On the notion of experience as a qualifier to be president

[Stinky The Clown]

Yes, experience matters in some things. Were I to need brain surgery, I'd rather be the surgeon's 10,000th patient than his 10th. But more than that, I'd want the surgeon to be a person of skill, focus, concentration, and steady hands.

If I were in a small plane that developed engine trouble, I'd rather be with a former fighter pilot than a 250 hour VFR-restricted novice.

But what about the presidency?

For me, experience matters there, too. But the nature of the experience need not be a career in elected office. In many ways, that's a check on the debit side of the ledger. I place much more value on traits than resume.

I want a reassuring manner. Calm lucidity and a clear air of rationality.

I want confidence and a willingness to say in clear language how one sees things. I don't need to agree with everything, but I MUST see that the person agrees with him or herself. In other words, no pandering, no triangulation, no mealy mouthed positions designed to be inoffensive to all who hear. I also don't need red meat speeches and inflamatory rhetoric (no matter HOW much I truly love it!).

I want to see the capacity for wise judgement. I want to see an innate ability to sort through options and make the best decision. A part of that is a willingness to seek the options of others - especially divergent opinions, and for the principal to grow and evolve as things change or become clearer.

I want to see a genuine concern for *people*. After all, when it is all boiled down, *people* are *all* that matter to an effective, altruistic government.

I want a history of accomplishment, not as way to judge the person experientially, but as a way to see a demonstrated history of moving upward and onward; a clear desire to be successful and to actually have been such.

American presidents have had all manner of background. Some have, indeed, been career politicians. Others have been career public servents, not, however, in elected office. Some have had varying levels of both private sector and public sector/elected office histories.

The best ones, however, were inspirational, wise, possessed of natural leadership skills, and above all, held a genuine love for their country and their fellow citizens.

Lincoln, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Kennedy come quickly to mind. There are, no doubt, others who can make this list.

And while I choose specifically NOT to endorse any one of them, Edwards, Obama, and Clark each have what I would see as the needed traits to be president. I mention these three simply because they seem to be the ones most often criticized for not having 'experience'. And I disagree with those who make this observation. In my own view, they have everything needed to be president.

No doubt, as we get closer to the 08 races, we'll be making many judgements about who would be our best bet come January, 2009.

I'll be judging the totality of the candidates.

[Aviation Pro]

1. I agree with everything except....

...I've seen plenty of 250 hour pilots (the average number of hours that a fighter pilot has when handed the keys to a F-16 or F-18 is 250 hours) who are more than competent.

[theoldman]

2. Using your qualifications , Bush junior would never qualify.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Is that an expression of surprise???

There's no measure by which he was ever qualified.

[theoldman]

5. Maybe Bush would qualify for dog catcher. On second thought

that would require at least a little brains.

[Greyhound]

17. ...for anything. n/t

[Cleita]

4. I would settle for a little vocational ability test.

There was a test that was administered back in the 1960s put out by Otis-Skinner (I believe. It's a long time and this is what I remember). It wasn't an I.Q. test as such. What it did was measure an individual's mental or physical ability for a job. It rated people from the loading dock up to executive skill. I found it to be rather accurate.

If an applicant passed a certain level of ability, you could match it to the job and they always could perform it, even though they needed training. If a person didn't pass that level of ability for the job, they really didn't do well. The boss's son seldom did well for the job if the test said so. But then no one cared anyway.

This test went down in flames with affirmative action. I am in favor of affirmative action, but I do miss the accuracy of this little twenty minute test that could measure a person's ability, not training for, a job that they could do.

[beaconess]

6. Bravo, Bravo, Bravo!!!

[Tansy_Gold]

7. For me, it would depend on where and what kind of

"experience."

I want an experienced leader. I want someone who has had significant experience as a leader of other people, whether in or out of "government." I want to be able to go to some of the people she or he has "led" and find out what they think of her/his leadership skills.

I want an experienced decider. I want someone who has been in a decision-making position, who has made those decisions, implemented them, altered them, pushed them through, etc. I want a record of those decisions that I can examine and analyze for myself.

I want an experienced actor and re-actor. I want someone who has a record of accomplishment that I can look at to see if I will agree with those accomplishments or cringe.

I want an experienced winner. I want someone with proven ability to get her/his party and voters solidly in line from the beginning of the campaign, especially someone who has had to fight for those victories.

More important, however, I want someone experienced at getting everyone on board. I want someone the Party is going to be supportive of, someone the Party can persuade everyone else to support, someone who is going to seek and hold the support of a lot of different people.

There are damn few of the Democrats who are currently seeking the 2008 nomination that I won't support wholeheartedly. In fact, at the moment I can't think of any. Are there some I like better than others? Sure, but not because I like them better than the others. Rather, my preference is based on what I perceive as their ability to win the election that comes after the nomination.

As I said back in late 2003, early 2004 -- the Democratic Party needs to do some of its own vetting long before the primary season. Yes, yes, yes, I know this takes some of the decision making out of the hands of The People. But I also know that letting the decision go until the convention is a mistake. We'll never know how much of a difference could have been made if Kerry-Edwards had been a team two, four, or six months earlier. We'll never know how much money -- and more important, how much energy -- was spent on the primary season that could have been better spent on the election campaign.

It's one thing to say "experience" doesn't matter when what one is really doing is trying to justify running a candidate who really doesn't have much "experience." I don't think the Democratic Party can afford that kind of rationalization. I think we here on DU ought to know that the GOP will throw EVERYTHING at any candidate the Dems put up, and we NEED a candidate who can stand up to all their slings and arrows. We saw what happened when we had a candidate who could have stood up and didn't; do we really want to risk having one who can't stand up even if she/he wanted to?



Tansy Gold

[Stinky The Clown]

8. At the risk of grossly oversimplifying your thoughts ... would the word .....

'toughness' sum up one of your main themes?

If it does, then I am full agreement with that, and pretty much everything else you wrote.

[Tansy_Gold]

13. "toughness" -- yes, but it's more than that, much more

When my kids were in junior high, they had a particularly incompetent teacher who did offer them some pithy advice: "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."

So, to me experience is something you acquire over a period of time and through a variety of events. It's not a quality like "toughness" or "honesty" or "likeability." Those are qualities that determine how an individual will face an event, how she/he will react to the results of an event, how she/he will shape the experience drawn from it.

I remember my Republican parents' worries about JFK in 1960 -- they felt he was inexperienced, untried, not knowledgeable enough about national and world issues to be a good leader. Were they biased? Sure; they were Eisenhower Republicans and they were devastated when Nixon lost. But I do remember that caution and it has stayed with me ever since, especially while the world has undergone so many political changes.

Curiosity prompts me to wonder what kind of analysis has been done about the over-all effectiveness of various presidents since, say, FDR, in terms of where they came from in terms of previous office (governor, VP, congress, etc.), what their congresses were like in terms of party, and how much legislation did they effect during their term in office. Off the top of my head, I'd say Nixon accomplished a lot -- much as I dislike the man personally and think he was crazy as a loon -- in that he opened relations with China, established the EPA, and so on. Again, whatever else good or bad can be said about him, he came from a background of experience. So did Johnson, Ford, etc. They had the experience to form connections. Was it Clinton's lack of experience, his lack of connections in the Washington apparatus, that partly led to his problems with Congress and with Gingrich and the neo-cons in particular, especially on the health care issue? Was it boooosh's abundance of vicarious experience (meaning, Poppy's experience and extensive connections) that put the little monster in the White House in 2000 and kept him there?

I want a candidate -- and, with any luck, a president -- who knows enough and is experienced enough not to need to rely on others all the time for the information, the wisdom, the expertise needed to make decisions and be a leader. Yes, it's good for candidates and presidents to have advisers; no one should be expected to know EVERYTHING. But I would worry about a president who has never been in a position where she/he had to establish a habit of dealing with big issues, life and death issues, global economic issues.

It's not enough to be tough; it's more a case of having that toughness tempered by experience, proven, confirmed, whatever you want to call it.

I do not want someone to get into the White House, or even on the campaign trail to the White House, based on hopes she/he has engendered in the electorate. I don't want a candidate everyone "has faith in" or "believes" will do such and such in a crisis. That's one of the reasons given for why voters tend to like governors: they've had leadership positions (except in Texas, as we know all too well now) where they've had to make decisions and live with the results of those decisions. I'm not saying I would only vote for a governor or former governor; I'm putting this out as one of those "they say" things.

And at the same time I realize that in order to get elected, a candidate must appeal to the emotional, non-rational part of the (majority of) voters who don't do any analysis beyond, "He's got a nice smile; I wouldn't mind inviting him for Thanksgiving dinner" or "Ain't no way I'm votin' for no woman to be president!"

No candidate is going to be perfect. I was touting a Kerry-Edwards ticket for 2004 back in 2003: I knew Kerry had the experience but he didn't have the personality. He needed a foil, someone personable and attractive and likeable and energetic. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party wasted so damn much energy and money on the campaign, on the incessant debates, that by the time Kerry was declared the winner and he chose Edwards as his running mate, there were too many internal issues to be resolved, while the pukes were in united form, working on how to fix the election, not just pick a candidate.

That's the point I think too many in leadership positions within the Democratic party have missed: We've got "Democrats" right here on Democratic Underground shrieking NO WAY WILL I VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON. How does the party go after those voters if Hillary is the nominee? How does the party prepare for a campaign in which the opposition will pick and hammer at the INexperience of an Obama, a Wes Clark (who has never held elective office), a John Edwards (who's been out of public office and the public eye for two years)?

As a feminist, I'll fiercely defend Hillary Clinton's right to run for the highest office. I won't defend her position on every issue, but there's an emotional, non-rational part of me that is screaming, "YOU GO, GIRL!" As an amateur intellectual, there's a part of me that says John Kerry was still the best person in 2004 to beat boooosh and make a good president; as a Democrat, there's a healthy part of me that damns John Kerry to hell for not fighting. As an American, I'm eagerly looking forward to the day when we don't have a color barrier and we can see men and women elected to the highest office without reference to their race -- or sexual orientation.

But I'm also pragmatic enough to know that any candidate, in order to be viable in the general election rather than the primary, has to be examined rationally for that elusive quality of electability. And I think the biggest liability ANY candidate can have is "lack of experience." There's just no counter to it. You just can't come back and say, "Yeah, he lacks experience, but I just know, I just have faith, that he's going to learn real quick once he gets in the White House." In this day and age, I don't think that argument is going to fly. My personal opinion, of course.

I also think -- again, personal opinion -- that there is a certain emotional blindness on the part of Democrats who go with a gut feeling about the attraction of certain candidates and pointedly ignore those candidates' weaknesses in terms of what the opposition will target. In an election where the Iraq war is THE issue, elements of a candidate's "experience" with the war may be paramount -- but other issues can become paramount due to the way the opposition frames them. And if a candidate has no "experience" to counter those claims, that candidate is at a real disadvantage.

The pukes are at a disadvantage right now: they don't have an incumbent and they don't have an apparent successor groomed. This affords the Dems a huge opportunity that I think they have a very good chance of squandering. My goodness, there hasn't even been much outrage against McCain's monstrous flip-flopping! He could, despite his age and health problems, be the strongest of the current crop of contenders, but has any Dem come out strongly, "toughly,:-)" against him? Not to my knowledge. And not strongly or toughly enough to make a difference. Indeed, the pundits seem to be doing more analysis and criticism than the Dems.

I'm further to the left of most DUers, and I will admit that Barak Obama's frequent references to and displays of his Christian (with a capital "C") faith make me nervous. That's my emotional, semi-rational objection to him at this moment. I don't care what a man or woman's religion is, so long as they don't make a public issue of it when they're seeking public elected office. I think he's a charming man, with the personality to attract a lot of voters. But he doesn't have much experience, and that is, as I said up top, something one has to acquire. It doesn't fall, like mercy, from heaven; it comes more often from going through the fires of hell.

I want a candidate who's been to hell --- and back.



Tansy Gold

[aaronbees]

9. What an excellent post!

Leadership is not just exhibited by holding elected office; it's shown in the totality of one's actions and history. Agree 100 percent!

[mike_c]

10. the question, of course, is how does one judge those admirable qualities...

...except through the window of experience? Ultimately, it comes down to voters making a decision. The Bush administration is a perfect example of what can happen when someone who is charismatic and good at selling his abilities gets past the filter and is in way over his head-- and never mind that you and I don't see those qualities in him, republican voters have swooned over them at length. The less experience a candidate has, the greater the risk voters take, and by experience I mean experience in the sort of democratic consensus government that has to happen in Washington. Even Bush is not any good at that-- his first six years were the unlucky confluence of a radical partisan congress and a neocon administration more driven by it's idealogues than by any tangible abilities in government. Either without the other would simply have spun their wheels and gotten nowhere.

So I suppose that while I certainly agree with you, I don't want to leave it up to chance. I'd like to know what I'm voting for.

[Stinky The Clown]

11. I think we may well all have different views on what qualities a 'leader' posseses .....

.... but for me, charisma is a large part of it. Natural leaders make people *want* to follow them .... for whatever reason. And isn't that, after all charisma?

[Tansy_Gold]

14. "Natural leaders" may not necessarily be good leaders

And I think in our current world, it's very important that we elect good leaders, not just people we have a political crush on. boooosh is the example of that -- people eagerly followed him right into catastrophe. And I suspect that if we go right back to the original vote on the Iraq war, some of that "charisma" (or political arm-twisting or manipulative lies) was part of the "charisma."

So my response would have to be that no, *I* do not want a charismatic leader.

But I'm wierd,


Tansy Gold

[Stinky The Clown]

15. You've made three thoughtful posts to this thread .....

... and I thank you for them.

I am also not disagreeing with anything you said. I just want to go back to my OP for a second .....

We seem to have gotten off onto focusing on 'charisma' (here) and 'toughness' (upthread a bit). While those are certainly two things to think about, I don't at all diagree with you that charisma alone is needed. You're perfectly correct in pointing out that charisma pretty much alone(which I suspect you and I and most on this board NEVER understood) got us Il Dunce.

No, there's no one or two traits that we should be looking for in a president. As I said in my OP, it is the totality of the person that should be judged. And my larger point was that simply having long experience in elected office is in NO way a slam dunk free rideto being 'qualified' to be president. The necessary life experiences can be gained in other venues and can be demonstarted in many ways. It is up to us to pick the right candidate in our primaries and then to work our asses off to 'sell' that candidate in the generals.

Again, thanks for your thoughtful posts.

[Tansy_Gold]

16. You're very welcome. . . . .

. . . but in all seriousness, I should point out that I didn't bring either "toughness" or "charisma" into the equation.

And I also have to make very clear that I personally do not like the notion of "charisma." To me it smacks of irrationality, "star quality" vs. leadership experience and expertise. I think of things like, "Oh, I know he's not a good husband, he drinks too much and he knocks me around sometimes and he hasn't worked more than a few weeks since the day we got married, but I just love him so much!" And considering that there have been comparisons of the relationship between the American people and boooosh to that of an abusive marriage, I don't think I'm too far off the mark.

I distrust charisma. I am very wary of anyone who projects such a strong personality that it overwhelms or disguises or even completely masks a lot of weaknesses. I think that was very much Ronald Reagan's problem, though I would certainly not consider him charismatic. But he did have a way of making people "follow" him -- or at least vote for him -- over a lot of rational objections. Same with Schwarzeneggar.

And frankly, I think there is enough charisma about Barak Obama to warrant some caution. I said just yesterday evening to BF that I think Obama is almost too slick. He's clearly playing to an evangelical bloc, and there is, imho, NOTHING rational in that. He's playing on issues of faith, not on issues of science and rationality, and that scares me. I sometimes think some otherwise rational people are "falling under the Obama spell," and that's scary. BF has been rather enamored of Obama --- until the preaching gained coverage. As BF said last night, "Bring on Hillary!" and he has NEVER been a Hillary supporter. that's the level of his distrust of the preachy Obama.

When a candidate, any candidate, panders to the evangelicals, I get red flags. There can be nothing good to come of it, imho -- either the candidate really is one of "them" and will enact their agenda once in office, or she/he is a lying panderer just going after votes and I do not want a lying panderer in office.

As I said upthread, no candidate is perfect, and I would vote for just about any of the present Dem hopefuls over any of the puke aspirants. furthermore, and perhaps more pertinent to the current discussion, I consider any of the Dem hopefuls to be more experienced, more knowledgeable, and more suitable for the office than any of the pukes: I loathe Brownback and McCain, I think Giuliani is one of the biggest hypocrites and spotlight-grabbers on the planet, etc., etc. Their negatives FAR outweigh their few (if any) positives. Each of the Democrats has more positives, but some of them have more than others. And some of them have large negatives, too.

John Kerry's negatives were in the realm of personality traits -- he was not a good campaigner and he was not a political fighter. John Edwards' negatives were in the realm of inexperience (which isn't nearly the negative for a VP candidate) and some social conservatism. But their positives so far exceeded everyone else's that I couldn't have supported anyone else to the same extent.

Vilsack and Bayh are going to have to overcome the negative that comes from being "governor of a small, rural state." That was one of the problems Howard Dean had, and there's no way to counter it. It's a simple truth. And whatever else Texas is, it's a large state with several large cities, major industries, diverse population. Neither Indiana or Iowa can make that claim. Regardless how much actual executive power the governor of Indiana or Iowa has relative to the governor of Texas, there's a distinct perceptual obstacle when presenting that to the voters.

Hillary lacks executive experience, too, and she certainly isn't overflowing with charisma. If anything, she's got the same kind of "vicarious" experience booosh brought to the office, except that I think most of us would prefer Bill Clinton pulling a few levers and pushing a few buttons behind the curtain to the machinations of Poppy booosh and his cronies.

Whatever team is chosen, and however they are chosen, they will have to be selected on the basis of a weighted balance of qualities, and I think a rational discussion of that ought to be welcomed both here on DU and in the inner workings of the Democratic party. Whether it will or not is the next question.


Tansy Gold

[JNelson6563]

12. The ability to govern can be evident in many careers

But sadly, if one is unable to get elected, their ability to govern would be a moot point, no?

Julie

[Greyhound]

18. I recall several Presidents commenting that there is nothing, no experience

at all, that can prepare one to be President. The position is unique and it always requires OJT, so we're best off picking people that learn quickly and have a broad range of experience.

[Tansy_Gold]

20. ". . . a broad range of experience"

I agree -- there is nothing that completely prepares a person for the position of President of the United States. There is nothing that compares to it.

But there are certain skills and experiences that can make the OJT easier and the transition from "President-Elect" to "President" much faster.

If the incoming president has never had to put together a cabinet or quasi-cabinet, has never held a major leadership position in anything bigger than a school board, has not established any extensive political/governmental network of supporters and advisers, has spent more time campaigning than learning about issues -- all the charisma in the world, all the "fast-learner" skills in the world won't cut it when a crisis hits.

What hurt the U.S. more than anything, imho, from the administration of the younger booosh was the fact that he did not have any true leadership ability and did not bother to establish an administration of people versed in the current world political scene. By relying on left-overs from Poppy's geopolitical age, the stupider boooosh put the country and the world in general in the hands of people who had no charisma, no leadership abilities, no knowledge, no wisdom, etc. boooooosh the stupider is and has been from the beginning little more than a campaign button; he does none of the work, makes none of the decisions. And I think when he has tried to do that, it's backfired.

I think, therefore, it's of crucial importance that we Dems not make the same mistake the general puke electorate made: If we fall for some slick campaigner rather than a truly wise executive, we risk catastrophe, not only from our own internal weakness but from the ability of that well-established neocon machine to undermine us.

If we look at what's happening already, with the calls from the right to make the Dems accountable for the war, we ought to be warned that the battle has already been enjoined. They are armed, they are dangerous, they are fearless, and they are far more united than we. Have they lost some of their base? Yes. Have they lost their hard-core constituency? No. And they have the same issues at that core that they've always had, and we have none.

The worst thing we can do now is to see the 2006 elections as a mandate, and I think that's exactly what a lot of people are doing. This was indeed an election on the single issue of the war, with few if any of the other issues even discussed. And I think there are a lot of voters who will very easily swing back to the GOP if a.) the Dems don't resolve the war issue swiftly and decisively and/or b.) the Dems don't address the other issues (social and economic) with assertiveness. By dwelling on the cult of personalities, which is always going to be a short-term flash and never a substantive issue, the Dems ignore the far more important long-term and substantive issues that have needed to be addressed for a long time.

The neocons and their puke base will always go for the superficial, the emotional, the visceral, because they already have the machiavellian infrastructure to operate beneath the surface. If the Dems want a lasting "victory," they have to go deeper and build their own infrastructure. They've got less than two years to do it.

Reading Woodward's "State of Denial" gives a chilling picture of all the mistakes that were made, utterly stupid, catastrophically stupid and manifestly avoidable mistakes, that turned the Iraq invasion into the poisonous morass it is now. But it also provides a template for how NOT to build a nation, or even a national political architecture.

Then again, what do I know? I'm just


Tansy Gold

[beachmom]

19. FDR had experience as Asst. Sec. of the Navy and as Governor

of NY. This meant he had experience in foreign and domestic policy. Obama and Edwards have domestic experience (I'd give Obama the edge who never worked for profit but as a civil rights lawyer, community organizer, and a state legislater and then a Senator) and Clark has foreign policy experience.

Kerry and Gore are better candidates because they have experience in both sides of the equation. And Kerry has inspired me more than any politician in my lifetime. He inspired me to get involved; Clinton (who's supposedly more inspirational) never did that for me.

[politicasista]

22. Exactly n/t

[Larry Allen]

21. All Fall Short

No one possesses a network of connections adequate to the enormous task of setting up a government. This was true of Clinton and Carter. Great news for unknown political novices from Arkansas and Georgia. Bad news for the country. These two were indeed "inspirational, wise, possessed of natural leadership skills, and above all, held a genuine love for their country and their fellow citizens. Moreover, they had experience. I don't think anyone is qualified to be Pressident of the United States. The job is just too big.

[sandnsea]

23. And if I DO agree with one on everything

or almost everything - then all the better. That's why I support Kerry. He meets all of your requirements - plus I never have to feel like I need a bath due to his triangulation, pandering or plain out putrid policy positions.