Yea, everyone thinks politicians need those skills, but do the current bout of politicians even have those skills, either?!
There seems to be an assumed competency that doesn’t match reality.
I think a greater problem is that some of them actually are. In this case, they’ll know more than the average citizen about a given issue, with a certain understanding of the nuance and complexity that the citizen, with mainly just access to major media, lacks. This makes their decisions look strange to us, in the same way someone might wonder “why did the engineer design this this way? makes no sense to me.”
Additionally, since they’re also knowledgeable about a lot of other considerations, they’ll have to balance them against each other, where even a highly-knowledgeable specialist might not fully understand the reasons something cannot be done yet.
Lastly, they have to win re-election, so they have to balance all of that against normal people’s perceptions and ignorant opinions. All this balancing is going to naturally make them seem very out-of-touch with an average citizen.
And that’s just any good ones. You also have plenty of crazy ideologues running around these days, that actually want to undermine democracy and seize greater power, or want some unchecked laissez-faire system or whatever. People whose faith has blinded them to reason and rationality.
All that said, politics has always been messy and ugly, that’s inherent. The only alternatives open the door for unchecked corruption to run things, like Russia deals with. As Churchill said, democracy is terrible. It’s just that everything else is a lot worse.
You see, you’re engaging in the assumed competency right now.
They DO NOT magically know more about an industry than the professionals in those industries. Ever. Period. Their decisions don’t make sense because they’re corrupted morons, not competent legislators. They do not know the intricacies of the bills they pass nor their impact most of the time.
While politicians can use skill as you describe, they don’t have to and in fact often abuse that assumed competency to hide the corruption.
“Trust me bro, this tax cut will totally trickle down! I talk to economists every day!” Assuming they are competent only hurts YOU, because it primes you to buy in to the gaslighting.
Note, I said “some”. If you think they are all terrible, you’ve likely been propagandized. I also said they’re jacks-of-all-trades, I never said they know more than a specialist about that specialist’s field. This is why they need to consult specialists. What they do know is things outside of that specialist’s field. Say, they know more about governmental budgeting than a doctor would. They know more about medicine than an economist would.
And again, some. They’re not all the same, that’s a gross and inaccurate oversimplification based on emotion.
