I’m mostly dealing with the issue of things that are nogaiah to the tzibbur. When it comes to such an issue, us in the da’as torah camp are simply saying that when Rabbiofberlin (& myself for that matter) is giving his opinion on the matter he is coming to his conclusions based on all the shtusim that his head is filled with & his opinion is not really worth any more than the other semi-intelligent guy next door.
However when an Adam Gadol offers HIS opinion on the matter, he is coming to his conclusion based on the TORAH outlook of the situation – NOT the New York Times outlook.
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First of all, as cited by Kaplan, the Rambam holds otherwise. Moreover, this assumes that Gedolim have access to better information than do we. Otherwise, how can we assume that their Torah perspective is actually correct, since it might be based on mis-information. My favorite example of this is R. Elya Svei, when he called R. Norman Lamm a “soneh Hashem” bsed on wrong information. Had R. Lamm said that R. Svei was told he said, the appelation would have been correct. But in fact R. Lamm did not say what R. Svei was told he said. Thus the Da’as Torah was faulty. It is my understanding that most Gedolim do not actually engage in investigating facts. Rather, they rely on information supplied to them by trusted sources. As such the information that Gedolim recieve is only as trustworthy as those sources, which we know can be dubious (recall the misinformation surrounding Lipa Schmelczer and concerts). Thus, arguably people are not hearing Da’as Torah, but rather the da’as of those “trusted sources.” Even in those cases where a Gadol might be directly familair with the facts since they are readily available (i.e. elections), for his Da’as Torah to be dispositive, he would have to be an expert on the subject about which he opines. Else again we may be the victims of the Gadol’s misapprehension of the facts. I’ts not the “Torah” of the Da’as Torah I question, it’s the Da’as.