The relation between knowledge and power was already complex when Plato wrote his Seventh Letter. It hasn't gotten any simpler since. Having served in three presidential campaigns (all losing), I am moved to offer a personal report from the front-line. Two opening caveats. I write in the mode of reckless generalization, knowing full well that counterexamples are legion, and I assimilate political scientists to the broader category of “intellectuals,” even though academic political science diverges in some respects from the classic sociological account of that class.

My point of departure is an inescapable fact: most politicians don't trust intellectuals. This is so for three reasons. Faced with a hostile world, politicians crave absolute loyalty, which they suspect intellectuals are constitutionally incapable of offering. Politicians prize realism, but they see intellectuals as infatuated with words that have become disconnected from the world. Politicians think that the quest for, and use of, power is the most serious thing in the world, and they have what amounts to contempt for intellectuals whom they see as shielded from the harsh realities of power. (This metaphysics of power ramifies through campaign organizations, whose “political” wings typically display a thinly veiled contempt for the “issues” shops.)