The Experience Thing

Ryan Lizza has a great piece in the NY Times "Week in Review" about the rising importance of star power in presidential campaigns (a favorite theme of mine) and the ways in which too much experience can become a handicap. The article is, however, a reminder that the imperative to frame questions in a journalistically compelling way can end up downplaying the level of experience our current candidates have. Lizza says the existence of comparisons between Barack Obama "only underscores how the bar for experience has been lowered in the ensuing decades" since "Kennedy, after all, had five years in the Navy, six years in the House, and eight years in the Senate, not to mention a Purple Heart, the Navy Medal and a Pulitzer Prize."

Obama has no pulitzer prize, but his first big is very well-regarded and his second book is considered unusually good for a campaign book. Kennedy, meanwhile, didn't actually write Profiles in Courage (it's also, in my opinion, a kind of awful book, but that's neither here nor there). Obama's years as a political organizer in Chicago probably have more actual relevance to understanding urban poverty issues than time as a junior naval officer has to national security issues. And Obama's time as a state senator in Illinois is, in fact, political and legislative experience. If Obama wins, it'll still be the case that Jimmy Carter sets the record for lack of political experience in the White House; only Mitt Romney is really aiming for the prize.

Along these lines, it's obviously her star power rather than her experience per se that's driving her campaign, but if she becomes president HIllary Clinton will probably be one of the very most experienced chief executives in modern times (back in the day, presidents like James "I Wrote the Constitution" Madison had qualifications nobody can beat). She was, by most accounts, an important advisor throughout the political career of a man who served two years as Arkansas attorney-general, 12 years as governor of the state, and eight years as President of the United States. She definitely does lack certain kinds of administrative experience, but she's about as knowledgeable about the full range of relevant topics as anyone who's ever done the job.

Comments

Profiles in Courage is full of disgraceful pandering to Southern Democrats to make them distrust Kennedy less, which makes the whole exercise somewhat ironic.

Posted by william | March 18, 2007 6:14 PM

Wasn't the bar lowered years ago when there was talk of enlisting Walter Cronkite? Or when JFK Jr was hailed as a possible President? I don't think there is a bar anymore. An Oprah (D) v.s. Gary Sinise (R) race is not out of the question now. Sinise would for sure be the underdog- but I could actually see him winning. You'd much rather see him than McCain or Giluiani anyway.

Posted by Trevor | March 18, 2007 6:32 PM

And Obama's time as a state senator in Illinois is, in fact, political and legislative experience.

So is time on a town council or a school board, but none of these provide the level of experience one expects of a president, who'll have to deal with the ins and outs of national politics on Capitol Hill, not the quirks of the Springfield state house. Add to this the fact that President Obama would be walking into the middle of the post-Bush foreign policy clusterfuck with no foreign policy experience whatsoever, and it's easy to see how someone could get to thinking the guy's a little too green. More importantly, his lack of experience gives us very little to go by to tell how he'll actually govern as president, leaving pundits and journalists to scrutinize obscure tea leaves in an attempt to figure out where his instincts might take him.

I'm certainly not saying that Clinton is the answer - god no, put a stake in that one and stuff it with garlic already - but so far the most compelling argument for an Obama presidency remains his ability to give a great speech. Now, those speeches really are great, but speech-making is a qualification for a good candidate, not a good president. I want someone who's both, and right now Obama's more or less a cipher who knows how to work a crowd.

Posted by Christmas | March 18, 2007 6:43 PM

I'm no Hillary basher, and to say this isn't to do so: but isn't it amazing how the Lizza piece just sidesteps and then ignores the question of her experience? She'll have only served two years in the Senate longer than Edwards did by next year, although she did have those years as a White House advisor ... Obviously a puzzle for his arguments such as they are to engage with but an interesting one, no?

Posted by Ottoe | March 18, 2007 6:55 PM

Ben Affleck (D) v. The Rock (R) - 2016 Presidential Campaign. Be there.

Posted by Mike | March 18, 2007 6:55 PM

On the one hand, I think of all those experienced Senators who voted for the Iraq War. On the other hand, I think of George Bush's father, whom I don't like much, but who seems to have handled foreign affairs ably. Am I wrong about that? If he did so, I imagine it was a combination of experience and a pragmatic, realistic approach to world affairs.

As for the current crop, Hillary's experience is up for some debate, isn't it? She's the very smart and accomplished wife of a very experienced man. Does that mean she's experienced? In and of itself, being the First Lady does not, I think, count as experience. Hillary may be an exception, but I'm not sure.

Funny how experience is in the eyes of the beholder: I was talking with a Republican friend who likes Romney. Knowing I supported Obama, he raised the experience question. When I threw it back at him, he looked puzzled. "A CEO? Who ran the Olympics?" And, of course, community organizing and state legislature experience didn't mean much to this friend when I brought them up.

The parallel Obama is trying hard to emphasize is Lincoln, rather than Kennedy. Lincoln had, arguably, even less experience than Obama, and he, too, was known primarily an orator. The counter-argument is that Obama hasn't engaged in anything like the Lincoln-Douglas debates. (Obama-Keyes wasn't quite the same.)

Posted by Jim | March 18, 2007 7:06 PM

I've heard that we once had a president who had been governor of our second largest state after getting a Harvard MBA and owning a baseball team. How'd that go?

Posted by clark | March 18, 2007 7:10 PM

Star power = free media, which is often more valuable per unit of time than paid (overtly paid, anyway) media. Does anyone even listen to one word of political advertising anymore?

Obama might not be raking in as much money as Hillary, but he is getting stupendous amounts of free media time. Some of that is because he's the first viable black candidate ... ever?, but he has also been very skillful in sounding unconventional, sounding conciliatory, and sounding intelligent.

Hillary has a stupendous machine, and that counts for quite a bit in primaries, as Lieberman/Bloomberg knew well.

DC experience is extremely deleterious to becoming president. There's something about the 24/7 media headlights that make every DC politician absurdly sensitive to criticism, absurdly desperate to please and absurdly pandering, yet at the same time having an infinite ego. Hagel, Biden and Kerry are the worst offenders.

If Obama wants the presidency, this is his moment. Youth and novelty don't happen after the first time around. A few more years in DC and the optimism will be a goner, too.

Posted by Alex Forshaw | March 18, 2007 7:18 PM

"Sinise would for sure be the underdog- but I could actually see him winning."

Especially with the whisper campaign trying to conflate him with his Forrest Gump character. "Vote for Sinise! Jesus gave him his legs back!"

Posted by Jon H | March 18, 2007 7:23 PM

As for the current crop, Hillary's experience is up for some debate, isn't it? She's the very smart and accomplished wife of a very experienced man. Does that mean she's experienced? In and of itself, being the First Lady does not, I think, count as experience. Hillary may be an exception, but I'm not sure.

Clinton only looks experienced compared to Edwards and Obama, and even then she'll only have two more years in the Senate than Edwards by 2008. As for her time as First Lady, the only appreciable experience she picked up back then was during the health care debacle, which, if anything, should be counted against her.

The good thing about Hillary Clinton's record in the Senate, though, is that it leaves us with a fairly clear picture of where she stands politically: substantially to the right of the Democratic pack on foreign policy, carefully centrist on domestic issues, apathetic or absent at best on civil liberties. That's really not what I want leading my party or my country for the next four years, so I can more or less rule Clinton out. But Obama's experience is thin enough that I can't get a decent grasp of what he actually intends to do as president. (Edwards, to his credit, is actually talking about policies to make up for this, which is part of what makes him attractive to me right now.)

Posted by Christmas | March 18, 2007 7:24 PM

I'm certainly not saying that Clinton is the answer - god no, put a stake in that one and stuff it with garlic already - but so far the most compelling argument for an Obama presidency remains his ability to give a great speech

If the CA report to which Atrios just linked is true and generalizable, the most compelling argument for an Obama presidency, to the people showing up to his rallies, is that he was against the war from the start. If Dems intend to run against the Iraq clusterfuck, that's a pretty good one.

More generally, this issue of experience is sort of garbage. I'm willing to believe that being a governor is relevant, and that knowledge of DC, and how it plays, is relevant. Everything else--garbage. You're dependent on your advisers. For me, what we learn about those advisers is likely to be determinative.

Anyway, early days.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 18, 2007 7:30 PM

I've heard that we once had a president who had been governor of our second largest state after getting a Harvard MBA and owning a baseball team. How'd that go?

Is this an attempt to spin 2000-vintage George Bush as a qualified candidate? If not, I've misread your comment.

At the time, everyone and their brother pointed out that Bush's experience was paltry: that he was remarkably unaccomplished prior to his brief political career, that he'd been governor for less than six years, and that the governorship of Texas is unusually weak and doesn't prepare an office-holder for the responsibilities of the presidency. The response Bush's supporters gave was the same response every unqualified candidate gives: that innate characteristics like "character" and "instinct" matter more than experience, and that Bush would be surrounded by lots of smart advisors who would give him lots of smart advice. And those advisors advised him right into Iraq.

Posted by Christmas | March 18, 2007 7:34 PM

And those advisors advised him right into Iraq.

According to Shrum, the same's true of Edwards.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 18, 2007 7:36 PM

Sorry this is off topic, but I'm curious.

Who wrote Profiles in Courage? Was it Ted Sorenson?

In Sorenson's book about Kennedy he specifically denies writing it. Is there proof that he wrote it or did he make any statements hinting that he is the true author?

Was it someone else?

Posted by golddog | March 18, 2007 7:41 PM

Experience is a varying thing. 10 years experience can mean 10 years in a varying set of roles that broaden and deepen your prospective. Or it can be one year of experience, ten times over, repetitively.

Instincts (or deep feelings and beliefs), moral and social, can be just as crucial as experience - what George Bush refers to when he mouthes stuff about what's in his heart.

No one should believe words that aren't supported by some record of deeds, but we shouldn't put aside what can maybe best be called 'trust'.

I 'trust' Obama, and to a large degree also Edwards. I used to trust Hillary because of her long record (before becoming the first lady in Arkansas and DC) of support and involvement in worthy causes. She now appears to be just another pol, tacking this way and that as the winds blow. She hasn't verified my trust since about 1990, so she fails the 'genuine' test.

I'm inclined to believe that Obama will turn out to be worthy of trust because of his instincts, and accept his experience as being sufficiently varied in his life that he isn't one dimensioned and controlled by the consultants.

Posted by JimPortandOR | March 18, 2007 7:46 PM

According to Shrum, the same's true of Edwards.

Yes, and?

If the CA report to which Atrios just linked is true and generalizable, the most compelling argument for an Obama presidency, to the people showing up to his rallies, is that he was against the war from the start. If Dems intend to run against the Iraq clusterfuck, that's a pretty good one.

This only helps us if Obama intends to run against the war. But so far he's really not doing that; he makes a point of noting that he got it right, but he's hardly railing against the war. What he's railing against is "divisiveness" - to the extent that anyone can rail against divisiveness - and I suspect that he's hesitant to come out as too anti-war for fear of spoiling his image as The Great Uniter. The fact that Edwards, who voted for this disaster in the first place, has taken a more credible "get out of Iraq" line over the past several months does not speak well of Obama here.

Posted by Christmas | March 18, 2007 7:52 PM

Obama isn't running against the war because everyone knows he hates the war and wants to bring it to a quick and decent end, so all he has to do is blow into the old dog whistle once in a while to remind people that's so. Edwards has to run against it because he's an idiot he voted for the thing—he's just insulating himself, not taking any position Obama doesn't either explicitly or implicitly take.

Posted by guy | March 18, 2007 8:04 PM

I agree with this from above: "Experience is a varying thing. 10 years experience can mean 10 years in a varying set of roles that broaden and deepen your prospective. Or it can be one year of experience, ten times over, repetitively."

This whole qualified thing is kinda silly. No one is ever truly qualified to be President. Bush may in fact still not be qualified and hes been President for 6 year.

Posted by jared | March 18, 2007 8:18 PM

Given this administration's record on upholding the Constitution, Obama's experience as a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago is refreshing.

Posted by Matthew Struhar | March 18, 2007 8:20 PM

All this talk about experience. George Bush 1 had the most in depth foreign policy resume of any recent president, but when military might and oil is your total agenda, your resume doesn't mean sh*t.

Posted by Jim Bunnell | March 18, 2007 8:34 PM

If Obama wins, it'll still be the case that Jimmy Carter sets the record for lack of political experience in the White House; only Mitt Romney is really aiming for the prize.

Jimmy Carter? What about Eisenhower? Or Lincoln? Or, you know, George Washington?

Posted by right | March 18, 2007 8:41 PM

The other side of the coin is that our emphasis on name brand politicians means that they are often too old when they finally get their shot, like 72-year-old Bob Dole in 1996, or even 67 year-old George Bush in 1992, who appeared to have largely retired after the successful conclusion of Desert Storm. Reagan was too old after he got shot, but the country was lucky that his principles were the right ones for the time. Even Clinton at age 54 spent most of his last year in office trying to break Ike's Presidential record for most rounds of golf in a year (103).

Being President is hard, and Obama's youth could come in handy.

There are other reasons to question Obama (e.g., his passionate ethnocentrism, as documented at vast length in his autobiography), but we aren't supposed to mention those, so many are turning to "experience" as a politically correct way to express perfectly appropriate concerns about Obama.

Posted by Steve Sailer | March 18, 2007 8:44 PM

You can't question a person of color's autobiographical "passionate ethnocentrism". Unless you want to come off as some hokey Uncle Tom- that's a given. If you were 1/8 Javanese- you'd be raving about your one-handed kukamonga fish-spearing.

Posted by Trevor | March 18, 2007 9:27 PM

"Reagan was too old after he got shot, but the country was lucky that his principles were the right ones for the time."

Yup. Thank god Reagan got rid of those welfare queens driving around in Cadillacs terrorizing our innocent white folks, eh, Steve?

Posted by Petey | March 18, 2007 9:49 PM

Jimmy Carter? What about Eisenhower? Or Lincoln? Or, you know, George Washington?

Lincoln -- yes -- he had less experience that Carter. I think very high level military command of the sort exercized by Ike and Washington constitutes relevant experience.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | March 18, 2007 10:34 PM

Woodrow Wilson's only political job or elected position prior to being elected president was 2 years as governor of NJ. Granted, since Matt's an avowed hater of Wilson, this might not be the best comparison.

Also, did even FDR have so much experience? I suppose he had more than Obama, but it still was still relatively thin. He had served in a sub-cabinet level appointment during WWI (Assistant Secretary of the Navy), a state senator in NY for a couple of terms, and governor of New York for 4 years prior to being elected president. Decent record, but similar in many regards to Mitt Romney's.

Ironically, the most "experienced" president we ever had was probably James Buchanan, who is often ranked last.

Posted by Andrew | March 18, 2007 10:47 PM

What exactly is foreign policy experience anyway? Working in the State Department? How many presidential hopefuls ever do that? Talk of "Foreign policy experience," to a certain degree, is an admission that most Americans have very little experience outside of the US so they need to make up for that via their careers if they hope to go into politics and have that as a resume bullet point. Obama actually lived for a number of years in the world's largest Muslim nation. He actually lived among Indonesians. Much of what counts as "foreign policy experience" is Thomas Friedman-like hobnobbing with foreign elites at cocktail parties and luncheons while discussing trade agreements and vacation destinations. Talking to cab drivers is thrown in to get a "of the people" perspective (such as when Kermit Roosevelt talked to cab drivers to get a wider perspective of Iranian views while planning Operation Ajax). Understanding how people actually live in the world is probably more important to understanding how the world works than knowing which wine Prince Bandhar likes.

Posted by Reality Man | March 18, 2007 11:58 PM

Or Lincoln?

The modern presidency is a radically different job with a radically different - and more expansive - set of responsibilities than the presidency circa 1860. You can't really compare the qualifications of Abraham Lincoln, for whom "foreign policy" meant dealing with western expansion, to the qualifications of the next president, who is expected to manage the foreign interventions of the world's preeminent superpower.

What exactly is foreign policy experience anyway? Working in the State Department? How many presidential hopefuls ever do that?

Bill Richardson was U.N. ambassador. Wes Clark was Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO for something like four years. And there's always Al Gore, if someone can get him to run. Usually the candidates with the most impressive foreign policy resumes are senators with lengthy assignments on various relevant committees (Foreign Relations, Armed Services, etc.), which doesn't describe anyone in this cycle's putative top tier. There's been a lot of talk about how great the candidates are in this cycle, which simply astonishes me; we have a lot of famous candidates, certainly, but none that appear to be both capable of winning the nomination and capable of doing the goddamn job.

Posted by Christmas | March 19, 2007 1:15 AM

What's the evidence that said experience yields a better foreign policy President? I'm really asking--I'm not aware of it.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 19, 2007 1:26 AM

I wish people would stop counting experience as a legislator as somehow relevant to doing a good job as an executive. It really isn't. I mean, for example, Bob Dole would have had 36 years' "experience" as a legislator had he won in '96, but, as to experience alone, I'd take someone who has been governor for 4 years over someone who'd been in Congress for 36 any day.

Posted by Al | March 19, 2007 1:45 AM

In the first place, I'm perplexed by "Lizza says the existence of comparisons between Barack Obama..." Between Obama and who--JFK?

As to substance: in the abstract, I prefer presidential candidates with experience--and executive experience in particular. This translates into a bias toward governors. I'll concede this doesn't always work out so well in practice.

In reality, of course, the overriding considerations relate to the candidates' positioning and potential effectiveness as a credible 'spokesmodel" for a sufficiently broad coalition of political factions and interests as to win elections.

One could make the theoretical case that mounting a successful campaign demonstrates the executive skills required of a president--but that doesn't always work out so well in practice, either.

Posted by BroD | March 19, 2007 7:51 AM

What's the evidence that said experience yields a better foreign policy President? I'm really asking--I'm not aware of it.

John Judis makes a good case that, post-WW2 at least, presidents with little prior foreign policy experience tend to fuck up more in foreign policy, especially in the beginning of their terms (JFK with the Bay of Pigs, LBJ with Vietnam, Reagan with Lebanon, Clinton with Somalia, George W. Bush with everything on the planet). This shouldn't come as a surprise, and I honestly don't understand why anyone wouldn't expect foreign policy experience to be a critical part of doing a job that involves directing much of America's foreign policy.

From the perspective of a voter, of course, a candidate with little to no foreign policy experience gives you very little to go by in discerning what that candidate's actual foreign policy is going to look like. I know that Obama opposed the Iraq War: so far, so good. I don't really know why he opposed it, though, and what he's said about Iran doesn't lead me to believe he's learned any lesson from the Iraq debacle that can be generalized to the rest of American foreign policy. Presumably a President Obama would have all sorts of smart advisers telling him all sorts of things, but they wouldn't all be telling him the same thing, and in fact knowing the state of the current Democratic policy establishment we can expect some of them to be telling him some fairly stupid things. So we still have to come down to expecting a president to have the intelligence, insight, and, yes, experience to sort out good advice from bad.

Posted by Christmas | March 19, 2007 9:13 AM

Another howler from the piece, along the same lines as the Obama stuff:

"As for Mr. Giuliani, he would be the first president whose last government job was mayor."

Now, I'm no fan of Rudy, but this makes it sound like he was the mayor of Dubuque. Really, is being mayor of New York City a less significant source of political experience than being governor of , oh, say, Arkansas, which has about one-third the population of NYC?

Posted by chiasmus | March 19, 2007 10:14 AM

"Granted, since Matt's an avowed hater of Wilson, this might not be the best comparison."

Wilson earned it. You should read the recent book about the 1918 influenza pandemic by Barry, I beleive. Wilson's negligence during that crisis actually makes Bush's handling of Katrina look good.

And, don't even get me started about his decision to get us into WW I.

Posted by Jim W | March 19, 2007 10:22 AM

Really, is being mayor of New York City a less significant source of political experience than being governor of , oh, say, Arkansas, which has about one-third the population of NYC?

In several meaningful ways, yes. NYC may be a huge city with a large economy and a diverse population, but it certainly lacks the kind of rural economies that any governor - even governors of small states - would be expected to deal with, to say nothing of the kinds of large-scale interstate politics that really only develop once you get beyond the scale of a large city. Being able to deal with a large population is good, and I'd certainly give more weight to the experience of a governor of New York or California than that of the governor of Wyoming, but it's really, really not enough. The fact that the mayor of anything can be considered a viable candidate for the presidency demonstrates how low the bar has fallen.

Of course, everything in Giuliani's record indicates that he was consistently incapable of dealing competently and diplomatically with New York's population anyway, so I don't see why even his mayoral experience should be counted as a plus.

Posted by Christmas | March 19, 2007 11:02 AM