I'm Rufus Griscombe.

And I'm Michael Kovnet.

And this is the next big idea.

Today, would the world be better off without politicians? So, Rufus, I want to talk about politics today.

Uh-oh, trouble. That's always a dangerous topic.

Yes, indeed it is. But I think wherever you sit on the political spectrum,

whether you're left or right, it's pretty safe to say that most of us aren't thrilled with the

people who are running things right now. Did you know that according to Gallup, Congress right now

has a 15% approval rating? That means 85% of us think they're doing a bad job. And these are the people

that we've elected that are supposed to represent us. Well, at least we have consensus on

something apparently. Yeah, and it's not a blip either. I mean, it's particularly bad now,

but over the years, the congressional approval rating has never been very high. So what's the solution? Obviously,

we need better politicians, right? We need smarter, more capable, more charismatic people to lead us.

That sounds good to me. It's a standard answer. Fix the inputs. Fix the outputs.

Yeah, you would think so. But our guest today is going to challenge that assumption. What if we don't need better politicians? What if we don't need politicians at all?

Excuse me?

Yeah, our guest is Elaine Landmore. She's a Yale political scientist. And she's got a new book out called Politics Without Politicians, the case for Citizen Rule.

Is that like saying we need medicine without doctors or architecture without architects?

Yeah, Elaine gets that a lot.

But she makes a case that what we call politics today has become so professionalized,

so distant from everyday citizens that we've completely lost sight of what

democratic governance could actually look like. Well, it turns out there are a lot more ways to do

...