One more thing:
We don't pay Congressmen, Judges, or any elected official for their skill or savvy in politics.
We pay them to be good *representatives*.
We don't want people of skill and experience in office - we want people of common sense. We don't want a political elite - we want elected officials to still be part of their constituency.
Now that the National Football League has apparently learned that it can be costly to hire cheap officials, perhaps the rest of us should learn the same lesson when it comes to government officials, whose bad calls can do a lot more damage.
What do we do when we want a better car, a better home or a better bottle of wine? We pay more for it. We definitely need a lot better crop of public officials. Yet we insist on paying flea market prices for people who will be spending trillions of tax dollars, not to mention making foreign policy that...
And as I said already, if you want competent people in Congress, ensure that you have a competent constituency to elect them from, or it's all useless anyway. Even having a wise person representing fools is a false representation - and they will be unable to perform their duties properly.
As unpleasant as it may be to hear, having good, competent people in government is not a cure-all for a sick nation. Having good, competent people taking action at all levels of society is.