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Monday, December 11, 2006

Civics lesson

This morning on KUOW, our local NPR station, the "Weekday" program did an hour titled "Citizenship: Can You Pass the Test?" [MP3 download]. For years I have enjoyed catching this show because the host, Steve Scher, can be counted on to ask or say at least one absurdly stupid thing per hour, in the most pretentious NPR speaking style, about the subjects the show "takes up."

In the last segment they took calls from naturalized citizens who told about their experiences with the citizenship test. One woman (beginning at minute 43:38 of the MP3) said that she had grown up in Seattle and gone to private schools here, but still missed a question, years ago, I assume, about who was next in the line of presidential succession after the Vice President. She said she hadn't known the answer but had remembered hearing that Henry Kissinger could not become President, so she told the questioner that "I know it can't be the Secretary of State." Although she missed the question, the interviewer told her she was right about the Secretary of State, because the Secretary of State is not an elected official. The caller noted with satisfaction that she had still passed. (Scher [noncommittally]: "Uh . . . but you got it in the end.") Then she added something to the effect that she didn't think a lot of people knew that about the Secretary of State, and it reflected badly on the school system because she had gone though private schools and was still "not understanding some of the fundamentals." It was clear that to this day she believes that cabinet officials are not in the line of succession. At the end of her call she put in a little dig at the public schools. There is something classically Seattle about her attitude: continuing in ignorance herself, she suggests that the less fortunate ("disenfranchised low-income people") can't necessarily be expected to know the things she implicitly does about "how our country works." At no point did Steve Scher say anything to indicate that he disagreed with the caller's concept of presidential succession. My long experience listening to the show suggests that he didn't know any different.

(For any of you reading this in other countries, or in underprivileged parts of Seattle, the woman was completely wrong. The line of succession runs through the whole Cabinet with no regard to the fact that cabinet secretaries are not elected. Kissinger could not have been President because he is not a "natural born" citizen.)


posted at 4:26 PM

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