It is a testament to how impoverished the discussion in this political season is that we have spent so much time talking about the term "experience." The media led by the Republicans have continually conflated "experienced" with "qualified." They are not one and the same and it is dangerous to suggest that they are. This is why we can debate the experience of Sarah Palin or John McCain versus Barack Obama and Joe Biden without talking about the broader issue of qualifications.
First of all there is no experience alone that qualifies one to be President. If it was military experience we would regularly elect former generals, if it were foreign policy experience Condi Rice or Colin Powell would have been the Republican nominee and if it were the economy we would generally select either the Secretary of Labor or the Treasury Secretary depending upon which way we leaned politically. If it were serving as Vice President each party would have drafted Dick Cheney and Al Gore to run against one another. Additionally, there is nothing about being a governor, a P.O.W., a community organizer, a mayor of a small town, a State Senator or a U.S. Senator that provides one with the clear experience to do a job whose scope and responsibility are beyond any of our comprehension. There is no single resume item that makes someone a better President than someone else.
But why have so many governors been elected to the US Presidency? Doesn’t executive experience matter? The fact is that it is easier for Governors to get elected than Senators or others because the job does not include hundreds if not thousands of votes on complicated issues that make fodder for negative campaign commercials. Remember John Kerry’s "I voted for it, before I voted against it." That is a quandary common for legislators. If Hillary Clinton had been Governor of New York rather than Senator she would not have had to vote on Iraq and would have likely been the nominee. Governors have the advantage of managing a relatively small bureaucracy, having the line item veto, and also being forced to balance the budget by statute in most cases. Unlike Governors Mayors are responsible for things like crime and poor service delivery. The job leaves few opportunities for error and lots of opportunity to take credit for things. It is perfect for a run for the Presidency.
But if executive experience were the litmus test as Republicans have now suggested why was Rudy Giuliani not selected as either the nominee or the vice-President? New York City is a larger and more complex than Alaska, has a larger armed force (the NYPD) , and more direct foreign policy issues (i.e. the UN, trade issues, immigration etc.), including counter terrorism than the state of Alaska. By that logic we should have had a match up of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles versus Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York or maybe Richard J. Daley of Chicago versus Rudy Giuliani to emphasize the Irish versus Italian old machine war. None of those people were serious contenders and the one who did run got a whopping one delegate.
So if not experience what does matter? I argue a general sense of qualifications matters that can’t be reduced to any single concept like experience. Over the campaign we get to know someone, their character, if they share our beliefs, if their policy programs make sense given our challenges and most of all we get a sense of their intelligence, judgment, vision and ability to communicate ideas or deal with complex issues. We also might judge based on ideology, which is of course legitimate and how most make their decisions.
Thus, experience is only one and perhaps the least important factor for a President, but it seems to be the only one we are talking about. An example is, George W. Bush is one of the most experienced people around in terms of the Presidency. If we could, would we re-elect him? Would we elect Dick Cheney? Of course not, they have proven that they are not good at the job. They have made multiple errors in judgment and execution. Despite their “experience” their performance has been poor, and we all know it. But that’s not the choice. We also understand the performance of the Republican Party in the last 12 years has been generally poor on issues of war and peace, the economy and ethics. So why are we stuck with this "experience" meme?
We are stuck with experience because the McCain campaign wants you to ignore that despite relative inexperience, Senator Barack Obama is highly qualified to be President. He has consistently shown judgment, intelligence, and an ability to communicate complex issues and ideas to the American people that matches those of some of our best Presidents. We are asked to dismiss his array of experiences and obvious intelligence as either "elitism" or to use Palin’s terms a "journey of personal discovery." They want to keep this going because the simple fact is their ideas are old, stale and proven failures. It is important to describe some set of resume items as legitimate "experience,"while dismissing others all the while avoiding a discussion of ideas, issues, vision and the broader notion of qualifications.
For Republicans thinking about our toughest most difficult issues in a serious fashion with some of the best minds in America and the world is not a qualification for being President but a negative. Turning down high paying jobs to bring old style small-scale democracy to people that no one cares about while working as a community organizer is sneered and scoffed at. Being able to communicate complex ideas, policies and a notion of America future in a way that inspires both Americans but also our allies is decried as "celebrity" and not a core aspect of leadership. Spending 18 months running one of the best and most organized campaigns anyone has observed while talking on all comers in tough forums including hostile ones like Fox News and having to explain everything from whether he drinks beer to what his neighbors were doing when he was 8 years old, is seen as an exercise in self-indulgence and egoism.
That’s the trick. Take the opponents strengths and present them as weaknesses. The "experience" talk distracts the fact that a member of a political party that is seeking a third term in office and has been in Washington for 26 years and supports verbatim the policies of the sitting president and the party, should essentially almost be dismissed out of hand and as a serious candidate except for those who are hard core ideologues. Senator John McCain also wants to deflect from the fact that his own experiences and those of his own Vice-Presidential choice don’t mean that they automatically have the intelligence, ideas, judgment, temperament and vision to solve problems like the failing economy. In fact, the ideas presented at the Republican National Convention represent more of the same but are carefully branded under "change," "maverick" and "experience."
So now we are debating if Governor Palin has more or less "experience" than Senator Obama while distracting from the broader and more important question; are her and the Presidential nominee "qualified" or more qualified than the Obama/Biden ticket. That we can only know through the debates, through the crucible of the campaign and when Palin takes tough questions from the media as Senators Obama, McCain and Biden have done for almost 18 months. She must face the press and also the press must deeply and serious investigate her performance in office and record not her "experience." There is a big difference between assessing someone’s "performance" and "record" versus arguments about which resume items constitute "experience" and which don’t.
Only President Bill Clinton has gotten it right and the media did not even understand it. President Bill Clinton was thought to be insulting Obama when he stated in an interview for ABC News, "You can argue that nobody is ready to be president," Mr Clinton told ABC News. "You can argue that even if you've been vice-president for eight years, that no one can be fully ready for the pressures of the office." Clinton was right the job is so singular, and so much pressure, that it is only the crucible of the campaign itself and our sense of the candidate’s judgment, intelligence, sensitivity, skill, leadership, ideas and plans of the individual candidates can give us a glimpse of the answer. So why don’t we move beyond the dueling resume talk of "experience" vs. lack of experience. But it will certainly be hard, the press as swallowed this meme uncritically hook line and sinker. So much so, even democrats despite knowing better go on shows and debate experience rather than qualifications.
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That’s the trick. Take the opponents strengths and present them as weaknesses. The "experience" talk distracts the fact that a member of a political party that is seeking a third term in office and has been in Washington for 26 years and supports verbatim the policies of the sitting president and the party, should essentially almost be dismissed out of hand and as a serious candidate http://www.odlotowewakacje.com except for those http://www.google.it who are hard core ideologues. Senator John McCain also wants to deflect from the fact that his own experiences and those of his own Vice-Presidential choice don’t mean that they automatically have the intelligence, ideas, judgment, temperament and vision to solve problems like the failing economy. In fact, the ideas presented at the Republican National Convention represent more of the same but are carefully branded under "change," "maverick" and "experience."
I've been doing a good bit of research on the 2008 election season and found your post to be post informative and genuinely helpful. I especially like the quote from former President Clinton.
Hector: you are only right if you perceive public opinion to be static and that voters at each moment have complete information. They do not.
