The Base: So What?

Andrew Sullivan worries about the real motives of the Republican base. Elsewhere in many posts I've seen and won't dignify with links, conservative bloggers identify lunatic protestors, assert that they are the Democratic base, and that therefore you shouldn't vote for John Kerry. The reality, of course, is that any major party presidential candidate attracts the votes of millions and millions of people. The overwhelming majority of these people have no idea what they're talking about. Public ignorance in the United States is massive -- and exists on both sides. Ideology aside, the base of either party would be an absolute disaster if put in charge of the country -- they wouldn't have the foggiest idea what to do. That's why the government is run by professional politicians, professional political operatives, and professional policy analysts, not by random members of the public. It's like how movies are made by professional filmakers, not by movie fans.

UPDATE: Brad's right, of course, that serious policy analysts don't seem to be much in evidence in the Bush administration, at least on the domestic side (there's something unserious about the security team, but Doug Feith's not a political hack, either, so it's hard to know what to say about this) though I do hear good things about the guy in charge of policy toward the homeless, and whoever came up with the "millenium challenge accounts" knows what he's doing.