What gets assessed

The evidence

For somebody who has never held office, the record is what they have said and done in public:

• Long-form interviews and appearances. Hours, not clips. A person's answer to a follow-up question is worth more than any prepared statement, which is why length matters.
• Their own writing — books, articles, published positions.
• Explicit commitments — what they have said they would do, in terms specific enough to be checked against later.
• Background — what they have actually done: work, service, things built or run.

How it is read

Material is assessed against the published qualification rubrics — sixteen areas, hundreds of graded criteria, each with levels 1 to 10 written down before anybody was assessed against them.

The rubrics are deliberately written so that people who disagree about policy can both score well. A market-oriented Democrat, an industrial-policy Republican and a deregulatory libertarian can each reach a 9 in the same area by naming a mechanism and saying who pays. What loses points is not having the wrong answer; it is having no mechanism.

Percent known

Every assessment carries a companion figure: how much of what we would want to know we actually have.

This is the number that keeps the roster honest. A 90% assessment built on one appearance is not a strong result, it is a weak sample, and the product refuses to present the two identically. A low percent-known is an invitation — it says exactly what contribution would improve the record.

What never feeds this

The voting record, if one exists. The wall runs in both directions: in-office acts feed Monkey and Llama and never touch the Flamingo, and none of the material above ever touches Monkey or Llama.