U.S.-centric blog debate

Very interesting coincidence.  First, bloggers in the U.S. discussing whether political scientists can have any impact on journalists, or whether we're irrelevant.

Here are some links for that:

Greg Marx at Columbia Journalism Review says there is an opportunity to get together.

Henry Farrell responds at The Monkey Cage.

Ryan Powers (blogging for Matthew Yglesias) weighs in.

Jonathan Bernstein brings it up.

The coincidence is this.  Just as this American debate goes on, in Chile the new president, Sebastián Piñera, had a lunch meeting that included political scientists who--gasp--also have written many political columns for Chilean newspapers in addition to their academic publications.  It is taken for granted that political scientists should contribute to public debate.

It seems that everyone who blogs about the issue focuses on American politics, and does not consider looking at it in a comparative context.  Why do some other countries not have the politician/political scientist/journalist divide?  Indeed, what are American political scientists doing (or not doing) to make journalists and politicians to feel some measure of disdain?