My money is on the politicians never participating in another "It's Academic".

So we kept re-electing them and everything kept getting worse.

So we're saying the press is smarter than the politicians?

I weep for our future. That's like comparing three turds to decide which one smells the best.

Every journalist I’ve ever know has a fairly range knowledge on a bunch of things. So I’m not too surprised

If you think for a second we live in a democracy you're kidding yourself. Our candidates go through several layers of screens before they even get on the primary ballot, and the primary ballot winner is usually the one who can gain the most support from very rich people. And all this is after they had already shook hands with and payed tribute to a very select few of the donor class in order to get on the primary ballot itself. Who we are voting for in the elections are a group of preselected representatives that we are allowed to choose from. They operate firstly with the consent of the very rich and powerful and then they are ordained by the people through elections.

Thats really only true in places the major parties think they win.

I had a friend who ran against a republican in a red area and participated in debates and was in papers, and the entire campaign was run pretty much without donations.

I also have been to county committee meeting for republicans and democrats, I swear its the same old people on both comitees arguing about money.

Besides they do research for their job every day. A limited number of professions are similar.

They are better at quoting disparate trivia.

Yeah you'd think our leaders would be the cream of the crop not the dregs of high society

If any one has been there to n a room with an elected politician, this outcome would have been obvious. Let’s just say it doesn’t take intelligence to get elected.

Knowing the average age of our Congress 4 of them are probably still in office

Counterpoint - Wolf Blitzer on Jeopardy.

Becoming an elected official doesn't require knowing things as much as it requires knowing how to convince the most people that you know the right things.

Basically, democracy self selects the people most adept at fooling and manipulating the most people.

It was said of Senator Daniel Patrick Moyniham that he had written more books than most of his colleagues had ever read.

The press team was represented by NBC broadcaster Jessica Savitch, Washington Post columnists Art Buchwald and David S. Broder. All were well-known and regarded in the journalistic world, and local to the production at DC NBC affiliate WRC-TV. Savitch died tragically about four years later.

Though changing hosts and broadcast channels, the show, which began in 1961, continues today.

Elected leaders are people with charisma who can win a popularity contest. Intelligence is not a pre requisite. You just need to appeal to a large group of people and in some areas intelligence is actually a negative.

I would like to see that tried again and see if the outcome would be the same

Kakistocracy

noun: "Rule by the worst"

It takes some scrolling to find the Democrats were Lloyd Bentsen, Patrick Moynihan and Alan Cranston. The GOP team was Danforth, John Heinz and Weicker.

Lloyd Bentsen bring back memories - he was the last Democrat to be elected to the Senate from Texas… which happened in… 1988. Ouch.

Nope. 5 of 6 are dead.

All you’re saying is that some random Joe Schmo can’t run for a particular party. That’s the parties’ prerogative. Joe Schmo can still run if they want. Next you’re going to say, “But Joe will lose. More people will vote for the parties.” And it’s like, that’s how voting works.

That was in the 70s, if that happened now we would have to revoke the high school diplomas of most of the senators out of shame.

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simple: the senators can get their underlings to do the grunt work and research and write their press releases to the public. That's the difference.

And have to source everything. Meanwhile politicians are simply bullshit artists.

Who is stopping you from joining your local party committee and helping to nominate candidates? For local office, you'd have a lot of say in who gets endorsed by the party. I know it's a different story for higher office, but a lot of elected officials in those higher offices get their start at the local level.

I was on a couple episodes of It’s Academic with a team against other high schools in my county. It was so cool as a 16 year old seeing what a tv studio looked like, even if it was just for local tv.

I mean that simply not the case for every politician there are plenty of politicians with a deficit in charisma and are skilled in managing interest groups and stakeholders to garner support. People overvalue charisma in politics. Though I will give you the more national the race the higher in importance it becomes.

Edit: For those who doubt why don't you attend your local politics meeting in my case this would be direct democracy townhall I can tell you our selectman would put you to sleep. If you want farther up go check to see your state rep I doubt they're a Casanova. If those are too hard go watch cspan which i do, most of these guys come off as glorified pencil pushing bureaucrats half the time which makes sense as half of them are lawyers truly a profession know for exclusively exciting action packed court cases and not sifting through hundreds of pages of legalises documents that use so much circle logic you don't know where a paragraph begins and ends.

Because they don't actually know how political parties work and neither do they want to work in politics if it beyond doomerism about how nothing matters on social media.

It would probably be something like the Celebrity Jeopardy bits on SNL.

Was this in the DC area or another part of the country? The show was very popular in the DC area for decades. The host was Mac McGarry, who would sometimes make unexpected asides during the show. The highlight was sometimes when he called down the cheerleaders or the marching band from the stands.

I’d agree, it was cool seeing the shows being filmed.I was there for another syndicated show. The tv studio itself was far smaller than expected, since the cameras did not show the entire view.

There was a trivia quiz between Canadian politicians on CBC radio every Christmas for decades. Then the leader of the Green Party of the time, Elizabeth May, entered and won by a huge margin, and did even better the next year, and better the next year, and the next... and then İ stopped listen cuz she would get every single question and it was just boring. İ bet they either cancelled the tradition or stopped inviting the Greens.

The overwhelming majority, 96%, of Members of the US Congress have a college education.

A degree from a top school or seeming to "academic" is sometimes seemed as negative in some political races. But it seems the american political elite are more highly educated and on average probaly higher than average intelligence.

Seriously impressed that the press beat a team with Moynihan on it, but Art Buchwald was a badass

I don't get why this is downvoted. Obviously politicians and academics have different goals, but that doesn't mean that being a successful politician isn't a very complex job that requires a lot of intelligence.

I guarantee you that the prime ministers of developed countries, regardless of whether you agree with their political ideas, are quite intelligent people.

I was elected to lead, not to read.

I was elected to lead, not to read.

You're describing an oligarchy, not a democracy.

My county is a deep red county, my state is now solidly red also. I could join a Republican committee but I would be outnumbered by the developers and real estate agents who want to lower school taxes and get rid of environmental compliance. I'm really going to compete against the guy that is already on the board of the chamber of commerce with half the people in my local committee? Get real.

Yes, Montgomery County which is right north of DC in Maryland. I guess I assumed it was a show that would happen in a lot of major metro areas, but maybe it was just a DC thing!

The photo is a regular episode with high school students from 2009-2010. In 1976, the teams were journalists, politicians, and athletes. The athletes team included Joe Theismann. The journalists still won, athletes 2nd, politicians last.

There were several versions, but DC area was the primary one.

Have you seen Congress lately? That doesnt mean they arent still in office.

Canada had a sort of similar thing more recently (sometime this century) where they did the same thing but with politicians and pop stars. There was not much I both enjoyed and was dismayed at as much as watching elected officials get humiliated by the Bare Naked Ladies.

And that is why a particular political party wants to convince everyone the media can't be trusted.

Wolf's embarrassment on Jeopardy is why very few politicians have ever gone on that show. It's seen as too big of a career risk if you do badly.

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I mean you don't trust politicians because they lie, why would you give a pass to the media when they do the same thing.

The only screen to getting on primary ballot in general is pay the fee.

But yeah ability to raise money is a major factor

Not dismissing the press simply for being the press is not the same as giving them a pass. Giving them a pass would to take everything as true because they are the press. But a big difference between the press an politicians is the press cites their sources and fact checks. Maybe web blogs don't, but they are not really the press. News channels that just have pundits giving their opinions is not factual.

People seem to have forgotten what the press actually is since Trump took office. And Trump's motive is to mislead people into thinking the press is no different than him or politicians who just say whatever they want.

You don't have to be book smart to be in politics.

Journalists tend to be over educated. Not necessarily likeable.

I don't think that the politicians would do better, but the journalists would likely do worse.

Agree

> The host was Mac McGarry, who would sometimes make unexpected asides during the show.

I was on It's Academic! back in the early 2000s. Because of Mac's unexpected asides there was a rumor his "coffee" cup was always filled with vodka. My teammates and I kept trying to get to his cup to see if the rumor was true but we never managed it.