In certain (though not all) circumstances one can reasonably act on the advice of an airplane pilot, an auto mechanic, an architect, or a physician without understanding its rationale or even being interested in it. But the idea that there is an analogous political expertise reasonably prompts suspicion.26 Why? Most minimally, the suggestion that there is political expertise is suspect because there are few reasons to believe that there is in fact much of it. What is typically billed as knowledge about the world of politics seems so meager, and is so regularly undermined by events, that people
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