Hindsight is 20/20. That's how these potential presidential candidates will be rated. How did their decisions about how to deal with actual situations the real president had to face during their 4 year realty show / mock presidency run.

For instance, say there's an actual pandemic. Regardless of what the real president does, all of the "on deck" presidents would register how they'd handle it. Their timing would be critical, they'd be asked how to react and "I don't know." would not be acceptable.

So one guy, Joe Smith, a successful small businessman from Chicago might say "Block all travel to and from the area where the pandemic is originating." while a competitor John Brown, a lawyer from San Francisco might say "That's xenophobic, we need to allow travel from that area so we look like nice people." In a few months, the responses are tested against actual responses, John Brown is confronted by the fact that his decision would have resulted in the deaths of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people while Joe would win this round be doing the correct thing.

This would go on for 4 years and the candidates / competitors would be scored on how many decisions were correct minus how many were wrong, just like the game show Jeopardy. For fun, there could be a tally of how many deaths resulted from certain decisions. "Dave Green from New York, you decided to nuke Russia for buying Facebook ads trying to influence the coming election, fully 30% of the world population would have been wiped out by that decision, what do you have to say for yourself?" "Well, frankly I'd do it again, somebody needs to stand up to Putin and you need to break a few eggs to make an omelette." "Or vaporize a third of the world human beings?" "Hey man, whatever it takes." Dave Green would not move to to next round.

However, let's say Joe Smith came up with a 90% "good call" rating. He could take that record to a real run for the Whitehouse.

And like The Masked Singer, you wouldn't be able to know their political party because people would mindlessly just pick the stupid candidate from their party no matter how badly they did.

Addendum: There could be a play at home version on line where you can see how well you'd do as president.
-- doctorremulac3, Mar 14 2020

Inspired by TC's idea. The_20Decider
Basically the same idea, but with a twist. [doctorremulac3, Mar 14 2020]

That difficult time window for registering is crucial, to stop over shoulder looking and other shadowy practices . Probably the fastest, most apt answer would be best virtual campaign support.
-- wjt, Mar 16 2020


Which candidate said that coronavirus is just a big hoax?
-- xenzag, Mar 16 2020


To make this work, you'd need an agreed model for constructing counter-factual histories.

If you've ever worked with opportunity-cost accounting in a complex organisation (never mind a large country), and if someone claims they've got a way to do it objectively, this is the point at which you fall off your chair laughing.
-- pertinax, Mar 16 2020



random, halfbakery