Best and Brightest

I was listening to MPR the other day and former Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson was being interviewed.  For those who don't know, Arne Carlson was our Governor in the 90's (pre - Jesse "the Body") and he was one of those old-school Republicans who actually seemed to believe in limited government, fiscal responsibility and, god-forbid, compromise with Democrats.  During the interview he was expressing some disappointment with the current field of Republicans (or Republi"can'ts" as I'm going to start calling them). 

He said that the idea of government used to be "putting up your best and brightest to run for public office."  These days as we all know, stupidity has become an ever-increasing virtue when it comes to being a viable candidate for public office, at least where the Republican'ts are concerned.

Take for example Mike LeMieur.  He was the Republican candidate running for the state House in my neighboring town of Little Falls.  I watched this man speak in a tea-party sponsored debate last year, and I swear to god he was dumb as a box of rocks.  He was asked many fairly simple questions to which he responded, "I don't know, I'm just a plumber."  When asked whether Shariah Law was a threat to the US, he actually answered by saying "I don't know what that is."  And this guy won!!  He was anti-choice and anti-gay and that was enough for the voters apparently.

In that same debate, the Democratic candidate running for the state Senate seat in my district was Taylor Stevenson.  He's in his early twenties and just graduated from Dartmouth with a political science degree.  He's young, sure, but he's a brilliant guy!  You can speak to him on basically any topic and have a very intelligent conversation with him.  He knows his shit, so to speak.  But of course, he lost to anti-choice, anti-gay Paul Gazelka, who went to Oral Roberts University.

I really can't understand why people are so eager to send idiots into public office.  I like to think I'm somewhat intelligent, but I want someone much, much smarter than me running the government.  When did that go out of fashion?