I must disagree with the last paragraph, if you meant it more broadly beyond sociologists. For one, Obama was a Harvard constitutional scholar - though I don't think he was "barely above the poverty line for decades" - so we already tried someone who at least paid attention in school as opposed to merely paying to cover their transgressions (I am speaking about GWB, who basically flunked Yale but then went to great trouble to hide that fact - you probably already know that a "C" in grad school is flunking). Much of the criticism that he received was undeserved and horrifically out of line - e.g. how his wife & children all looked like various forms of monkeys, do you hear that dog whistle? - but some of it was also probably deserved (unfortunately I do not know precisely how to distinguish which is which, and we likely will not know for another decade or so until historians are able to piece it together; and then the likes of me may never find out b/c I'd have to sift it through all the misinformation also being spewed out, and the idiocy besides).

More recently, Fauci provided a great example when he was asked what policy he would recommend implementing during the pandemic and his response was basically "I do not know. I will help with the factual questions though." - thereby displaying humility, and precision in stating where exactly his sphere of knowledge lay, and having the wisdom to know that that target was beyond it. i.e., scientists tend to know very little beyond the fields that they choose to study.

So for the same reason that you may not want a brain surgeon coming over to fix your toilet problems - nor vice versa I might add!!!! - just b/c someone went through grad school means very little, in terms of their ability to LEAD.

That said, ofc leaders should LISTEN to experts, not shit on them as DT did, especially within their area of expertise. Much of the economic struggles we are having today derive from the power of "corporations", which were a thing that did not used to exist, but Bill Clinton (as he says many times) ignored them (he did set us up with many overseas treatises I am told, but domestic affairs on the other hand tended to be neglected under his administration - I thought the consensus was? oh right, you probably know way more than that than I!:-D), and ignored Robert Reich his cabinet secretary who tried to help with domestic policies.

So this is a lot of words to say that people can do well what they have been trained to do, but that does not mean that they can do everything, especially things that have very little to do with their training. Angela Merkel could, so ofc it's not mutually exclusive, just not a sure thing either.

Also, at this point you probably would have to be insane to WANT to enter the political sphere, unless you were doing it for the $$$$$.