RATIONAL IGNORANCE & THE PROGRESSIVE PROCESS
Kausfile reports that Arianna Huffington is planning to run for California governor. Arianna is charming and clever and has a lovely radio voice. She knows how to find fashionable positions and attract attention. And she's completely unequipped to be governor in the middle of a fiscal crisis (unless she can find some really, really, really rich gay guy to marry and give her enough money to cover the state deficit). In other words, she's the perfect candidate for this peculiar election in the making: a very effective publicity hound. The million-candidate election isn't about becoming governor. It's about running for governor. But somebody will eventually win, that person will have to be governor, and a screwed-up state government will very likely get even more screwed up.
This is what you get when you combine the Progressive faith in unmediated democracy--which, in this case, includes mass candidacy--with a state in which "rational ignorance" has reached an all-time high (except on the passionate fringes, including mine): a high probability that Californians will elect a joke candidate or, the next best thing, a celebrity with a lot of glib opinions and minimal nuts-and-bolts knowledge. Yikes.
For continuing coverage of rational ignorance, read The Volokh Conspiracy.