The constraint on politicians is that every opinion they express can have consequences. To give them some sympathetic due any politician can say, “Yes you can say that because if the result is so many thousands of dead then you do not have to feel responsible.” The general public at the water cooler faces no sanction greater than hearing someone from IT or accounting in the elevator say that sure got that one wrong. The strength of the Internet, to spiral to an old thread as we said in education, is that it minimizes the public exposure to any cost for error and thereby maximizes the ability to engage in risky analysis. Given the fact that I was just subjected to an attack on a prior thread on just this issue I am feeling very aware of it. There are costs to this freedom, a very high noise to signal ratio being the chief of them. Sarah Pallin perfectly described the burden of government. Obama had the freedom of the community organizer to point out problems. He did not actually have to solve those problems.