Do you want a smart mechanic? A knowledgable doctor?

I know I do.

Matthew Yglesias writes about the absurdity of a lot of television talking heads on the right suggesting that our top elected officials don't need to be much more knowledgable than the average person on the street:

Beyond that, the notion that it would be okay for high-ranking public officials to have no better understanding of policy issues than does the average person is bizarre. When you get someone to fix your car, you want that person to know more about fixing cars than do most people. Houses are designed by architects and actually put together by a whole bunch of specialists — plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. — who know more about what they’re doing than do most people. That doesn’t mean the building trades are dominated by a shadowy elite that the rest of us need to overthrow, it just reflects the benefits of the division of labor. There’s no need for politics to be totally controlled by some narrow cabal of credentialed experts, but at a minimum it would be nice for policymakers to be people who’ve been paying attention to policy debates.

LISTENING TO PALIN talk about domestic policy, I'd have to say that she knows a bit more about them than she knows about foreign policy, but let's face it: she doesn't understand much about government programs (like Social Security), the federal budget, or the national economy.

And she tried to downplay her earmark requests (I would, too, if I was tops in the nation!).

If she was a mechanic and I was looking for someone to fix my car, I'd keep shopping.