Nerds and Wonks should drive America(?)
I could start comment this out, but the article itself is interesting enough: I don’t need to add my own juice (and, most important, it doesn’t need it neither). […] We owe our well-crafted democratic form of government with its cleverly designed system of checks and balances, to a weird bunch of policy, technology, and scientific wonks and nerds such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Alexander Hamilton. These guys and their compatriots were the kind of wonks and nerds, who, when presented with a problem and a complex system to analyze and possibly replicate, threw themselves into learning as much about it as possible. Some were best at policy, and others were best at technology, and some, like Jefferson and Franklin were outstanding contributors to both. But today - because some of them did not exactly have winning personalities and others had personal morality issues - few would have little chance of getting elected. Which is a shame because not only did they have the desire, education and life experience to deal with such problems, they also had what Walter Lippmann - a premier political journalist of past decades - called “civic virtue.,” […] The wonks and nerds we need to run for political office and take direct control are out there. Some I see working within government advising the politicials, such as engineering nerd and ecomomics wonk Neel Kashkari, the interim assistant secretary in the U.S. Treasury assigned with the responsibilty for managing the financial bailout. Others I meet at the embedded system design, science, and technology meetings I attend and write about. Many of you are satisfied and busy with the work you trained for. Others may have a complete disdain for politics and politicians. But remember our representative democracy was designed as a “goverment OF the people, BY the people and FOR the people.” […] ...