Experience vs inexperience

July 16, 2007

The NYT’s Matt Bai had a fairly interesting piece yesterday exploring the importance of political experience in presidential candidates. He grudgingly acknowledges that Bush “lowered the bar for presidential preparedness,” which Bai believes is part of a broader trend.

This, however, didn’t quite work.

Through the long decades that saw the rise and fall of American industry and the cold war, serious contenders for the presidency could generally boast of distinguished careers in statewide or federal office. […]

Today most of the leading presidential candidates have other kinds of experience that are arguably just as relevant to the presidency as years logged in statehouses or the Capitol — living at the White House, running the Olympics, locking up white-collar criminals. Obama, who leads the field in financial contributions, would set a new precedent for inexperience in the White House; he was a state senator only three years ago, when he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic convention, and before that he was a community organizer. (emphasis added)

Political observers can debate Obama’s readiness, but the notion that he would “set a new precedent in experience” is kind of silly. For one thing, he fares quite well when compared to his 2008 rivals. By the time of next year’s presidential election, here’s the tale of the tape for years in elected office:

* Obama: 11 years (7 state Senate, 4 U.S. Senate)
* Clinton: 8 years (8 U.S. Senate)
* Edwards: 6 years (6 U.S. Senate)
* Giuliani: 8 years (two, four-year mayoral terms)
* Romney: 4 years (one four-year gubernatorial term)
* McCain: 26 years (4 U.S. House, 22 U.S. Senate)
* Thompson: 8 years (8 U.S. Senate)

If we limit the standards to federal office, Giuliani and Romney drop to zero, compared to Obama’s four. Indeed, Giuliani really would “set a new precedent in experience,” given that no one has ever gone from Mayor to President without some kind of political experience in between.

Then, of course, there’s history to consider.

Kevin Drum, not too long ago, tallied the number of years of political experience each president since FDR had before he became president (up until Bush): 22, 23, 0, 14, 26, 18, 26, 14, 14, 22, 16. (The zero was Eisenhower.) By this standard, practically all of the major 2008 contenders are relatively inexperienced. (If we include Clinton’s eight years as First Lady, her tally is far more impressive and in line with historical precedent, but I’m inclined not to count it.)

But George W. Bush really did break the mold. He became the GOP’s consensus candidate after one term as governor, in a state with a weak-governor system and a legislature that meets every other year. Far from setting a new standard for inexperience, if Obama wins the Democratic nomination, he’ll run for president with nearly double the years of experience in elected office.

Maybe Obama has what it takes; maybe not. Voters will decide. But I think Bai’s comment is off-base, as is the general media scrutiny on a Democrat with more than a decade in elected office, as compared to most of the Republicans’ top tier.

Honestly, when was the last time we saw a major media piece questioning whether Romney and Giuliani “have what it takes” to be president? How often are they characterized as “inexperienced”?

Honestly, when was the last time we saw a major media piece questioning whether Romney and Giuliani “have what it takes” to be president?

They do have what it takes to be president. They are rich, white men. That’s all that really matters to some people.

  • The Mayor of New York has lost every election for higher office for years. I can’t remember the last mayor of New York who was elected to higher office. It may have been DeWitt Clinton who was mayor during the war of 1812.

    Recently, Koch lost for governor, Lindsay lost for President and governor (I think), Wagner ran for higher office (I think)

    So history is not on Guilliani’s or Bloomberg’s side but ….we shall see.

  • Maybe the question isn’t how much experience the candidate has, but what kind of leadership on the issues each one has demonstrated within the framwork of the experience he or she has had.

    Obama may look okay going by the number-of-years measurement, but it troubles me that in his time as a US Senator, particularly since he began to consider a presidential run, he has been more of a follower than a leader, entirely too tentative on taking positions without first looking left and right to see what the others are doing and saying, and his vote on the Iraq supplemental was downright cowardly – as was Hillary Clinton’s.

    All of those who are running from their positions as Senators have an opportunity to lead on a laundry list of issues. They have an opportunity to build the strength of the Democratic caucus, too, and I would like to see more of that.

    It’s so damn early, this campaign is just too long, and I am already sick of it.

  • What has happened, without notice from the heavily involved mainstream media, is that we have become a nation of TeeVee addicts who no longer have functioning brains.

    Kennedy won the first TeeVee debates because he was attractive and Nixon was ugly (he wear makeup, he didn’t even shave). Those who oppose Hillary aren’t opposed to her ideas (probably couldn’t identify one), but they don’t like her “look” (all they can talk about are her thighs, for Christ’s sake). How many voters can tell you a difference between the health plans of Edwards and Obama?

    We are being governed by our occipital lobes … the tiniest, most primitive part of our brains, designed only to trigger fight or flight responses and then erase the screen for what pops up next. The part we share with sowbugs.

  • I’m inclined not to count it.

    I would count it, to myself, though, even if it would be a faux pas to count it aloud, because she was a different kind of first lady. Because of her background, she was in far better position to appreciate what was going on in the White House while she was there than any other First Lady that came before her. And, in addition to this, she was actually engaged, rather than ignoring the nitty-gritty of the Chief Executive’s business. Was there ever a lawyer, ex-law professor First Lady before Hillary Clinton? I think not. Yet somehow this unprecedented achievement for women and First Ladies is never touched upon in the media, be it MSM or net-roots.

    All that matters to bloggers are what their commenters say. I wonder who are all these commenters anyway? Hillary Clinton used to do great in the polls- a few months of commenters on liberal blogs going out of their way to talk about how much they hate her over and over again, every time her name is mentioned on a blog (pretty strange behavior for a liberal), she is doing worse in some of the polls.

  • All that matters to bloggers are what their commenters say. I wonder who are all these commenters anyway?

    Ever see a crowded room at a party or a club and decide not to walk in because it was so crowded already?

    I wonder how many shy people don’t post comments because other people are doing it already, and how hard it is to figure out how many comments you have to post every day to a blog before other people start feeling like they needn’t bother to contribute. At least, every blog at every time seems pretty limited to its same regular group of commenters.

  • One candidate who “has what it takes” to act upon the moral imperative of the American People in these times of universal deceit, the candidate with the unrivaled experience of submitting House Resolution 333 to impeach Richard “Bruce” Cheney, is Dennis Kucinich.

  • Indeed, Giuliani really would “set a new precedent in experience,” given that no one has ever gone from Mayor to President without some kind of political experience in between.

    True enough, though the mayor of NYC is in charge of a city with a population greater than 39 states, with a police force larger than the militaries of Kenya, Uruguay, or Ireland. For what it’s worth.

  • I agree with Swan in comment # 5, when it comes to counting Clinton’s 8 years as first lady. The Republicans were constantly deriding her during Bill Clinton’s presidency, as if she was the one holding political office. Look how they treated her with the Health Care Plan she worked on….

    If the Republicans want to count Thompson’s years as district attorney on “Law & Order” and call it experience, then there is no comparison. But then again, that’s where Ed Stephan’s comment #4 says it all: being governed by their occipital lobes…. That’s pretty much what we’ve been hearing from the Republican side: Looks matter more than substance…

  • neil @ #2:

    grover cleveland
    elected mayor of buffalo – 1881
    elected governor of new york – 1882
    elected president – 1884

  • Mellowjohn:

    No Mayor of NEW YORK CITY has gone on to higher office in recent memory. I know there is one but I am not sure.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if lots of mayors of towns in New York State went on to higher office, just not New York City.

  • Actually, I would argue Sen. Clinton’s 8 yrs as First Lady are perhaps the best experience one could have short of being Vice President or perhaps a major Cabinet secretary.

    My sense – particularly from watching Carter, to some degree Bill Clinton, and to some degree Dubya – is that there are a lot of things about the job that no outside position really prepares you for, and you end up starting slower than you’d like and stumbling some out of the gate. It truly is a unique job. Hillary, however, has seen it up close and personal; she wont have the starstruck reaction, she has been in that extraordinary spotlight, she knows what those first 100 days look like, what positions need filled, what strictly mechanical things need done to get started, etc. in ways that you cannot know unless you have actually been there.

    You can agree or disagree with what Sen. Clinton would want to do in office, but I think it hard to argue that she would have the least “learning curve” in getting to those things on her agenda.

  • I’ve always thought experience vs. inexperience arguments were always a bit silly in presidential races. Honestly, is there any job anyone could hold that truly prepares them to be president? Lawmakers know issues; governors have executive experience, but zero foreign policy credentials (except for Richardson). Look at Bush Sr.: He had one of the most extensive resumes you could hope for, but he still wasn’t a good president (though he looks a lot better compared to his dingbat son).

  • neil…

    i stand (sit, actually) corrected. it was early, i hadn’t had my caffeine, and – truthfully – the 1880s isn’t within my recent memory 😉

  • If you recall, the Republicans distributed their competitive attack points about all the Democratic candidates several months ago.

    Go have a look at those, and you will see that the Republicans want us all to be questioning Obama’s “inexperience”. It does not matter whether this narrative is true or not, the story has made the jump from Republican distributed campaign material to “conventional wisdom”

    It would be so easy to ridicule journalists and pundits who trot out these lines, except that our collective attention span seems to be too short even to remember the most blatant propaganda spam.

  • “If we limit the standards to federal office, Giuliani and Romney drop to zero…”

    True, but one might also weigh executive experience higher than legislative experience, thus giving a boost to Giuliani and Romney.

  • I’m sorry, but years living at the White House is an absurd standard. Why not give Chelsea Clinton 8 years credit?

    Bai is cherry picking here. He decided that running the Olympics and arresting people counts as experience, but being a state senator doesn’t.

    He decided Obama was inexperienced then had to twist logic to make it work.

    As for executive experience being more important than legislative, there’s a big difference between the problems a mayor or governor face and those faced by the federal government. National security being the most obvious.

  • Hillary didn’t just live in the White House. She went out and got her nose bloodied in the health care debate. I’ve learned some vital lessons in conflicts I’ve lost. Perhaps she has as well. At the very least she hasn’t lost the will to try.

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