 million hits on ridiculous, incorrect, or offensive things he has ever said). For more on that check out this article where you can even up or down vote 191 ridiculous things Trump has said that make him unfit to be President.
Then if you look at the two main third party candidates (Jill Stein and Gary Johnson) they have been under fairly harsh criticism as well. Recently Johnson was asked who his favorite world leader was; see the video of his response here. This isn't an uncommon thing either. Johnson says "I'm having an Aleppo moment" in reference to him not knowing about the city of Aleppo in Syria. Now, I'm not expecting my potential future president to know everything about every issue across the globe, but having a vague clue about a majority of issues and knowing more details about the most pressing issues is not unreasonable. But after Johnson's mistake about knowing any foreign world leaders Stein tweeted a response hoping to give herself a one up, but she too failed to successfully name a world leader. See more about that one here. While she was at least able to give specific names of foreign government officials, none of them are technically world leaders. In addition to this, Johnson stuck his tongue out during an interview with with MSNBC leaving the reporter very confused and uncomfortable.
But unfortunately clueless candidates is not a new thing. Former Vice President Dan Quayle had a couple major blunders from simple things like his inability to correctly spell "potato" to saying that the Holocaust was an embarrassment in our nation's history. At one point 2012 Republican Nominee Mitt Romney even misspelled "America" on his app. Find that image here. We can also look at John McCain's Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin who finds it fun to invent words.
So I'm here to show that a 20 year old knows more about foreign politics and be more professional than the people vying to become president in the 2016 election.
Who is your favorite World Leader? Why?
The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I first heard about Trudeau in this article about Trudeau being the first Canadian Prime Minister to walk in Toronto's 35th annual Pride Parade. I feel like this is such a huge deal because Canada was the fourth country to legalize same sex marriage on a national level (legalizing it in 2005, a full ten years before the United States). By the year 2005, only one U.S. state (Massachusetts) had legalized same sex marriage.
Should you stick your tongue out during a professional news interview?
No. You should never stick your tongue out during any type of interview. But for Gary Johnson and other politicians who have had trouble in interviews here are some tips:
1. Always be professional: look, dress and act that way.
2. Know your facts going into the interview. You should never be blindsided by a question.
3. Make sure the statistics, data, or information you use is from a reliable and credible source.
4. Remember: everything you say will probably end up on the internet and continue to haunt you, especially if its such a painfully obvious mistake to the general American public.
If you enjoyed my examples of politician's fail moments, check out this article for some sadly hilarious moments from politicians.
