The experience question, and the Palin trade-off
Electoral-vote.com has a great article on how overblown the whole experience issue is. Put bluntly, there’s no evidence to suggest that less experienced presidents underperform more experienced presidents. This is in large part due to the nature of the Oval Office: by definition, everyone who ends up there has no idea what it’s really like, and they’re going to be playing catch-up as best they can.
Which may still leave open the question as to whether there’s an “experience threshold”: i.e., a desirable minimum of exposure to the pitfalls of high office prior to taking over the highest office of them all. While the Dems hasten to defend the magic power that serving only a few years in the Senate can apparently have (at least on Democratic candidates), I think the most telling argument in favor of Obama is the campaign he’s run: a highly successful undertaking that beat the favored incumbent and may yet win the presidency. While the nature of modern campaigning gets (and deserves) a lot of flack, the sheer volatility/complexity of running a national campaign has the benefit of signaling when someone’s totally unqualified, as a candidate who loses control of his campaign isn’t likely to make a good president. (Which is one reason I think Kerry would have been a disappointment had he won in 04.) This of course doesn’t prove that Obama would make a great president, but it does at least indicate he has the potential.
Palin is more of an enigma. Whereas with Obama we have at least have some clue as to how he might cope with a blizzard of domestic and foreign issues/crises, with her we have none (beyond, of course, her socially conservative views). This doesn’t mean she would make a terrible president. Were she to shadow a President McCain for several months/years, she may yet cut a formidable figure on the world stage. Great leaders often come from humble origins and backgrounds; there’s nothing in Palin’s biography to suggest she won’t learn if given time.
But that’s the problem: time. McCain is betting that he’ll have it, and he may, if all goes according to plan. The press is agog with the notion that the Palin pick is a terrible risk to his campaign. I don’t think it is: she will fire up the GOP base like no one has done since Ronald Reagan, and her very lack of experience will prove to be a boon with an electorate desperate for something new. The real risk here is that Palin may succeed quickly to the presidency, and I can’t see anyone arguing with a straight face that putting someone into that office after (let’s say) three months in the national spotlight isn’t a colossal gamble. It’s hard to escape the notion that in picking Palin, McCain has optimized his campaign at the expense of his legacy, and the repercussions could be with us for a long time to come.
September 5th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Oh yeah. She’s fired up the base alright.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/03/peggy-noonan-mike-murphy_n_123647.html
September 7th, 2008 at 3:48 am
Yeah, because the open-borders Wall Street Journal is the epitome of the views of American conservatism. Right…
As for the campaign issue: bear with me, I’m not an American, but honestly, how does running a campaign qualify you for the job you are running the campaign for? Obama isn’t managing that, and neither is McCain – their campaign staff and campaign managers are. All both candidates have to enter to the mix is their unwavering will to run, and their personality – and, especially with Obama, their empty platitudes.
“Change”, “Hope”, my ass. I give you economic crisis, a resurgency of authoritarianism, a destabilizing Pakistan and an Iran lusting for nukes, and the choice is between an old hawk with fragile health and a man styling himself as the second coming who is eager to apply the inefficient and devastating policy recipies of the 70 ies all over again.
And I truly would not make light of the whole experience argument. Yes, McCain is old and probably his health has seen better days, but he’s had 25 years in Congress and an awful lot of experience and insight with long terms in many quite important Senate commitees. He’s worked on countless laws and legislative initiatives. And Palin’s been running a state with 25,000 employees, and a town before that. Yeah, she’s small-town America, and she has some very conservative ideas, but she’s the right thing to bring onto the ticket for the Republicans because for most conservatives McCain simply was too centrist.
And Obama? Sorry, but in my book just being relatively young and black and full of messianic imagery is not enough to qualify for the position of POTUS, especially if it means you have to deal with people like Medvedev, Putin or Hu Jintao who are likely to turn the guy inside out before having had their breakfast. I have higher demands to the leader of the militarily and economically most powerful nation of the world than being someone who can sell himself well but has absolutely no legislative nor executive nor business leading experience and quite frankly, whose shown understanding of world affairs and history is severely lacking.
September 7th, 2008 at 10:25 am
@Wired: I think you underestimate the campaign-management issue. I’m not saying that proves one’s qualified; what I am saying is that running a well-organized campaign may be the most analogous skill we have to running a well-organized presidency–and that if one loses control of one’s campaign, one would almost certainly have made a lousy prez. (Sure, they have their campaign managers to run things on a day-to-day basis–but who picks those managers, and who sets up the overall pattern of delegation?)
And on Palin: it’s tough for me to have a lot of confidence here when the McCain campaign won’t even let her talk to reporters right now. It seems pretty clear to me that if the Dems had put forward someone of Palin’s credentials, the GOP would be all over her.
What is it about Obama’s understanding of world affairs/history that’s lacking for you? (If anything, I would have thought he had TOO nuanced an understanding.)
September 7th, 2008 at 11:19 am
David, you more or less answered some of my gripes with him in your newest thread. He’s like Carter all over again, and like good ol’ Jimmy he shows no understanding of the simple and proven concept that for authoritarian regimes talks and paper are issues of convenience that can be ignored and discarded if it suits them. I won’t bring in Nevill Chamberlain analogies, but his idea of unconditional talks with all sorts of very outspoken enemies is already a problem in itself in that it grants those states a degree of legitimacy they do not deserve. It also reeks of the European mental disease which is the believe that deep down everybody is good and every dispute can be solved on a table between open-minded discussion partners – ignoring that such a stance breeds appeasement and is as far from global realities as the moon.
Jimmy Carter-esque lack of insight and rose-coloured political ideas got you the Tehran embassy debacle, Afghanistan and the Soviet arms build-up in Europe (in crass violation of their treaty statements), and the first two are still shaping US national policy now. But today the stakes are higher. Do you really want a suave “One World”-idealist in the White House when what you/we seem to need is more a mix of Teddy Roosevelt, Bismarck and Talleyrand?
Granted, you have a point with the campaign issue, even if I would stress that most of it only can be applied in the formative phase of it. It shows that a candidate can pick useful people (which, for example, Fred Thompson did not).
I’m also not too hot on the whole Sarah Palin issue, mostly due to her leanings towards creationism and her absolute stance on abortion. I mean, I very much consider myself a political conservative, but for someone socialized in the European political environment stances like some of Palin’s are just way out there. Still, I also would not make her worse than she is. Even if she became President rather quickly, she’d still have to deal with a democrat majority in Congress.
September 7th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Understood, though I think this bit about how Obama would negotiate without preconditions is overblown–he got trapped in a debate, but realistically, no head of state ever meets another one until the groundwork has been handled at lower levels. I don’t seriously believe Obama would either.
Palin’s creationist/hard-line fundamentalist views are a huge concern to me, though.
But hey: someone whose opinion I respect has just posted on the Obama/carterland post to say that they say something totally different in the O’Reilly debate from what I saw. Funny how perceptions work.