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Why Experience Doesn't Matter

Barack Obama has inspired me, and many others, in a way no other leader has. His utterly genuine mantra of change strikes the right tone at the right moment in history.

Hillary Clinton has seized on this message, and repeatedly countered that she is the only candidate who has the experience necessary to implement change in this country. The argument sounds compelling, but is a little incomplete.

Obama has been an elected official for four years longer than Clinton. Clinton has been a federal elected official for four years longer than Obama.

The real disparity in these candidates? level of experience emerges if we count Clinton?s time as First Lady. But no matter how often she points out she was in the White House for two terms, or how active she was as First Lady, she was not the President, or Vice President, or a Cabinet member.

If you feel compelled to vote for experience, you should look to Mike Huckabee. He has more executive experience than any other remaining candidate?two and a half years as Lieutenant Governor, and 11 years as Governor.

So maybe the tallies don?t tell the whole story.

The real question is: why do we care about experience?

In the 19th Century, there was a man who served eight years in his state?s House of Representatives. He later served two years in the U.S. House of Representatives before taking a break from politics. Ten years as an elected official?slightly less than Obama, slightly more than Clinton?left him an unlikely candidate for President. After all, he wasn?t very experienced, and the country was in crisis. This was no time for someone to learn in office; they had to hit the ground running.

By the time Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, just over four years after becoming President, he had fought and won the Civil War, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, started Reconstruction, and literally saved the United States of America.

We remember Lincoln, not as a man who was unqualified or unfit to be President, but as one of the greatest leaders our country has ever seen. The right man at the right time. His successor, who had executive experience as Governor of Tennessee and also five years as a U.S. Senator (and a month as Vice President), was the first U.S. President ever impeached.

Experience is a red herring in the Democratic primaries. Neither Obama nor Clinton has the experience necessary to automatically qualify them for the job. No one gets handed the nomination by virtue of having been in Washington D.C. longer. We choose our leader, and boiling it down to a tally of experience?with or without including Clinton?s time as First Lady?doesn?t do justice to our tremendous power of self-determination.

So set aside this misdirection about experience and ask yourself: which of these two nominees do you think can lead our country most effectively? In the end, that?s all that matters.

Full post as published by Clever WoT on February 07, 2008 (boomark / email).