I was a bit exasperated by the attacks on Obama's 'inexperience', but didn't say anything about it because I thought it was inevitable that someone would eventually point out how utterly absurd it is as an argument. No one really did. And now that Palin is on the scene, we have long arguments of attrition in which Palinites and Obamans argue that the other is more inexperienced, and therefore less fit for office, arguments that have gone from absurd to straightforwardly stupid. It's playground politics, with both sides shouting "I know you are, but what am I?" at the top of their lungs. (It's curious, too, in that I hadn't realized Obama supporters were running him against Palin for Vice President rather than McCain for President.) I'd like to remind everyone of a few points that seem to be overlooked.
(1) If experience were such a key issue for the Presidency, we would expect second-term Presidents always to be better Presidents than first-term ones. After all, they have the maximum amount of experience possible not just with "national office" or "executive office" but with the Presidency itself. But in fact we do not see any such increase in quality. Second terms notoriously tend to fizzle and stutter. Second-term Presidents are regularly accused of not knowing their limits and of excessive confidence in their own ability to handle the problems faced by the country. Second-term Presidents stop making some kinds of mistakes, but always end up making new kinds of mistakes.
(2) Politics is extraordinarily scalable. The basic skills used by a successful small-town mayor and a state Governor are not fundamentally different: the politics of the two positions consists of exactly the same thing. There are really only four things you do in politics: sell, bully, bargain, and organize. The policies may change, as may the rules and the stakes; but the political skills, which are the greater part of what experience in politics actually brings, are pretty much the same everywhere. What is important is not experience but adaptability: i.e., the ability to adjust one's skills to new conditions and rules. This is one of the things of which we can sometimes get a rough idea by looking at the details of a candidate's experience; but looking at a candidate's experience in this way and trying to sum up their record simplistically as "Experienced Enough" or "Not Experienced Enough" are radically different things.
(3) The features of the President that you most want to avoid mistakes with are not the sorts of things for which experience is easy to obtain outside of the Presidency itself. Being a Senator or a Governor does not prepare you for carrying around the U.S. nuclear launch codes in your pocket. Nothing in the experience of either will be adequate preparation for what to do when you are faced with the question of how to respond, in military terms, to a terrorist attack on American soil. What you need in such circumstances is not experience but prudent judgment. This, too, is something of which one can sometimes get a rough idea by looking at someone's experience; but, again, this is not a question of being 'experienced enough' but of being able to handle new circumstances well. We shouldn't be looking for people who already know how to do everything important; we should be looking for people who have developed the ability to learn quickly how to swim when you throw them into new waters.
(4) James Buchanan was an astoundingly experienced candidate for President. He had served six years in the state legislature, ten years in the House, ten years in the Senate, eight years as ambassador, four years as Secretary of State. He lost against Abraham Lincoln, who had served eight years in state legislature and two in the House. I'm not sure we are really going to cry over that one. Woodrow Wilson's experience consisted of eight years as president of Princeton and two years as Governor of New Jersey. Grover Cleveland's consisted of several years as sheriff, a term as Mayor of Buffalo, and two years as Governor of New York. Given cases like these, one wants some sort of careful analysis of the role experience really does play in the Presidency. This is hard to do, but this interesting website makes a rough first attempt at it.
