To me, the most annoying part about what Bruce Braley said, which I’ll post down here for those who haven’t heard:
To put this in stark contrast, if you help me win this race you may have someone with your background, your experience, your voice, someone who’s been literally fighting tort reform for thirty years, in a visible or public way, on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Or, you might have a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, serving as the next Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Because, if Democrats lose the majority, Chuck Grassley will be the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.”
Is that he’s all about the proper qualifications for the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Gotta have a law school grad on the Judiciary Committee, not a farmer!”, yet you never hear lawyers-turned-politicians advocate for bankers on the Banking Committee, accountants on the budget committee, veterans on the Armed Services Committee, or farmers on the Agriculture Committee. To the politicians, most of whom happen to be lawyers, being a lawyer qualifies you to do anything, apparently. But if you’re not a lawyer, you need to know your place and stick to what you know.
What this tells me is that we’ve got too many lawyers in Congress, and not enough people from other walks of life.
It’s a common mistake: politicians aren’t lawyers who entered politics, they’e politicians who happened to study law. In other words, they didn’t just decide to enter politics after graduating law school - they were politicians ever since they were elected class president in junior high school, and they went to law school because they thought it would help their political career. If, for some reason, society decided that Art History helps you be a politician, then Congress would be packed with art historians - and they’d be the exact same people.
Point taken, but I’m not sure career politicians are what we’re looking for either. Congress is supposed to be where the people get representation and I don’t think career professional representatives is what the founders had in mind.
My own opinion is that politics is what successful people should do when they’ve accomplished their goals in the private world. It should be the cream of the crop, not just those who happened to decide from an early age that they wanted to accrue power to themselves by lording it over the rest of us.
That’s probably why politicians tend to have the same types of pathologies:
I’m not sure career politicians are professionals in the sense of being able to govern a nuclear-armed superpower. Does Bruce Braley really have insights into this that you do not? Did his legal training give him expertise in all the facets of nuclear weapons policy such that he can be trusted more than you?
Basically your argument is that citizens can no longer govern their own country. We need to outsource it to professionals. Except the professionals are just lawyers, most of whom, as Alessan point out, didn’t even practice law. And most of whom can’t even given an interview on the simplest subjects without extensive preparation from their staff.
Of course, it could very well be that the real power in DC is the staffers. They seem to be the repositories of actual knowledge, which they spoonfeed to the officeholders when they have to pretend to be smart.
So we’ve not only chucked democracy, but now we’re advocating one-party rule. Which I guess is just redundant.
Despite your hostility to basic democratic norms like the fact that average people are qualified to be Congressmen, I think that you’re a pretty smart person who could do a better job in Congress than 90% of the people squatting there now. I’d say that about most Dopers, actually. We all come from different walks of life, but we’re interested in the issues and we aren’t interested because of how much power they can help us accrue. Stick the 435 most frequent posters in Congress and you’d end up with at least as good as what we have now.
Not to egg you on in this matter – but a substantial portion of the electorate sees the issue differently. In fact, if Nate Silver is to be believed, the result of people holding the opposite opinion in November will be a majority of Republicans in both houses of Congress.
My own view is that most Democrats are a worse choice than most Republicans; in any given race, the odds are strong that the best candidate is a Republican. But I will certainly allow that there are a few races every election cycle in which the Democrat’s merits outweigh his opponent’s.
I agree completely. I find that Democrats are a lot more likely to vote Democrat no matter what than Republican voters. Aside from the demographic challenges, breaking that bad habit and introducing Democratic voters to the virtue of multiple parties(as well as politicians from backgrounds other than lawyer or activist) should be an important priority for Republicans.
So your solution to the problem of your party’s well-earned distastefulness to the majority of Americans is to plead for us to practice affirmative action. :rolleyes:
You don’t grasp how pathetic that is, do you? How about returning your positions and candidates back toward sanity and reality instead? Wouldn’t that be more effective and even respectable? You’ll get support again when you show you *deserve *it, not before. Now grow the fuck up a little.
Really? If, after the 2016 election, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the White House, you’d consider that to be a bad thing? Bullshit.
Wow. Meanwhile, elsewhere on adaher’s planet, a giant flying tortoise wheels slowly across the purple sky. Tribes of nomadic weeping willows gather around the campfire, and the elder willow begins a tale of the open-minded Republican citing “the good of the country” as he bucks his party leaders to vote for a measure being vilified by the GOP as a whole …
I actually live in Braley’s current congressional district, and fully intend to vote for him in the Senate race. What he said was kinda dumb, yes - frankly it’s the “fighting hard against tort reform for you trial lawyers” part that rubs me the wrong way, not the “farmer in charge of the Judiciary Committee” part - but today’s politics unfortunately dictate that you gotta raise oodles of money to play. Thanks to the Supremes and a couple of their recent decisions, that’s only going to get worse. In my mind, Braley is still the best candidate for the job - mainly because he’s a Democrat, true, but also because I truly believe he has the best interests of Iowa as a whole and the nation at heart. Too many Republicans give me the vibe of “unleash the rich!” and “oversight is bad, unless it’s in your bedroom!” and “you little people will get yours, once the business types and job creators get their fill!”
Getting more “regular folks” to participate in our legislatures is a worthy goal that could only help our country. Too bad the current system is so stacked against “regular folks” that it’s only a pipe dream. Thanks, Koch brothers! Thanks, Roberts Supreme Court! Thanks, dedicated and entrenched lobbyists and status quo politicians (on both sides of the aisle, mind you)!
I used to agree, but that has been eroded to almost negligibility over time for a few reasons. Seeking the vote of the religious because you’re pious is one thing; seeking the religious vote under the pretence that you share their beliefs and your policy choices will reflect that is something else. Further, occasional pandering is one thing, as is broadening your appeal as much as possible–both are understandable. But in the middling/recent past, pandering to the lowest common denominator seems to have gone from a necessarly element to a dominating focus.
These are generalizations, but there is now a large subset of republicans who won primaries because they are promoting mixing religion with law (e.g. anti-gay marriage) or are riding the wave of anti-intellectualism past the primaries.
I think Michelle Bachman is a good example. Even if someone would agree with the majority of her votes in congress, to say that, in general, she is the best candidate her district put forward. (This assumes that ‘best candidate’ means the best person for the job, the spirit of the OP, not the one most likely to win.)
Damn straight. Case in point, Ashton Kutcher. Not qualified to be doing Mila Kunis. I am because I’m a lawyer. Ashton, get back to doing old hag Demi Moore (still younger than me!) and introduce me to your former co-worker.
Astute observation. How many Congressional members who are lawyers have been litigators or transactional lawyers for 10 years or more before running for office?
Make up your mind. Average people or pretty smart person? Personally I think that I’d prefer more diversity with professional training, but being a hell of a lot smarter than average and better educated than average is pretty high on my list for elected office candidates.
“Tort reform” is all about making it more difficult for average people to gain access to the courts and juries for redress of their grievances. I respect someone fighting to eliminate corporate tort responsibility for killing, maiming and ripping-off people.
I don’t know about this particular candidate, but he is running against Grassley, one of the most stupid, venal, rude and nasty American politicians I have ever seen. He does have that going for him. And that adaher dislikes him. adaher is usually a moron of impressive dimensions, so this too speaks highly of Mr. Braley.
You wouldn’t just grab some schmuck off the street and put him in charge of a corporation, would you? Are countries less important than corporations? Are they easier to run? Politics isn’t just showing up for a vote, or at least, it shouldn’t be. Politics is a vocation, and it requires certain skills and capabilities. Politics is leadership.
Now, I don’t care where the politicians acquired their leadership skills - in business, in the military, in social causes, or in politics. What’s important is that they’re capable of leading.
