Kanye West Shouldn't Run For President But Be An Active Citizen

Mr. Kanye West is running for President. I cannot believe I just wrote those words. 

He shouldn't. He should be an active citizen.

An active citizen is a person who is an official member of a political community and who therefore has  rights and privileges and legitimate expectations of her/his government. One important question for political philosophy, then, is whether and how these benefits impose obligations on citizens. In other words, what do people as citizens owe to their governments and/or societies? There are many ways that he can use his platform. There are many places that his voice could be better used. He needs to understand that democracy needs his to be just a citizen in the system.

Democracy requires not just obeying the law, though; it requires that people actively participate in the political process. This means voting, of course, but it is usually thought that not just any effort at voting will suffice—the citizen must stay informed of political affairs and make a rational choice among the options presented to her in the voting booth. 

It is time for less stunt programming and more substance leading. Let's face facts, Kanye has no social or civil experience. He may have some passing knowledge, but there is no part of me that trusts that he can be a steed enough leader to shepherd the free world. 

Kanye's candidacy will only spur further polarization.

Polarization is likely exacerbating widespread voter irrationality. There is already plenty of evidence that many voters are quite ignorant about their government (e.g., how much it spends on foreign aid) or relevant empirical facts (e.g., facts about economics, foreign affairs, history, etc.), which is bad enough. But voters also demonstrate irrationality; for example, they use biased or flawed thought processes to evaluate whatever information they do happen to have. In one famous experiment, people opposed legislative proposals from their own party when they were (falsely) told that the proposals were supported by the competing party. 

Clearly, they were responding to party branding rather than the content of the proposals. 

Another study shows that voters tend to reward or punish incumbent candidates based on how the economy is doing a few months before the election, regardless of how well it has done in the previous years or the extent to which the incumbent is actually responsible for the economy. In many ways, voters demonstrate motivated reasoning, cognitive bias, and sloppy thinking when they act politically.

Kanye running for office is a knee jerk reaction.