Unless people are very much trained up, the election by the mass is not very good. Rather, first-class men, they should nominate that "This man should be president."

Voting for Strangers

Training first class men

JAYATIRTHA: How to get a God conscious leader?

SANDY NIXON: God conscious president.

PRABHUPADA: Yes, if you train people to become God conscious, then naturally president will come, God conscious. If you train people like hogs and dogs, then the president will be hogs and dogs because it is democracy. [laughter] Therefore we have taken the task to train people how to become godly. Then naturally the president will come godly. If people decide that "We shall not cast our vote to any man who is not Krishna conscious," then the Krishna conscious man will come. But people are not trained up. They are fools, so they elect another fool, big fool. That's all. How you can be happy? Just like in the forest the small animals like cats and dogs and asses, they are very much afraid of the lion, tiger. And they accept lion as the king of forest. But he may be lion or tiger and elected by asses and cats and dogs, but he is nothing but animal. Will any human being accept the lion as human being? No. He knows that he is an animal. Maybe he is voted by the small animals. So that is the position. At the present moment the mass of people are kept in their animal consciousness. And therefore they elect another big animal to become president. Their idea is to have animal strength, jaws and nails and very powerful – "Oh, he is God," or "He is president." They cannot select anyone else. But formerly, in the Vedic civilization, a king was elected by the first-class men of the society, the saintly persons, the brahmanas. They did not take part in politics, but they recommended that "This man should..." Just like Krishna. He wanted Yudhishthira must be the king. Because king is supposed to be God's representative, how to rule over, not that these cats and dogs will find out a lion and vote him to the chair. That is not the process. Your modern process is that the electors, they are not trained up, and they elect another big animal to become the president. Therefore it is failure. All over the world this is going on. This so-called democracy... Unless people are very much trained up, the election by the mass is not very good. Rather, first-class men, they should nominate that "This man should be president." That will be nice. Your question was "How to find out president, good"? So this is the process.

So there is no intelligent class of man. That is the difficulty. Who is trying to control his mind, control his senses? This is the first condition to become a first-class man. As soon as a man sees a beautiful woman, immediately his mind is agitated. Where is the control? And as soon as the mind is agitated, the senses are agitated. And this is the first condition of the first-class man, that he should not be agitated in his mind, and agitated by senses. This is the first condition.

So where is that school who is training to, how to control the mind, how to control the senses, how to become truthful, how to become cleansed, internally, externally. These are the signs of first-class men. So we are trying our little bit to make some men as first class. This is our teeny effort.