With the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate there was a short-lived feeling among Democrats that Palin was vulnerable on her lack of experience. Sensing an opportunity, Obama spokesman Bill Burton quickly released a statement mocking Palin’s short resume. He noted that only two years ago, before her current tenure as Alaska’s governor, Palin’s biggest political credential was being mayor of an Alaskan town of 8,500 people called Wasilla. But the statement was soon retracted. The reason, no doubt, was fear of falling into McCain’s so-called “brilliant trap”. This trap, by inducing the Obama campaign to criticize Palin for her lack of experience, would highlight Obama’s own limited experience. It would also draw him into a shouting match with the bottom half of the Republican ticket, not the most flattering role for the Democratic standard-bearer.
At risk of falling into this trap ourselves, let’s give some thought to the experience question. How does experience qualify one for the presidency? What are the most important experiences? Does Palin have them? Does Obama have them?
To start, not all experiences are created equal. Certainly being the governor of California is a more impressive experience than being the governor of Alaska. California, after all, has more than thirty-six million citizens while Alaska has only 683,000. But let’s not stop there. Would it be reasonable to say that the mayors of Austin, TX, Columbus, OH, and Jacksonville, FL have equally impressive resumes as Sarah Palin? Probably, since Austin, Columbus, and Jacksonville each have larger populations than the entire state of Alaska. But no one’s called John Peyton, Michael Coleman, or Will Wynn to tell them they were on the short list for a VP nomination. And for good reason: they’re not particularly qualified. Of course that’s only to say that Sarah Palin’s meager resume is no qualification for the vice presidency of the United States. Although one Fox News analyst believes that Alaska’s proximity to Russia gives Palin some sort of foreign policy expertise. Huh?
But what about Barack Obama’s supposed lack of experience? Can Bill Burton still criticize Palin’s resume and avoid hypocrisy in supporting Obama?
The answer is yes, Palin can (and should) be criticized for her lack of experience, even by Obama supporters. This is because Barack Obama does have the experience to be president. Put aside, for a moment, his eight years as an Illinois Senator and four years as a US Senator. These qualifications are already impressive, but I agree with critics who worry that twelve years of legislative experience are not enough. Fortunately Obama has another qualification on his resume: Nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States of America. In a campaign that lasted for twenty months, spanned all fifty states, Puerto Rico, and Guam, witnessed twenty-six debates, and faced relentless 24/7 media coverage, Obama came out ahead. His personal management of the campaign is testament to his outstanding leadership ability. Even when Obama trailed both John Edwards and Hillary Clinton in the polls, and Clinton appeared to be the inevitable nominee, Obama never gave up. Instead, his record-breaking fundraising in early 2008 set the stage for his shocking upset of Clinton, concluding with his nomination at the DNC last week.
Obama’s experience running his national campaign is the right kind of experience to qualify him for the presidency. This is most true today, in a media driven age, when the presidency is more about management and judgment than it is about technical expertise. Obama has demonstrated both qualities; we know this because otherwise he wouldn’t be the nominee. Sarah Palin, however, has demonstrated neither quality. Yes, she has been successful in Alaska, but the stakes in Alaska are about as high as they are in, well, Jacksonville, FL. When it comes to the national stage she’s untested and grossly under-qualified.
Obama supporters fear not, you can criticize Palin’s inexperience and not worry about undercutting Obama. He’s plenty experienced and the voters agree.
UPDATE 8/31:
Now Cindy McCain’s claiming that Palin has “national security” experience because Alaska is close to Russia. Also check out Michael Kinsley’s analysis of Republican hypocrisy and John Podhoretz’s feeble defense of Palin’s candidacy (which proves Kinsley’s point).
hey guys welcome back, missed this.
on a completely differnt note i just wanted to find out the reactions to Bill Clinton endorsing Obama.. especially from the republican camp. This is getting ridiculous. i realise they need to show a united front but from what was said to this…
please educate.
I also found it very amusing that “being near Russia” counts as foreign policy experience. When has anything ever happened over the Bering Strait (besides ice age migration)? As Matt Yglesias pointed out, Russia didn’t even threaten Alaska in Cold War action movies.
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/the_proximity_factor.php
Not sure how the Republicans reacted to the Clinton endorsement, but they have to have expected it. Maybe it was a bit stronger than imagined, but he’s a Democrat after all. I’ll be more interested to see how active the Clintons are in the Obama campaign in the next eight weeks.
Jess, I understand your point but I miss your logic. You rightly note Sarah Palin’s inexperience. I and, ironically, many of her and McCain’s supporters, rightly note Barack Obama’s inexperience as well. I do not buy your presentation of his winning the nomination as evidence of “experience”. On the contrary, his nomination never was about experience — McCain’s was. Obama — and this is not a criticism but an empirical fact — showed the world that, to many voters, a fresh face, a fresh voice, a fresh message means a great deal more than experience. I would imagine this would be a very different picture if the experience were not in the context of a candidate who shares many, uh, traits with the incumbent Republican of whom Democrats loathe to have “four more years”. It certainly wasn’t an anomaly of a single questionnaire when poll after poll, study after study, indicated not just the general public’s concern with Obama’s lack of experience and leadership, but his own supporters’ concern as well. That Barack resorts to a series of moral platitudes nearly every time he speaks to large audiences — we will somehow save poverty, end wars, cure AIDS, fix schools, preserve unions, prevent natural disasters, achieve energy independence, and not raise taxes on the middle class (but we will hand IRS checks to millions who pay nothing at all) — is so clearly a surrogate for his inexperience. And as much as I’m appearing as commentator on this, I’m attempting not to — I’m simply stating what so many of his supporters already have — that experience isn’t always what we need. Obama clearly has established and tested intellect, where McCain clearly has established and tested experience. Palin herself is obviously deciding where she sits on that spectrum, but it’s unfair for you to dismiss her on the basis of inexperience in the same breath that you praise Obama on the basis of experience — it’s a complete and illogical non sequitur.
jaf, I sort of agree with Dewart here. To cite that the campaign gives Obama the “right” experience whereas a similar length of time as a mayor/governor in a sparsely populated state is not the “right” experience does seem like a bit of a stretch. However I do agree with you to some extent because running a campaign for the presidency might actually be some of the most relevant experience, in the sense that the people you manage in that campaign are often the people you manage in office. Two more short points:
1) I think this means of raising the experience argument is a little ineffective in general. The vice president is not running against the opposing presidential candidate so it is not really relevant.
2) more broadly, the focus on experience seems to presuppose that there is relevant experience. It seems to me that we should be looking more for a candidate with certain personal characteristics like a strong intellect or a commitment to shared values rather than work experience. I guess in the end relevant experience is the experience that sways voters, but the focus on this seems misguided when we are picking someone to do a job for which there is no true comparable role.