Oh, and as for the "experience" thing...

[jducoeur]

It may be too late -- many people will already have voted before they see this -- but one more relevant point while I think on it:

The Clinton campaign has been hammering home the issue of "experience" for months now. The implication is that Obama doesn't have enough experience to be President, and that Clinton does. In my opinion, it's nonsense. History says that "experience" is, at best, a modest benefit to a new President. Many of the worst Presidents had lots of prior executive experience; many of the best didn't.

There are some ways in which "experience" matters, but as far as I can tell it's of specific kinds. It's important that the President have clear skill at building and running a large, smoothly-running organization. Obama has demonstrated that quite ably in the past few months -- his campaign has been a model of brilliant organization, centralized and decentralized in just the right ways, and has succeeded in taking on a well-oiled election machine that everyone assumed would handily deliver the nomination to Clinton.

Despite everyone's desire for an "outsider", it's also important that the President know how to navigate the highways and byways of Washington -- to know how to get business done. Again, Obama seems to be fine. While he may not be quite the consummate insider that Hilary has become, he's been a good Senator, and he's demonstrated that he's a quick study in how real politics works.

The thing is, everyone keeps comparing him with Deval Patrick, and assuming that he's going to make the same (mostly fairly modest) mistakes that Patrick made at first. And I'm sorry folks, but that's not only rubbish, it has a casually racist tinge I dislike. The comparison is there mostly because they're both charismatic, young black politicians; if they weren't, people wouldn't be making the association. The fact is, they are different precisely *in* the area of experience. Patrick came to office with *no* real political experience: he had been a capable civil servant, but that was pretty much it. Of course he made rookie political errors -- he was a rookie politician. Obama, by contrast, has years of experience in down-and-dirty local politics, and four years as a Senator, deep in the center of Washington. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison, and an inappropriate one.

So let's be explicit: I think the experience thing is a non-issue. Yes, Obama will make some mistakes. So will Clinton, so will McCain or whoever it is who gets elected. They'll be different mistakes, but the politician hasn't been born who *hasn't* made lots of mistakes when in the big chair, regardless how much or what sort of experience they had had before. But none of these people are stupid or naive -- they wouldn't have gotten this far in this tough election if they were -- and this whole "issue" is largely a smoke-screen as far as I'm concerned...

Comments

[zachkessin.livejournal.com]

The thing is I think the most important thing a president can do is hire a good chief of staff. Ok its something that most folks outside the beltway don't think much about (myself included). But I am sure Obama has the senior staff lined up already and I'm sure it includes a number of the A list types.

[hungrytiger]

The thing that's really ticked me off about Clinton's "Expertise" argument is that it really smacks of her increasingly obvious feeling of political entitlement. She's be doing this longer than Obama, so she deserves it more. That's playground politics, not national politics. It's really feeling to me that her campaign is becoming more about what's good for the Clintons and the FOBs than what's good for the country.

Plus, given that she's running on Bill's record at least as much as her own, it's fairly hypocritical of her since Bill's 9 years as Governor of Arkansas are roughly equivalent to Barak's 9 years in the Illinois State Senate and Congress in terms of experience.

Finally, echoing Zach, I'm rather annoyed by Hillary hammering the experience issue as though the Presidency is a one-person operation. Is she planning to go it single-handledly with no staff? Is she trying to get us to believe that Obama will bring on a staff of people who've never been to DC before? The president is the leader (or figurehead) of a coalition of people, and that's the thing that Barak is showing me he can do better than Clinton.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

It may be too late -- many people will already have voted before they see this -- but one more relevant point while I think on it:

It's only "too late" if you expect to influence people's vote. I found some of your points valid on their own.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Well said on all fronts. I too believe Obama has the right level of experience -- enough to know how the game is played but still fresh enough to bring new insights and ideas.

This isn't a competition between vision v. experience. It is a question of who has the right mix of vision and experience.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

Even if the comparison to Patrick weren't (I'll be polite and call it) superficial, it seems to me hardly a condemnation. Patrick

1. made some mistakes
2. publicly admitted to making them
3. moved on
4. and learned from his mistakes.

This seems to me an admirable record, especially in comparison to the current occupant of the job, who is only capible of #1 on that list.

And whenever Hilary talks about experience, I always remember the national consensus that existed in the first years of the Clinton administration that something had to be done about the health care situation — and how she managed to not only drop the ball but to leave it coated in nuclear waste so nobody's been willing to come near it for fifteen years. I realize I have several orders of magnitude longer a memory than the typical American voter, but from where I sit it just casts doubt on her judgement for Hilary to harp on "experience" so much.

[jducoeur]

Yaas. Patrick's record so far reminds me of no one quite so much as Jane Swift -- another competent rookie governor who took a bunch of flack over "crises" that I thought were downright silly. (Romney's stabbing in the back of Swift was the moment I decided that I really didn't like this guy.)

Overall, I'm rather liking Patrick as governor: I've agreed with most of his approaches and decisions, and I think he's done a reasonable job of getting past the dumb, petty errors. He's the kind of sensible, technocratic politician I would love to see more of...

[serakit.livejournal.com]

You've mentioned Jane Swift and Romney before. I vaguely remember the advertisements from when they were running... What happened with him stabbing her in the back?

[jducoeur]

Basically, he fed into and took advantage of the dirty PR machine that doomed her politically. She made a few fairly mild mistakes (mostly due to trying to balance the governor's job with being the mother to small children), which got turned into a gigantic political smear. I've always felt that she was treated quite shoddily, especially by her fellow Republicans...