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Sarah Palin is no Herbert Hoover
By Michael Douglas
Beacon Journal editorial page editor
Published on Sunday, Sep 07, 2008
Bill Clinton often receives a media beating for fudging the truth. And when he opts for candor? The sticks and stones still fly.
Consider an interview involving the former president last month, the Democratic National Convention still weeks away, the forces of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama wary about how events would unfold in Denver. Bill Clinton got the question: Is Obama ready to be president?
Part one of the answer was one of those ''I didn't inhale'' responses. Clinton shared that Obama met the qualifications of the Constitution, yep, native born and old enough. Clinton added, helpfully, that the people would decide.
Part two was more enlightening, if no less coy. Clinton explained that ''you could argue that no one is ever ready to be president.'' He admitted learning much on the job. He then proceeded to say, essentially, that sure, Obama is ready, citing his ''keen strategic sense'' and capacity to inspire, motivate and energize. More, Obama is ''smart as a whip,'' adding ''so there's nothing he can't learn.''
You may recall that many pundits hammered Clinton for this grudging endorsement. What they missed was his helpful contribution to a debate still swirling around the presidential race: What does experience tell us about a candidate, anyway?
Look at an example close to home, and you will find the Akron Bar Association, in rating local judicial candidates, appeared to give great weight to experience on the bench. In the bewildering 10 races this year, all but one sitting judge received a ''highly recommended'' rating. Those candidates without black robes of the official kind? Just two gained the top grade, one since becoming judge via an appointment by the governor.
Republicans spent part of the past week in St. Paul contending that Sarah Palin outpaces Barack Obama in the experience department. They pointed to her years as mayor of an Alaska town the equivalent of Fairlawn in population and her 20 months as the governor of Alaska. Truth be told, Obama doesn't have much executive experience, beyond running a smooth and successful (so far) presidential campaign for the past two years.
Democrats countered that John McCain is similarly challenged, spending the past 26 years on Capitol Hill, far removed from executive responsibility.
To which McCain responded indirectly in his acceptance speech: It is really about the character of the man or woman. Which was exactly Bill Clinton's point. Experience offers a clue about leadership. It hardly reveals all about a candidate.
The Republican convention featured numerous retellings of McCain's ordeal as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Hard to dispute his courage, his strength of mind. He has been tested as few have. Yet, in a May article in the New York Times Magazine, Matt Bai explored how McCain's particular ordeal in Vietnam may shape his view of the Iraq war, his belief that if effectively shaped and carried out, the American mission will prove a success.
Interestingly, Bai noted that the other Vietnam veterans in the Senate, Jim Webb, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, have markedly different and darker views. All three had more typical deployments in Vietnam, soldiers at the front lines, confronting the persistent ambiguity, confusion and uncertainty.
Many in this discussion point to John Kennedy, president at age 43, the last sitting senator (before McCain or Obama) to enter the Oval Office. His experience was thin, yet he had spent years watching and thinking about the exercise of presidential power.
Kennedy famously blundered, waving ahead the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, notably enough conceived and designed by his more experienced elders at the CIA. He learned. Read the transcripts of the meetings during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and you find an appropriately skeptical and more confident president at work.
The observation often is made that Abraham Lincoln may have been the country's least experienced yet greatest president. Herbert Hoover put together a most impressive resume. He flopped. Franklin Roosevelt brought rich experience, as assistant secretary of the Navy and governor of New York. His presidency amounted to a stirring success, albeit Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. citing the telling factor, Roosevelt's ''first-class temperament.''
Each of us has experience with experience. A certain amount of familiarity is essential, whether driving a car, swinging a golf club, swimming, cooking or doing the laundry. How many of these procedures has the surgeon performed? Yet experience also features complications. A veteran in whatever field may be stuck in his or her ways, resistant to a changing world. He or she may be too aware of potential risks and pitfalls, and thus painfully indecisive.
Or that awareness may prove indispensable to avoiding trouble.
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld brought truckloads of experience to their jobs in the Bush White House. What they lacked, among other things, was that ''keen strategic vision.''
There is no objective calculation for experience in assessing the qualifications of a presidential candidate, a ranking from, say, one to 100. Even if such a thing could be constructed, intense arguments would ensue. Actually, an argument is good. It should focus not on tallying years but on attempting to determine what the candidates have done with their many experiences, what their past and skills reveal about where they would take the country.
Still, history counsels to expect surprises, and errors. Bill Clinton certainly spoke from experience.
Douglas is the Beacon Journal editorial page editor. He can be reached at 330-996-3514, or emailed at mdouglas@thebeaconjournal.com.
Bill Clinton often receives a media beating for fudging the truth. And when he opts for candor? The sticks and stones still fly.
Get the full article here.
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