The US electoral process is prejudiced against any candidate with skills other than "people skills." Anybody who campaigns on a platform even implying the advantage of intelligence will be cast as an elitist. Boom, campaign-headshot.
Sure, there are exceptions, and that guy is pretty low-level. My point is on the level of Mitt Romney's Mormonism: certain traits do not appear to be compatible with higher office (these days). Look at John Kerry's 2004 campaign for some examples of what I'm talking about.
China's leaders are engineers. It just helps them be more repressive. Rather than engineers, we need leaders who value liberty and want to reduce the size and scope of government.
The problem we have isn't that people in government aren't bright. They are. It's that they want government to solve too many problems.
When you have power, it's tempting to try to solve problems through imposition (by passing laws, e.g., network neutrality) rather than allow people to work out their differences peacefully (through the marketplace).
I like child labor laws. I like food safety laws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle). I like my bank being separate from investment institutions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act). I also like education programs, fire departments, police, roads, etc. I pay a lot in taxes and want to keep all of these things (and really have stricter regulations in the banking system).
Our market isn't free enough, that's true, but having a totally free market tends to crush the lower class. A completely free market, after all, is like a force of nature and nature doesn't give a shit about people. I do give a shit about people and am happy to pay taxes to help those people.
Our system isn't perfect and there are a lot of problems with it, but I don't want it to go away completely.
I'm not sure if this was genuine, joking, or accidentally the result of a lack of study in political science and social relations, but let's be clear on this point:
People do not work out their differences through the marketplace.
The market is a social relation in which people are put to the task of serving the interest of capital—and capital alone.
What Americans call a democratic government is a minority ruling class serving the interests and goals of capital and the market, regardless what it costs the majority. The ruling class doesn't want government to solve too many problems—they want it to solve the problems of capital, allowing brief pauses only where the majority threatens capital's current relations as to necessitate throwing the majority a bone of reform to quiet things back down.
All that to say let's be careful thinking, much less suggesting, people work out differences in the marketplace. It's the wrong forum. Submitting our needs to the market is nothing more than offering those needs up for exploitation in the interest of financial returns.
The market will not solve this problem unless, and only if, it is found to threaten the interests of capital, diminishes surplus value, and then the government will back off. People need to stop believing that a government who exists to protect capital is going to defend the people against the loss of unprofitable or dangerous freedoms.
Want to get the government to make a change? Convince them this harms the market (well, that's the most cynical suggestion given the current state of things). Better yet? Subvert and support eliminating the power of the market itself to control government.
You're right "we need leaders who value liberty and want to reduce the size and scope of government." You're wrong suggesting this has anything at all to do with the marketplace. The market created the enormous edifice of governmental machinery we have today to protect itself. Government isn't the source of the problem. It's the servant, the tool, and the scapegoat.
What can be done is to educate people and engage in a discussion on what the proper role of the state should be. For many, the government should have little to no involvement in technological and economic matters and focus merely on the preservation of individual liberties - if this view continues to gain momentum issues such as these will become nonissues.
