Well you know about computers presumably if you're here, so think about how computers, hacking, mainframes etc are portrayed on TV and in movies. Ludicrous, right?

Now consider that a doctor thinks the same about medical dramas, cops and lawyers think that way about crime shows, even pastry chefs probably think that about pastry chefs on TV.

Yet the people who star in and who produce these shows are wildly successful and rich. Politics is the same.

I'll just rattle off some sweeping observations that I think have to do with the narrow set of viewpoints and shallow analysis that often results:

- Incentives in government (and most of the professionals here work for the government in some way, shape, or form) are extraordinarily misaligned. Public servant pay is often crap, so people are easy to buy with stuff like expensive dinners. Public servants thus get obsessed with amassing more power - self-promotion becomes the driving force behind their decisions with little regard as to how their power actually plays out.

- Relatedly, public servants become slaves to the existing power structures, both in practice and in their thoughts. It is very, very difficult for them to think outside of the box... even when they have leadership positions that you would typically look to for this.

- Everyone here majored in political science or economics in college.

- Everyone here worships the New York Times and Washington Post.

It's like being surrounded by zombies sometimes.

Professionally, you can be a big value-add by being willing to be the person who shakes people up with new ideas and having the drive to sustain it.

The implication that intelligence and insight are necessarily other than orthogonal to success seems to me optimistic.

Politicians need to be excellent at getting elected. That requires skills in persuasion, manipulation, forming alliances etc, but not neccssarily deep thought. Being a politician is at its core a sales job, and how much insight do you typically expect from salesmen?