Engineers and Scientists as Politicians?

Some think that electing engineers and scientists as politicians is a good idea but you need only look at a university research institution to see how much bureaucracy and partisanship exists.  Humans are ultimately humans and a person's profession does not make him much different from another.

That said, the type of people we are electing into office is not as much of a problem as how the government is set up to run.  Congressmen make decisions driven by re-election, and for re-election, they must cater to their own arbitrary territorial groups (aka constituents).  Catering to the needs of the party the congressman is associated comes second to the needs of the constituents.  The problem is that these groups of people have conflicts with the interests of other groups of people.  Everyone wants to free ride.  Everyone wants to pay minimal taxes and receive maximal benefits from the government, and they don't like it when the money goes to other people.  It's analogous to hatchlings fighting for nurture and food from their mother.

What we can take from the engineering and science community is how they approach problems: objectively.  Treat bettering the country and upholding some basic ideologies as the end goal and work towards that goal as a team.  Solve free riding problems by dissolving regional boundaries and having the nation identify as one entity composed by a diverse group of people, not a diverse group of groups.

I will come back later to contemplate on these naive remarks.