Even as we ignore mass slaughter in Rwanda, Syria, Cambodia, and countless other places, brazen embezzlement by the majority of world leaders, forced starvation perpetrated by African warlords, and organized crime's quiet takeover of Russia, it's hard not to recognize how lucky we are to be able to select our own President of the United States. But do we really know who we are getting? And what if we did know? In an age where advances in psychiatry and psychology could help, America can set an example-by testing, evaluating, and disseminating objective assessments of all major political candidates.

No, this isn't merely an anti-Clinton diatribe. One cannot help but observe, for example, the blithering President Boris Yeltsin bark about bombing the United States, without praying that he'll be gone before he does something really, really stupid and irreversible. And yet, when the Russian leader finally does drink himself into permanent unconsciousness, who can possibly emerge to raise the sunken Soviets without a brutal display?

No nation is immune from human vulnerability. Even Ronald Reagan, who remained the Great Communicator long after he forgot what he was communicating, rendered America vulnerable when the person he became affected the leader he was. Would I have voted for Ronald Reagan if I knew he had Alzheimer's, or a gene for Alzheimer's? Would I have voted for Paul Tsongas if I knew he still had lymphoma? Maybe-but somebody thought I didn't need to know.

Thankfully, in the United States, the President works for us. One can't ignore the rescue of the Clinton presidency by the voice of public opinion polls-which were used as a jury by Senate jurors in his impeachment trial.

As the Y2K presidential race approaches, with an unprecedented amount of money invested in telling us what we want to hear, and how we want to hear it, get ready to be programmed to think things we are trained to think. This one loves his wife, that one was brave, this one is honest, and that one is a man of the people. Not because it is so, but because some focus group said it would play in Peoria. All this accompanied by tabloid excavation causing so much cynicism that it neutralizes the ability of the electorate to thoughtfully consider, "does it matter to me that he did that?"

If you were planning to hire an employee, what would you do in this day and age? Why, utilize a variety of investigative and psychological measures geared toward giving you an exact sense of whom you would be recruiting. Objective and standardized measures for personality assessment have steadily improved and now provide windows on a person's character as never before.

I cannot help but recall when John Glenn ran for public office, how fine a man he must have been for having earned the distinction, through the rigorous testing, screening, and training of the NASA program, to go into space. The universe is a lot tougher in The White House.

As a 1/270,000,000 shareholder in this country, I want to know whom I'm voting for-and as a scientist, I want to see the raw, objective data. Before I vote. I want to see whatever I see when I evaluate an employee as a forensic psychiatrist. I want to see the raw data of his MMPI-2; I want to see how egocentric he is on the Personality Assessment Inventory-not hear it from a member of the opposition party, or some mannequin on MSNBC. I want to see neuropsychological testing that confirms that he is acute in reasoning, and demonstrates her abilities to abstract and react to stress-beforehand. I don't want to learn after the fact that my Vice President is a potato, and I don't want to find out that he's not the man I voted for after I learn of the stroke they never told me about.

I want to know who is especially resilient, who is decisive, who seeks counsel, who is not too eager to please, and who is humble. Please show me objective measures of who is least selfish, most secure, and slowest to explode - instead of generalizing from the size of his eyebrows. But, you say, you can't predict what kind of president someone will be from psychological testing? All right, then let's just trust Canada's Peter Jennings to guestimate for us, based on whom he had dinner with the night before. And while we're at it, let's ask him about an executive at a Fortune 500 company we'd like his psychiatric input on.

Celebrate the information age. Now, can't we apply it better? The American voter is forced to rely upon second rate psychological profiling as it is offered through The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other news providers. Don't we deserve better? I, for one, want objective scientific input. After I am subjected to images of baby kissing, guru hugging, and photo-ops with the police, I want to know whether he has cocaine in his urine. I want to know if he has had a sexually transmitted disease. And if I then vote for him, don't worry, my voter registration card (not to mention my own psychological testing results) shows that I will be able to handle the truth, and make up my own mind, thank you.