Another reason we’re in the mess we’re in is because of the rise of professional politics and politicians.  According to a recent study 46%  of the present Congress is comprised of lawyers.  That’s 68 times  the density of lawyers throughout the population. But law school for many has been or has become the jumping off point for life as a professional politician.

And so, as with our current president, we get a class of people who have never “done anything or run anything.”  The results predictable, just look around. For the most part, those who are our supposedly “leaders” haven’t a clue on how to proceed or how to “fix” what is wrong with this country.  They have little experience in doing much of anything else but getting elected. Execution, governing, management – all seem foreign to most of our political class.  So they rely on “experts”, mostly in academia or among their political connections, to advise them on how to proceed.

Ed Driscoll provides us with a great example of one politician who, after he left political life, realized how little he knew about extraordinarily important information, and how little experience he actually had where it counted. Former presidential candidate and longtime politician, George McGovern, decided to go into business after leaving politics. It was only then, after his business failed, he realized how little he knew about something as critical as what it takes in the business atmosphere he helped build to run a business.

George McGovern laments that after his experience in the bed-and-breakfast business he realizes that laws and regulations pertaining to small business are actually hurting the lower-wage workers whom he had tried to help during his entire political career. With his Stratford Inn in bankruptcy, McGovern now says:

In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business…. I wish that during the years I was in public office I had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better Senator and a more understanding presidential contender… To create job opportunities, we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities.

He is just one of many of this of this professional political class who have helped put us in this mess.

We should demand, as voters and citizens, that our politicians have real world experience before we allow them the privilege of representing us. We should end this era of politicians whose only real world experience concerning the effects of policy come from dormitory debates and untried academic theories.  And we should reject, out of hand, anyone who has “never done anything or run anything”, unless we find ourselves comfortable with the shape this country is in.

Source:  http://www.qando.net/?p=14763