Originally Posted by
DH2time
Written by someone who has never been elected, worked to get someone elected, started a 527 PAC, worked within the system to get meaningful things done I assume. Your utopian way of thinking how this country was founded and how it has always operated taints your objectivity. I’ll give you a great example of why experience matters. The Trump administration has lost 80 percent of their policy battles in court, they have won 11 percent and spend untold time and money facing off in court. They have lost 63 cases in the last 24 months, why? Primarily because they are neophytes who have no clue on how policy is formed or implemented. The administration aides are not the ones calling the shots. The guy on the top is making them implement and fight these out. They don’t lose on the grounds of illegality usually, they lose on procedural grounds or the inability to understand how the game is played and operated. Experience matters. Some local yahoo who is a farmer has zero understanding how complex the machinery of government and law are intertwined. Just like watching a YouTube video on a surgery does not make me an expert reading your kids 8th grade history book and watching “How a Bill becomes a law” does not make you an expert on how the machine of America works. In theory your idea works beautifully, but so does communism in theory.....
The elected person is elected because of the positions they take. It’s their policy positions that put them in office. And you don’t need to be a process expert to have a policy position. You simply need to have life experience. That’s my point. Most of the point you just made supports what I was saying. I don’t need the surgeon to help me make a healthcare decision the picks physical therapy, diet, or drugs. I only need him if the healthcare decision I chose requires surgery. Likewise, I don’t need a person who is a career politician (no real life job experience out of elected office and therefore just take policy positions that will help keep your elected position) when looking for real life solutions that shouldn’t require government (or even if it does call of government intervention). Of course, if on the other hand, one is a creature of the collective, then most likely you do look at a career politician. My point being is that you don’t require a career politician to be an effective representative of the people if you are looking for someone who can simply get legislation passed. You certainly need a good surgeon when having surgery, just as you also need good advisories, aides, attorneys to write policy and legislation. So just to close the entire logic circle, just because you are a career politician doesn’t mean you will be an effective elected official. And just because you don’t have experience as an elected official, doesn’t mean you will be an ineffective elected official. But I rather have that regular citizen representative that has organizational skills and uses the professionals to effect his policy positions rather than the career politician who knows his way around bureaucratic red tape and who just chooses or changes policy positions that he thinks gets him elected. I think our founding documents (and general practice at the time) support my position more than yours. The only requirements are age and citizenship for a reason.
By the way, I have been elected to a body which made policy decisions for thousands of my colleagues. So you made a false assumption by trying to go make my comment less relevant than yours because of a perceived elevated sense of self. So let’s not keep making this discussion a personal one against each other. Your thoughts on surgeons or politicians are not any greater than mine, even if you are both. We can all have sensible thoughts and ideas about many things and professions without ever having done them. Any notion contrary to that just seems to stop discussion rather than try to learn from them.