General Discussion

...is present in the United States?

I am in a highly technical field myself, and like most people, know people with no technical background at all. I can more fluidly discuss any of the issues in "foreign and domestic affairs, economics" with people holding technical engineering or scientific degrees than I can with those with no technical background.

(My former Congressperson, the best Congressperson who has ever represented me, was a physicist, Rush Holt. I am hoping another physicist in Government, Andrew Zwicker, will run for the soon to be vacated 12th Congressional district New Jersey seat.)

I consider the greatest Democratic President of all time to have been Franklin D. Roosevelt. He did not hold a technical degree, but what he did know was how to call on scientists to make decisions in which science was very involved.

(I've been to his home in New Hyde Park, where I came to appreciate his vast personal library, reflecting, in my view, a powerful intellect and generalized curiosity.)

I think you may be assuming that most holders of technical degrees are intellectually monolithic. After a long career and life approaching their ends, I can say that I have indeed known examples of people with advanced degrees, even those with a plethora of post-docs, who are narrowly focused. I'm sure you do as well. That said, the overwhelming majority of the scientists with whom I've had the pleasure of working were broadly educated, many in an autodidactic sense and were thus well equipped to be leaders.

(We all know "nerds" with advanced degrees about whom one wonders how they learned to tie their shoes.)

The world is decidedly not what it was in the 20th century; the critical issues before humanity require access to highly technical understanding if they are to be solved.

That is not to say that a technical education always leads to wise choices. Neither President Carter, nor Chancellor Merkel of Germany, both of whom had technical scientific or engineering educations, in Merkel's case, an advanced degree in Physical Chemistry, made wise energy decisions.

That said, both had supple minds, and led their countries, if not spectacularly well, successfully.