Discuss the importance of having a combination of education and real-life experience in public life.
When I saw the title of this article on the ADN website my mind went immediately to the William F. Buckley quotation, and I was pleased to see that the article started with it. The plain matter is that what is better in public life of any sort is someone with a grasp of reality as well as education. This is often referred to, mistakenly in my experience, as "common sense." The unfortunate reality is that we have lots of well intentioned people with no background in the very things they want to do, along with educated idiots, people with paper degrees but no concept of how to get the dirt flying.
I had a friend who frequently remarked that there were smart people and fools. There were people with ideas and people with no ideas. The most dangerous kind of people were the idiots with ideas.
So I would caution that if you believe in democracy, PAY ATTENTION.