Yea... the Chinese stock market is doing so great right now.

Stock markets go up and down, so what? Governments can only do so much to keep the economy positive. The real problem with China is repression of its citizens and the complete lack of protections and "safety nets" that is taken for granted in civilized western nations. I don't think that has anything to do with leadership being engineer-heavy rather than lawyer-heavy.

Yup and their human rights and pollution records are excellent, too :) </s>

People forget that civic leadership is a requirement for running a country. Just like managers have to "herd cats," politicians have to herd a more diverse group of roles. I'm not trying to garnish sympathy for politicians, I just want to point out that their requirements are not easily translated from any one field, such as real estate, engineering, business leadership, chemistry, etc.

Also, their decisions are constantly compromises. Most people cringe when they have to compromise b/t two things such as cost and quality. Politicians typically compromise b/t about ten things like: legacy, human rights, quality of life, cost, reputation, longevity, state of relationships at local, county, state, region, national and international level, etc, etc. They even have to compromise against themselves in order to stay in power. It would make me completely ill to have nearly all of my decisions play out with a near 10% net efficiency :)