[Lordarminius]

> At 32, I don't count a social networking startup and an incubator for much of a resume especially with respect to running the government of the 6th largest economy in the world.

I came here to say the same thing. I am not American but politics is pretty much the same all over the world nowadays.

Effective leadership in political positions demands specialized knowledge and skills developed over long periods of time. This is so often ignored. Socio-economic problems do not succumb to neat textbook solutions. The real world is messy

To add to my previous points.

Many people labor under the misconception that solutions are lacking to many problems they face in their communities and the job of the politician is to magically conjure them. This is false.

There are some issues with no clear way to solve them but these are the minority. For the vast majority of problems(think teacher shortages, healthcare costs, pollution, government corruption etc) solutions exist: it is the political will and organization to implement them that is lacking.

[jacques_chester]

It is typical in these situations to cast the establishment as a stuffy force for evil, a damp quilt blanket that muffles exciting possibilities.

And sometimes it is. Sometimes seniority beats sanity, sometimes self-interest beats public interest.

But, taking the view from the other side, the establishment sees an endless parade of bold, brilliant, I'm-the-exception types running up to knock it down. In such a position they might be forgiven, after the dozenth encounter with yet another visionary, for rolling their eyes.

And I imagine that the California establishment has seen one or two techno-utopians by now.

[CalChris]

Yes, but we've also seen more than our share of entertain-opians. Other than being able to open at the box office they brought no ability to a hard problem.

[jacques_chester]

Even they belonged to major parties.