...there are other, equally compelling reasons to vote against a total neophyte to run the California economy. Simply put, he is completely unqualified to manage the budget. Americans have an open disdain for professionals. There is the naive assumption that most people can do most jobs. People believe that they can play professional sports to a frightening degree. You have 5'10" teenagers assuming that an NBA career is within reach. Any number of rappers have tried to play professional basketball. Most adult men assume they can hit a major league fastball. Denigrating teachers is a national pasttime. Hell, people will even try to defend themselves in jury trials.

This delusion is a popular one in a society where the illusion of upward mobility and shared wealth dominates the national agenda. If most Americans understood how little they benefit from regressive tax policies and other pro-wealthy biases in the law, they would be stunned.

One popular delusion about government is that it needs to be run like a business. Because Schwarzenegger is rich and has power, it is assumed that he is a successful businessman. In reality, he has only hired a few people and for the most part is an employee. He has some business skill, but less than the average Army depot sergeant. Compared to George Clooney, he's not even hands on. There are 25 year old sergeants in Iraq better equipped to run California than
Schwarzenegger.

I've seen several studies which conclude that people favor policies which help only the top 10% or 5% or 1% in this country because they assume that they themselves are in those groups, when, of course, the vast majority of them are not, the gap between the rich and the middle class now being so very wide. But, as Gilliard writes, people are deluded not only about their own abilities, but of the level of accomplishment necessary to do things that we see every day on TV.

After watching almost a full season of baseball, I've seen on the order of 50-60,000 swings by major league players trying to hit major league pitching, and sooner or later it starts to look if not easy, at least doable by mere mortals like myself. Fortunately, a trip to the batting cage is sufficient to dispel that delusion, since I have a hard enough time hitting a 60 mph softball, left alone a 90+ mph baseball.

Hitting a baseball is hard, damn hard -- just ask Michael Jordan, a great athlete from another sport who couldn't hit the curve ball and failed to get past the minor leagues. Running a government, while probably not as hard a hitting a baseball, also takes special skills, and (as we've found out many times, to our regret) these are not the same set of skills needed to get elected in modern media-saturated America.