Friday, June 06, 2008
Experience matters: The anti-Bush argument against Barack Obama
The Philadelphia Inquirer's Jonathan Last makes a sharp-eyed observation about the importance of experience that does not bode well for an Obama presidency:
Since the Civil War, 49 men have won a major-party presidential nomination. Only three of these nominees were less qualified, by traditional measures of leadership and experience, than Obama.
In the 1872 election, Horace Greeley, backed by the Liberal Republicans and Democrats, was a dilettante newspaper publisher. In his first presidential run in 1896, William Jennings Bryan's only credentials were two terms in the House of Representatives and the ability to give a great speech. (Sound familiar?) Wendell Willkie, who served as FDR's punching bag in 1940, was nothing but a corporate lawyer and Republican Party apparatchik.
None of those men was able to win the White House. But inexperience is not necessarily an electoral liability. Bill Clinton, a draft-dodging state attorney general and governor, bested a sitting president who had served as vice president, congressman, ambassador, and head of the CIA (not to mention being a hero in World War II).
Or consider George W. Bush, who hid out in the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam before going on as an adult to a string of business failures. He had only six years in public life as governor of Texas, an office with relatively little executive power.
Bush defeated Al Gore (who served in Vietnam, spent 22 years in Congress, and was vice president) and John Kerry (a decorated Vietnam veteran who had been a district attorney and lieutenant governor before spending 20 years in the U.S. Senate).
So Obama may well beat John McCain, even though McCain's résumé trumps his by every traditional measure of leadership and experience.
But while inexperience is no bar to office, it may not be an asset once the governing begins. Part of Obama's pitch is that his relative inexperience will allow him to approach the problems of governance with a fresh set of eyes. This may prove to be true. But two other recent presidents sought office using that same argument: Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. Neither of their administrations was covered in glory.
Without experience, a president is hostage to both his advisers and his inner compass. A naïf in matters of economics and foreign policy, Carter was unable to distinguish the bad advice he received about the energy crisis, managing inflation, and the rising Islamic radicalism in Iran.
Bush campaigned as a post-partisan uniter who could get things done because he hadn't been corrupted by Washington. But he couldn't sniff out the bad advice he received from George Tenet and Donald Rumsfeld.
Yet despite, or perhaps because of, their inexperience, Carter and Bush shared an overwhelming confidence in the rightness of their own judgments. Both were, as the expression goes, "comfortable in their own skin" - meaning that they were happy to make decisions based on gut instinct.
Think of it as the presidential version of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink hypothesis that the instant conclusions we reach are often the best ones. This contributed in no small way to their failed presidencies.
Hmmm.
7 Comments:
By 
Escort81, at
Fri Jun 06, 06:58:00 PM:
TH, we both obviously need to find some Kool-Aid to drink.
My expectation was for Obama's outstanding academic credentials and the smarts behind them (HLS Law Review means that you know how to study and prepare, whatever your lack of common sense or judgment might be) to prevent the string of unforced errors or gaffes we have seen -- the flip-flop on the line in the AIPAC speech regarding a unified Jerusalem being the most recent example.
But don't worry, be happy, because it turns out that an Op-Ed writer at the SF Chronicle says that Senator Obama is a "Lightworker" (via Hot Air and LGF), and can vibrate his way to success in the Oval Office in ways that similarly inexperienced Jimmy Carter could not even dream about, when he was not wearing ugly cardigan sweaters or avoiding killer rabbits. Seriously. Read the whole thing; I am pretty sure it is not intended as self-satire, or a pitch for the next Star Wars movie script, when the essence of The Force is truly revealed.
By Miss Ladybug, at
Fri Jun 06, 09:12:00 PM:
Grim has a post about the "Lightworker" bit...
By 
, at
Fri Jun 06, 09:58:00 PM:
But Keith Olbermann cheers on Barack, so he's got that going for him.
I think the "silly season" is coming early this year, and staying 'till November.
-David
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Jun 06, 10:40:00 PM:
Re: "Lightworker" and "silly season"
San Franciscans love silliness. Remember, in the 19th century the city was the home of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I, emperor of the United States and protector of Mexico. After Norton's death, 30,000 people packed the streets to pay homage to him.
Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_A._Norton
By Khaki Elephant, at
Sat Jun 07, 12:10:00 AM:
So based on experience (or lack thereof) it's Obama who could give us a 3rd Bush term . . . interesting.
By davod, at
Sat Jun 07, 08:03:00 AM:
I read somewhere that Obama was the only person the head the Harvard Law Review who never wrote an article. Can anyone confirm this?
By , at
Sat Jun 07, 03:11:00 PM:
Davod,
I heard that, too, but don't have a link. The following article does address the question, albeit obliquely:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/05/obama-mythical.html
TH, I enjoy your blog. Thank you.
