Just in case you missed it – that influential paleface Senator Pauline Hanson used the phrase "It’s OK to be white" in a Senate motion denouncing "racism against whites" and "attacks on Western civilisation". The motion was narrowly defeated 31-28 on Monday, with the government somehow supporting it. Later, blushing, the Coalition said an "administrative process failure" had led it to vote the wrong way by mistake.

Yes, summoned by bells and gambolling mindlessly into the chamber (one would compare them to sheep but that would defame those comparatively deep-thinking ruminants) government Senators voted as a blockheaded bloc. They voted for whatever it was that was being voted for, but as usual without first finding out what it was.

And they may go far, because in Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore we find the First Lord of the Admiralty admitting he got a great career boost from his distinguished time in parliament during which "I always voted at my party's call/And never thought of thinking for myself at all".

But all Australian palefaces should be grateful to Senator Hanson for her motion and then for her inarticulate but passionate defence of it next day on one of those breakfast TV shows that get simple-minded viewers' days off to such a sparkling start.

It's been especially inspiring to hear her speak up for western civilisation. It has one hankering to hear more from her on this. Of which aspects of our best-in-the-world western civilisation is she most proud? What parts of that civilisation does she feel most civilise her? The arts, perhaps? Pauline, which is your favourite Shakespeare play? Which of Bach's cantatas, which of Keats' poems, which of Tolstoy's monumental novels, which of Mozart's operas most buoyantly floats your appreciative boat?

But I am being ironic, for surely Pauline reads very little Tolstoy. And also I am indulging my long-standing fantasy of having our federal MPs given little exams, the results made public, testing for us their intelligence and general knowledge. "Name a Mozart opera. Find Afghanistan, Nauru, Moscow, and Gundagai on a map. Who wrote War and Peace? Who or what is a Jorn Utzon? How long does it take the Sun to go around the Earth?" the challenging (and occasionally tricking) exam might challenge.

This week's "It's OK to be white" parliamentary pantomime, deepening our sense that our MPs are not the sharpest tools in the shed of our democracy, revives my 'exams for MPs' fantasy. What's more all this coincides with the appearance online of a swish new US essay fit to Rule? Perhaps it’s time to consider cognitive and psychological testing of politicians.

For City Journal distinguished North American physician and molecular biologist Henry I Miller begins by noting that "Congress continues to rank dead-last in the most recent Gallup poll of public confidence in institutions".

"It's no surprise: [in performances] such as during Brett Cavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings [politicians] are saying and doing things that strain credulity. No wonder insulting the intelligence of members of Congress is such a staple of American folk wisdom. 'Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself,' quipped Mark Twain."

Miller's piece reminds us that the sheer, nation-embarrassing awfulness of national legislatures is not just an Australian affliction. Miller tells lots of illustrative yarns. Yes, these read like jokes, Miller admits, but "too often the joke is on us [the American people]" for having elected dummies to run the country,

"A friend of mine was seated at a banquet table with the family of a then-congressman from Kansas. Family members expressed relief at the congressman's career in politics because none of them thought that he was smart enough to enter the family business - processing scrap metal."

"'When I was debating what became the 2008 Farm Bill,' said Colorado congressman John Salazar, 'I had a member of the Agriculture Committee actually ask me if chocolate milk comes from brown cows.'"

"That’s in the same category as the concern of a congressman that stationing 8,000 U.S. military personnel on Guam would cause the island to 'become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize'."

"Perhaps we should ask candidates (and incumbents) to volunteer for periodic testing of intelligence, mental status, and psychopathology. A mental-status exam …"

"Every politician need not be a genius, but I'd like the ones who represent me to know that islands don’t capsize with the arrival of a few thousand military personnel."

Miller is fond of H.L. Mencken’s vicious (but fair) observation that "Congress consists of one-third scoundrels; two-thirds idiots; and three-thirds poltroons."

"Testing might help us weed out a few idiots. Getting rid of the scoundrels and poltroons will have to wait," Dr Miller growls.

How about it Australia? Do we want the idiots weeded from the garden, the Floriade of federal parliament, by a test? Or would a poltroon-free, drongo-bereft parliament strike us as uncomfortably Australian? What doth it profit a nation to be governed by opera-goers, swots and scholars?