Good judgement or experience?

[Ruffhowse]

>>In Council Bluffs and Atlantic, Obama received standing ovations for his calls for change. Each time, he also noted that he is called inexperienced.

"When people say experience, what they're really saying is -- do you have good judgment?" he said. Former Defense Secretary "Donald Rumsfeld and (Vice President) Dick Cheney have a lot of experience, but they didn't have a lot of good judgment when it came to foreign policy. Part of what I offer is good judgment."<<

This guy is sounding better and better!

[jobycom]

1. He's been working that meme. It's weak, he needs to drop it.

The problem is he's running against several people with experience who could argue they have good judgement as well. For Obama to argue he has good judgement means nothing. He has to show it, not say it. Show it by explaining his policies, his beliefs. Show what he can do, don't tell it.

He's really showing his political inexperience. He's lasering in on every criticism, trying to prove his critics wrong. He's under the impression that he has to convince people the experience isn't a big deal, but every time he brings it up, he makes people think about it. It's a classic mistake in politics (and in sales, incidentally). Rather than focus on people's objections to him, he needs to focus on his strengths, steer the conversation away from his weakness. Make people want him for what he has. When he began campaigning, his numbers were high, but he was no more experienced than now. It isn't the experience that people liked, and they didn't miss it. It was his passion, his focus, his insight, his optimism for the future. That's his strength, and every time someone steers him away from that, he needs to ignore them and get back to it. When Clinton calls him "naive," he shouldn't get upset, he shouldn't object. He should just show he isn't. "It's naive to take nukes off the table," she says. He should respond "I will not be the president who launches nuclear weapons at an innocent population. America can and will find a better solution when I'm president." That cuts off her point, makes her look less idealistic, and makes him look like a leader.

Instead, he argued that he wasn't naive, that experience wasn't everything, that Clinton's policies were Republican-lite, that Rumsfeld and Cheney had experience and were still bad. None of that showed what he can do, none of it sold anyone on anything positive about him. He's becoming defensive, and that never looks like leadership.

[GeorgeGist]

2. Nice try ...

but we've all seen what happens to Democrats who don't respond to their critics; they get labelled as spineless. No?

[jobycom]

3. No.

There's a difference between "not responding" to critics, and responding poorly.

A good response is one that turns the issue back to his strength. When Perot was asked about his lack of experience in 92, he answered that his critics were right, he didn't have experience squandering the nation's wealth. That attacked his opponents, and hinted at what Perot did have experience at. It was a good answer. When Dan Quayle tried to explain why his lack of experience didn't matter in a debate with Lloyd Bentsen, he pointed out that JFK was as young as him, and also had no more experience, when he took office. That left him wide open for the most brutal smackdown in American political history: I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a close friend of mine, and Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.

Obama's doing the same thing, though not quite as badly. The obvious answer to him, from Clinton or Edwards or Biden or anyone else running, is "Senator, with all due respect, all of us have better judgement than Cheney or Rumsfeld, and most of us still have more experience than you." That puts Obama into a more defensive position, where his defense against the first attack only reinforces the second attack.

Quayle's answer should have been about his own experience and ideology, not about someone else's. He should have dug down deep, looked for the reason he was running and what he most had to offer, and made that his answer. Instead, he set the ball on the tee and let Bentsen slam it so hard that it not only hurt his chances in that election, but damaged him for all future campaigns. (not that he had much going for him anyway). Obama needs to avoid that mistake. So far, he's not.

Worse, he's letting his opponents set his agenda. That's never a winning tactic.

[emilyg]

4. Good judgement comes from experience.