I would no more hire a butcher to change out my kidney than I would hire a doctor to shingle my house , the skill sets are not overlapping enough, unfortunately due to government regulation , I am forbidden from hireing someone qualified to wire the space shuttle to wire my house , the pidgionholeing of skills is not always based on competance.
I don't think that study of the law is necessacerily bad training for a lawmaker or executive in government , but to make it such a closed shop seaprates the people from the govbernment and leads to people being in power who do not respect the people s wisdom to decide the course of their own lives. People seem to be returning the favor and are paying little respect to the Congress and presidency , even the judicary nowadays.
It isn't that they are poorly qualified to be in government , it is their contempt itself for the people who choose to raise food or drive trucks for their liveing.
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If you pick the surgeon instead of the butcher to operate on you, you are an ELITIST, since you prefer to have a member of a small, qualified group to do the job.
I do not think that liberals discriminate against small farmers or truckers nearly as much as the Republicans, who favor the large farmers and the lower-paid non-union, non independent truckers every time. Republicans favor "right to work" laws, which certainly make improving wages more difficult for non-independent truckers, and also favor paying owners of huge agribusiness enterprises to benefit the most from soil bank, subsidies and other sorts of government aid. If they favored family farms, then every year there would be more, not fewer of them. But the reverse is true.
I do not hold anyone in contempt, but if I choose a qualified professional for any job, I realize that this is by definition being an elitist. I am afraid that your definition of elitist (people Hannity and Rush dislike) is not an accurate one.
If your space shuttle engineering buddy wanted to wire your house, all he would need to do is take an exam. I have PhD and am not qualified to teach in public schools except with a provisional certificate, because I have not taken a methodology course in the last ten years. Same difference, and you can't blame that on just liberals, either. I also would have to pay $150 to be fingerprinted to do practice teaching before I could enter a classroom, because somehow the fingerprints I submitted in 1986 have "expired". In this case, a specific right-wing idiot on the MD County School Board is responsible. It really means that they threw out my records because I have not worked there, but they won't admit this. Fortunately, I have no desire to work there.
Your NASA friend could wire your house. You just couldn't get the county to certify it as being up to code. Big Deal.
The main point is that elitism does exist, and much of the time is is a GOOD idea.
Elitism is similar to professionalism. It can be a GOOD thing.
People who vote against a candidate because he is accused of "elitism" by Rush are your basic yokels, rubes, hicks, and fools. I do not oppose giving them the right to vote, but I do favor educating them.
I would say that Obama, as a law school graduate, is certainly more academically qualified to run the country than McCain, who is probably better qualified at flying jet aircraft and enduring pain in a POW camp. Probably not as good at managing banking, either. He is qualified for Medicare, so he might cost slightly less in medical payments, but then he is older and has more health problems.
Lots of places would not hire McCain because he is too old, can't raise his arms above his head and has a history of cancer, which means that the group insurance wouldn't approve him. Ironically, it is the GOP that would be most likely to support the employer on all these policies.