(Or...Be Careful Who You Compare Barack Obama To)(cross-posted at DailyKos)
Experience can be a tricky thing when it comes to presidential candidates. Take this resume, for example: 10 years in the House of Representatives; 8 years in the Senate; 4 years as Secretary of State and stints as ambassador to Great Britain and Russia. And if you like your candidates to have military experience, this guy was one of the first guys to volunteer to serve and protect the homeland from a grave foreign threat.
Sounds great. I might vote for that candidate. And people did vote to put James Buchanan in the White House in 1856, and his presidency was a disaster. He's probably the only U.S. President who can possibly prevent the current occupant from being a lock for worst president ever.
Barack Obama's formation of his exploratory committee has got me thinking about experience and what role it should play in who I ultimately should vote for in the event the Democratic primaries are still competitive by the time Texans vote in 2008.
What got me thinking about this issue today was the radio host Ed Schultz's statement that Obama has the same amount of experience JFK had when he ran for president in 1960. (Eddie, I love ya, but you're talking out of your hat on that one: Kennedy was relatively inexperienced compared to his opponents for the Democratic nomination, and compared to Richard Nixon, but Kennedy had 6 years in the U.S. House and 8 years as a Senator--more political experience than Sen. Obama). I can see the comparison inasmuch as both men have considerable oratorical skill and are both relatively young, but Obama has nowhere near the experience Kennedy had when JFK entered national politics.
Barack Obama is not my first choice for president, but at this point he's probably my second choice by a hair. And as the experience issue continues to be trumpeted over the next year (or longer), it's got me thinking about how much experience really counts in a president. Going strictly by resume, James Buchanan should be ranked as one of our best presidents, Abraham Lincoln one of our worst, not vice-versa. If a brilliant military career counted for anything, Ulysses S. Grant should have been at least as successful as Dwight D. Eisenhower, if not George Washington, rather than a disappointment who presided over one of the most corrupt administrations in history. Teddy Roosevelt should have been a terrible president, as his only elective experience was 2 years as governor of New York prior to his succession to the White House on the death of William McKinley.
Obama's lack of experience is probably the major issue holding me back from being in his camp, but is John Edwards really that much more experienced? After all, Edwards served just a single term in the Senate, his only political experience. I like Bill Richardson's resume, but a resume doesn't always tell the tale, as James Buchanan proves. And while I'd like to think Wes Clark will be at least Eisenhower-grade as a president, there's no telling what would happen.
So there's the question I'd like to kick around: how much should experience count when weighing a potential presidential candidate? How much does it count to you? I'm not fishing for reasons why Barack Obama is better/worse than other candidates in the field, but I'm curious as to what others think about this. Enlighten me, please!
