Three monkeys for president
What is experience when it comes to political leadership? This question is shaping up to be a key one for the 2008 Presidential election. Senator Clinton claims that she is far more experienced than Senator Obama, because she served as First Lady for eight years. Her White House schedule was just made public this week and it's not clear that her background is as straightforward as she claims. Much of what she did was social, other than her botched attempt to reform the Health Care system.
Obama doesn't have that much experience. But he's not really claiming that he has.
McCain has a lot of experience. If that was truly the qualifying criteria, then he'd be the man. He might be genuinely crazy, however and that's a little scary.
So how important is experience in a Presidential campaign? George Bush Jr was woefully unqualified to be President. Other than a stint as governor of Texas (which is like being the head inmate in the asylum that gets control of the tv remote during recreation time), his leadership background was primarily running a baseball team.
Perhaps we'd be better off with a young president who reinvents the office. That's points for Obama. The Clinton people will argue that you need an experienced hand at the helm who knows who to get bills passed and can better control their agenda with Congress. Clinton didn't do that well at that endeavor before, but perhaps she'd be better now with her Senatorial experience under her belt.
Of course, Clinton detractors will say that Hillary has essentially been running on Bill's coattails her entire political career.
So what kind of experience do we want in our next leader? IMHO, things haven't been working so far. I go for someone new and for that reason I like Obama. I really wish one of the three of them had some credibility towards strengthening the economy and I'm afraid that none of them do.
Posted on March 21, 2008
