Ten years ago, I knew what a Muslim was…in fact one of my best friends from college practiced.
I loaned him money to buy his first house.
And helped convince him that an arranged marriage could be OK.
Today he and is wife have three children and are happily American and African too.

When I lived in Paris in the 90’s – I would be stopped weekly on the Metro.
In a group of 5+ college students, I would always be the one to be checked for papers.
Quickly I learned it was because they thought I was Muslim.
Soon my friends stopped walking with me in the Metro, since it was so common to get stopped.
As soon as the police saw my US passport and Jewish name, everything was fine.

Bottom line – it would suck if the best thing about America was being ignorant.
That said, pining for simpler times is universal – which is what I saw as the core comment in the article.
I too wish things were as easy going and awesome as they were back in the “day.”

I was more proud when healthcare reform passed, despite some of its flaws.

Our leaders’ true success should be measured by the lives they save, not the one’s they take.

LK is correct in his focu on education. This writer believes the only hope the USA has is to reform its education system immediately. A massive injection of funds is needed. Take the $$ from the defense budget; take it from the foreign aid we willy-nilly send all around the world. And even acting right now won’t help for 2-3 generations.
Most Americans are complacent. Even those caught in the economic downturn, the unemployed, underemployed and working poor almost seem to accept their lot. They should be making lots of noise. But I think they’ve been beaten down.
They see so much dishonesty in government and special privileges for the well-connected and rich that they have given up hope of things ever changing.
Yes, its a dark picture. But unless strong efforts are made to remedy the unbelieveable imbalance between the haves and have nots, this country will continue its downward spiral.
Rome fell. Greece fell. The British Empire lost its power. We’re next.

Well, so here we have some Hosni Mubarak of a corrupt-beneficiary of The System, enjoying nepotism, and stepping on a soapbox, to lecture Congress and all of us about Congress, and on the subject of realpolitik economics.

No confidence is inspired by this, indeed the opposite. Especially when your self-assessment is that you “didn’t learn much”. However, if you learned that “the economist simply ‘assumes’ the can opener and opens the can” –then you know the Econ 101 joke, and fully understand why ‘the Dismal Science’ is so dismal as to almost not be a science at all.

The main bone of contention is that you are besmearing broadly. You state ‘Representatives’. You write ‘Senators’. But you do not name people party or state. You mention two very inappropriate names, not typical of the vast majority of congresspeople. Newt Gingrich is an astonishingly well-informed political and economic polymath-genius. To me this cannot be denied, although I, personally, am in disagreement with most of his final conclusions.

Sarah Palin, in terms of economics, is a woman who has skillfully made the most of her assets. I don’t agree with much of what she says as well, but again I do not see her as a symptomatic sign of legislative dysfunction.

I listen to Bloomberg Radio, National Public Radio, and a smattering of financial-world podcast interviews. I also listen to the local Detroit megastation of news, a CBS affiliate. I can name without a pause of hesitation at least one senator who does not excite in me any of the alarms mentioned in this guest-article, and that is Carl Levin. Because of residence in Michigan I’ve heard entire press conferences with him. I’m not ashamed of my Congress when he speaks.

I’ve heard targeted interviews with many a key representative or senator on some economically sensitive sub-committee–or even a key high-profile aide to a Congressperson–who blew me away with how much they knew of the theoretical and pragmatic aspects of their subject, which included multiple economic aspects. They knew what Mexico had just passed in the way of legislation; they knew the current tonnage of iron ore into and out of China. Whatever. I didn’t feel ashamed of Congress when I listened to them, discussing problems of great economic complexity–although I both agreed and disagreed with what they said in conclusion.

And I’ve seen and heard shameful uneducated ignorance on the part of some Congresspeople, once you step even a bit outside their special Committee zones. But that just makes for a bad rep, throw the bum out! It doesn’t necessarily indicate a systemic-pattern of functional economic illiteracy.

A speaker once said of the hockey star Wayne Gretsky that by and through navigating his life, his fame, his non-hockey activities etc. he had become as business savvy as any MBA. We don’t know what “economic courses” Gretsky took in college. We can guess the ones he got in the elite Graduate school of hard knocks.

Perhaps many in Congress pick up the economics they need on the fly along the way, in much the same way. A kind of savvy pidgin mercantile street economics. Practical pidgin-economics, just enough to get the trade treaty signed and some pork on the home tables. And still have some human life and fun and time.

That said, I’m in agreement with your core thesis, that one “can never have too much firepower” in our elected officials, education and intellect-wise. Personally I like the notion of a JFK Cabinet-from-Camelot, a best and the brightest who are being enticed to service of the commonwealth, and who not being annoyed to death by idiot press, and also not getting too full of themselves.

Cautious mediocre know-nothings should and do get a thumbs up from no thinking person. And yes we should definitely hold elected feet to coals… to give them a good burn every now and then… right about the heel-area, to motivate them to stay on their toes on behalf of America. No doubt.

However, the absence of any mention of those elected officials who are exemplary in their economic IQ and knowledge is tarring with too broad a brush. I’m the opposite of a political junkie, but just in an attempt to keep generally well-informed I’ve had the above-mentioned heartening experiences. And many of these Congresspeople have been diligent in pursuit of continuing economic self-education to get and stay that way.