I'm curious...

[Writer]

Do you think that you understand politics more than those serving in office and the people running their campaigns?

I know that people have opinions, but do you believe that you understand more generally about politics than they do?

[phantom power]

1. Riddle me this:

If everybody adopts the attitude that our govt "knows more about politics than we do" what is to become of representative democracy?

:shrug:

[butterfly77]

2. Yes..

[Vincardog]

3. No but I understand REALITY better than them

[FBaggins]

4. I guess that depends on how you define "politics"

I'd say that there's plenty of evidence to support the notion that many of them don't understand as much as they should.

[Writer]

5. Interesting answers so far.

Thanks for not jumping to conclusions about my reason for asking... I'd really like to understand the cognitive processes of those who closely follow the mechanics of American politics.

[TheKentuckian]

6. I find that I can converse well with staffers and even stymie them.

They put on their pants just like everybody else, we took similar courses in college, we have access to the same history.

They are just people. Worship of specialization is not helping to keep this nation on the rails.

Many "know" too much about politics and far too little about the real world conditions of the regular people they are supposed to represent.

[treestar]

11. Well good, I'll just start an IT consulting business then

I work with the same computers everyone else does. They put their pants on just like everyone else.

If I don't like that, I can always open a hair salon. How hard can it be to cut hair?

[TheKentuckian]

13. lame

[polichick]

7. We're just more likely to expect our political leaders to support policies...

...that make this country better - as opposed to being in it for power and a future lobbying position.

[AtomicKitten]

8. I have no doubt there is much info we don't know.

Bloggers guessing or repeating rumors doesn't count.

[damntexdem]

9. The wrong question.

The right question is "who understands better what the country needs?"

[treestar]

10. No. Everyone likes to opine on how it could be done better

But it's impossible to say, and most of us don' t have the knowledge to really know what we are talking about.

[WI_DEM]

12. No, but I do think that I have some ideas about what dems should have done to improve their

situation. For instance, I keep hearing GOP ads proclaim that Obama and the Dems are causing the deficit to explode--with little or not rebuttal from Dems who should have been running ads 1) reminding people what Obama inherited 2) that the deficit has actually gone down under the Dems this year 3) that Obama has created more private sector jobs in 1.5 year than GW Bush did in 8-years and 4) talk up the positive aspects of the HCR bill such as ending pre-X and how the GOP wants to kill that.

Dems have been on the defensive too much.

[Clio the Leo]

14. I know one thing...

... I'm no Rhodes scholar, but I never realized how many IDIOTS we had in Congress until I started to follow things more closely. I'm smarter than a large portion of them (and cuter, but that's beside the point.) :p