Ed Kilgore points to a new Gallup poll that asks what kind of people you’d like to see in Congress:
So is this a vote for more business experience? Or even—shudder—a retroactive yearning for Mitt Romney? Like Kilgore, I’m skeptical. At a guess, people who answered the question about business experience were implicitly contrasting it with lawyers or career politicians, and that’s a rigged deck. Of course business leaders will come out ahead compared to those two despised professions.
Which makes it too bad that Gallup screwed up this question. Instead of throwing out a kitchen sink of qualities (occupation, religion, ideology, etc.) they should have asked specifically about a list of occupations. Do you think the country would be better governed if our legislatures had more:
- Business folks
- Teachers
- Lawyers
- Doctors
- Retired people
- Military leaders
- Scientists
- Etc.
That would be kind of an interesting poll. Personally, I’d vote for more kindergarten teachers. I suspect that’s a pretty appropriate background for serving a few years in Congress.
