Ben Carson: ‘Neurosurgery Is Considerably More Complex Than Politics’

Retired neurosurgeon and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson is rejecting the notion that a president should not be a political neophyte based on the argument that on the flip side, someone wouldn’t want a person to perform brain surgery on them if that person had never done it before.

“Neurosurgery is considerably more complex than politics,” Mr. Carson said in an interview for USA TODAY’s “Capital Download. “I know everybody wants to think that what they do is very, very complex, but it’s not. They’re not even close in terms of the things that are required in order to be able to do them.”

“You don’t need to know nearly as much to be able to maneuver in the political world as you do in the operating room inside of somebody’s brain. It’s not even close,” he said.

Early polling on the 2016 GOP field shows that around 50 percent of GOP primary voters are collectively supporting three people for the Republican nomination who have never before held public office: Businessman Donald Trump, Mr. Carson, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.

“It says that the people are actually starting to wake up and recognize that politics as usual is not taking us where we want to be,” Mr. Carson said. “In fact, it’s leading us in exactly the opposite direction.”

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