If you are going in for heart surgery, you probably want a team of surgeons and anaesthesiologists to perform your operation. You wouldn't want a team of lawyers to do it -- you would die.
It boggles the mind that we don't hold the same standards for decision making in our government: environmental policy is decided by a team of lawyers, military spending is decided by lawyers, security policy is decided by lawyers.
Certainly good rhetoric and being able to engender passion in the populace has it's place, but I'm hard pressed to believe that 99% of the elected leadership positions in government should be occupied by people with primarily those skill sets.
The people who acquire power tend to be those skilled at acquiring power.
To be more accurate, those who acquire power tend to be those who are good at acquiring power under the system for doing so. Existing political systems favor the most charismatic politicians. What system would encourage the most able technocrats, instead of the most ruthless? This isn't a rhetorical question.
"What system would encourage the most able technocrats, instead of the most ruthless?"
In general, I think in the US, we torture politicians and bureaucrats far too much.
However, I don't think putting smart people in government is going to solve all of our problems, and it could make things much worse (I'm serious when I say that -- sometimes smart people make extremely unwise policy decisions).
I think, what we really need, are people that:
* Have not publicly stated a bunch of opinions. The more clearly you state an opinion in public, the more it becomes a part of your identity no matter how ridiculous.
* Have been wrong enough times that they aren't afraid of being wrong one more time. They expect a high likelihood of being wrong, so build safeguards into their policies for when they don't work.
* Are willing to cede power. Maybe some federal laws could be state laws, instead? Or maybe state laws could be local laws? Or maybe they don't need to be laws at all, and the goal can be accomplished in some less-forceful way.
I don't know the answer, but your use of the word "ruthless" brings up a good point.
I seem to remember hearing about studies[0] which showed that to be a politician (or even a CEO of a large company) required certain psychopathic traits. This is because making decisions like, e.g.:
- Sending people to war, knowing that many will not return
- Changing laws which will result in many being worse off
- Firing hundreds/thousands of people, with potential disastrous consequences for many of them
Would be very difficult to be made by somebody who possesses a strong sense of empathy.
I wonder if lawyers tend to posses the same traits, because often they are asked to defend people, even if the persons crimes were indefensible. Likewise, I wonder if this is related to why other professionals are underrepresented? I am doing my PhD in Australia, and despite the occasional crazy academic, I don't think (many of) my colleagues show psychopathic tendencies that I am aware of.
[0] - I don't recall where I heard this, so no citations forthcoming.
It boggles the mind that we don't hold the same standards for decision making in our government: environmental policy is decided by a team of lawyers, military spending is decided by lawyers, security policy is decided by lawyers.
Certainly good rhetoric and being able to engender passion in the populace has it's place, but I'm hard pressed to believe that 99% of the elected leadership positions in government should be occupied by people with primarily those skill sets.