It’s not about you. It’s never about you. It’s about us, and us are very different from you.
If you’re trying to prove that yes, professional politicians are stupid then you failed. If you’re trying to prove that yes, some commenters will attempt to add their own agenda to any thread, then you succeeded.
You can be ‘smarter’ about some things than others. That’s what Obama was talking about. When it comes to the debt ceiling, members of Congress should be smarter than the average American on this subject. Should be. Doubt that they are.
Not necessarily. Did all those people taking loans they can’t afford know their best interests? Do people taking quack remedies know their best interests? I suspect lots of people opposing raising the debt ceiling are going to be surprised when the economy crashes and they are out on their asses without unemployment. It is clear from letters to my local paper that lots of people have no clue about the impact of the government defaulting.
Now, most politicians at least have a clue, though they may choose to deny the impact for political motives. Some are pretty stupid - like the Creationists, if they really believe it as opposed to telling the cretinous constituents what they want to hear.
Perfect example: Joe the Plumber. He became famous for opposing something of direct benefit to him,when he had no real chance of being rich (not even being a certified plumber) and had no clue about the impact of taxes, which he thought was on his fantasy company’s sales, not income after expenses.
This only makes sense if you think that politicians are somehow randomly selected from the population. Check out the percentage of politicians who are lawyers, for example. Who are independently wealthy. Any politician, smart or dumb, has to put together a campaign and lead a fairly large group of supporters, and so aren’t sheep by definition.
Hell, Palin may be a moron, but no one ever accused her of being a sheep.
But how much do you now about light rail right-of-way, commercial zoning, expected demographic changes, tax base, construction costs, long-term capital project insurance, educational investment? Will you be knowledgeable enough to know whether it’s in your best interests that a rail stop be put in at the community college?
IMHO no one can “really” know all this stuff at once – that’s why we have teams of people trying to reach consensus on it. Whether the result is smarter than you, me, or any one person remains to be seen, but at least many hands make light work.
Not even in Hal Briston’s wildest fantasies?
Yes.
Full stop.
This is it, exactly.
And part of their job is to become better educated about the issues they’re working on.
I don’t want my President, representatives, etc. to make decisions the way I would make them, necessarily. I want them to do the work necessary to become well-informed, and then to make the decisions the way I would make them if I were as well-informed as they are.
People are stupid. Hopefully some of the stupid is weeded out when representatives are elected, this past mid-term election notwithstanding.
90+% of that 69% figure simply don’t realize what the consequences would be if the U.S. defaulted on its debt. I bet they’re confusing that with the spending deficit, which is a problem, but not the same thing.
Stating that lawyers are more intelligent than the average isn’t helping your case. Honestly.
More educated doesn’t necessarily mean more well informed, sadly.
My son-in-law just graduated from law school. They are definitely smarter than average. Not as smart as engineers, but then who is?
Actually, that is exactly what more educated means.
Of course, sometimes a more educated person will get things wrong that a less educated one will, by luck, get right, but the more educated person has a better chance of being right.
I’m somewhat disappointed in the responses in this thread as I think they are all focusing in on the wrong aspect. The statement Obama made is incredibly stupid. The issue is not whether an average politician is smarter than an average member of the public. That is irrelevant. The problem with Obama’s statement is that it assumes that an average politician is smarter than an average member of the public on a single specific issue, which in this case is the public debt ceiling.
Politicians are generalists. They are the classic case of a “jack of all trades, master of none.” The same guy who is working out the details of the public debt ceiling (which includes possibly entitlement reform, tax reform, changes in expenses to numerous unrelated programs, etc) was also the guy who was working on “healthcare reform”, which was really about the insurance industry, and a guy who may vote on a gun bill, war resolution, financial regulation, etc all next week. They do all of this while also being essentially fulltime PR people and campaigners. The position of President is an exaggerated version of it that also lives in a fishbowl for us all to dissect.
To compound matters, we all (the public) get analysis of the work done by these politician generalists performed by other generalists (members of the media).
There are certainly subjects that I run circles around nearly 100% of politicians (who are mostly lawyers) and journalists (who mostly have journalism degrees). I’m sure the same exists for most of you for your given profession or educational interest. Do you people honestly think Obama knows the slightest thing about accounting or energy or insurance or finance or healthcare or military tactics? He knows exactly what a short memo he was handed earlier that morning that was written by someone who generally has the same ideology as he does he tells him to know. He knows enough to memorize a couple of buzzwords and talking points. Every single politician is the same, and so is every member of the media.
His comment is incredibly stupid because he should not be asking people to defer to the professional politicians but instead to the experts in that particular field, which in this case would likely be economists. He does exactly that much of the time, but this was an absurd statement that is 100% wrong to say. I don’t give a shit, nor should any of you, about what Joe Biden, for example, thinks about the economic ramifications of the failure to raise the debt ceiling. We should care what position he is taking, certainly, but we should also realize that he really doesn’t have a clue. We should really care what the specialists think though.
That was … beautiful, LonghornDave.
(Seriously.)
You mean those pointy headed ivory tower professors? And which ones?
While I agree with nearly everything you say, the experts don’t make the decision how to vote, the politicians do. Politicians should be smart enough to get multiple opinions, look at them critically, and decide which to go with based on the facts and of course influenced by their biases.
Some politicians can speak quite knowledgeably about subjects they’ve worked on for a while, but I do hope that every one of them has studied this issue at least in more depths than the average member of the American public. If my rep is not smart enough to understand the issues, I’d vote against him or her regardless of party. I do care what Biden thinks, especially because he is heavily involved.
Anyone who has ever had to make a decision knows it is a lot easier to give advice than to decide. The experts give advice, the politicians decide. And I think it is very beneficial for members of the public to think that just maybe there is a reason for a politician to vote against what the public’s gut interest is. The politician cannot say to a constituent that their opinion is misinformed and downright stupid - even when it is. If the constituent believes the politician is smarter, maybe he’d tone it down.
In case you were wondering, this is where you lost me.
The median politician is more intelligent than the median member of the public. The median politician is more informed on any given issue than a non-specialist because of that intelligence advantage, because their lives are dedicated to public policy, and because they have advisers. Consequently, sometimes (perhaps relatively rarely) the median politician actually knows the majority preferences of the country better than the public itself, because people can be wrong about their own preferences when they lack sufficient knowledge or intelligence to evaluate the consequences of certain choices. Obama’s point was that the debt ceiling is one of those issues.
The average member of the public cannot explain why default is bad, or how it would affect them, and therefore does not have an informed preference.
LonghornDave is just factually wrong that politicians don’t know more than few buzzwords about each issue. That is true for a lot of politicians and a lot of issues. But most politicians are expert on one or two issues, and some are experts on many. He is also wrong when he states that “Every single politician is the same, and so is every member of the media.” Until recently, my Congressman was a rocket scientist, for example. And many members of the media are very well-informed an expert on some issues.
This statement shows a serious lack of understanding of the media. There are certainly talking heads on TV who have little skill beyond looking pretty and reading a TelePrompTer well. But the majority of people who work in the news business have a specialty. How many sports reporters are former players or coaches? How many tech reporters are engineers or programmers? How many legal reporters are lawyers or paralegals? Oftentimes, when I’m interviewing “experts” for a magazine article, I have a deeper knowledge of the subject than they do, because I tend to write about subject matter I’ve studied and fields I’ve worked in for years.
Yes, I’ve been interviewed by idiots who screwed up every time they quoted me. I’ve also worked with some pretty clueless editors, but every profession has lazy and/or incompetent people. They are the exception rather than the rule.
Is should not suprise anyone that there are smart, dedicated public servants in politics, and that there are some nitwits and hosebags. There are nitwits and hosebags in all professions, even those that require a large amount of schooling.
But the nitwits and hosebags in politics are likely to be better informed on this issue than I am, as they have probably studied it more and had smart folks on their staffs who have studied it a lot and have given their opinions. They probably had discussions with other informed folks and gotten more views on it.
Not that they would come up with right decision, mind you.