Stop Me Before I Vote Again

http://content.ksg.harvard.edu/blog/jeff_frankels_weblog/2011/12/04/the-hour-of-the-technocrats/

couldn't resist posting this up belatedly :
its by that kennedy school magnifico

jefferson t grackle :

"The Hour of the Technocrats has arrived. "

" In desperation from debt crises that their gridlocked political systems have created, Italy and Greece both in November chose new Prime Ministers who are technocratic economists rather than politicians.... One can even describe them as professors: ... It is a mistake to conflate technocrat elites (they are the ones with the PhDs or other advanced economics degrees) with other kinds of elites (the ones with money or power, especially if they got them from their parents). ....Technocrats can play a useful role. One of their advantages is acting as an honest broker when traditional politicians have become discredited or parties are deadlocked. Another is the credibility that comes when they are not motivated by getting re-elected, either because their term in office has been limited in advance or because it is know that they in fact prefer the quiet life back at the university. The most obvious advantage to technocrats comes when the biggest problems facing the country are in large part technical such as proposing economic reforms or negotiating loan terms. A good precedent in Italy is Carlo Ciampi, who took the governing reins in 1993 after Italy was forced to drop out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, but managed to repeal the scala mobile (the wage indexation system), beat down inflation, and re-board the train of European monetary integration....Obvious disadvantages of some technocrats include ..lack of a domestic political powerbase.....
Among current heads of state who could be considered technocrats are President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, President Sebastián Piñera of Chile, and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia. ...it happens that all three received their ivory tower training at Harvard. Calderón took a record three courses from me. Unfortunately, dealing with violent drug lords was not on my syllabus. "