Occam’s Razor

The audacity of stupidity

I have been trying to understand the rage of Hillary Clinton supporters now that she is out of the Democratic presidential race. Naturally, none of their rage seems to be directed against her personally for failing to win the nomination. Unsurprisingly, much of it is instead directed at Barack Obama who had the audacity to run a better campaign, present a better pitch to voters and, yes, sorry to dash your illusions Hillary fans, but also win the Democratic popular vote.

There are also many passionate Obama supporters out there. Had he lost and Clinton won, which I argued was what should have happened, I suspect many Obama supporters would be upset too. Perhaps they too would threaten to do what a quarter of Clinton supporters tell pollsters they will do: either sit out this election or vote for John McCain. The fact that some of Clinton’s supporters would actually vote for John McCain tells me how strongly they were vested in Clinton’s campaign. That they would actually vote for a candidate who is against almost all the interests that Clinton stood for strikes me as exercising the Audacity of Stupidity. Dogbert would have a field day with this line of reasoning.

As readers know, I support Barack Obama for president. However, I never was one of those Obama fanatics. I liked all the candidates and could have happily voted for any of them. I only narrowly chose Obama over Clinton. I could have happily voted for Clinton in the general election, despite her statements during the Pennsylvania and West Virginia primaries that sure sounded racist to me. I could vote for her because she is smart, personable, has values that are similar to mine, has a fair amount of political experience and also because I would have liked to see a woman in the Oval Office. Those obliquely racist comments about being best able to represent the values of the downsized, lower income white middle class were, I realized, mostly a desperate attempt to change the dynamics. (Moreover, it was probably untrue, given that Obama grew up living on food stamps, and she grew up in a comfortable Republican household.) This was clear to many others and me that by the end of March she just wasn’t going to be the nominee. Obama speaks of the Audacity of Hope. Hope though is predicated on at least something tangible. By the end of March, Clinton’s best hope was that some racist nut would assassinate her opponent. You do not plan a win based on such a strategy.

History will be the ultimate judge of why Obama won the nomination and Clinton lost. A few things are already clear. Obama ran a much better campaign. It is not that Obama’s advisors were all that cleverer, but that Clinton’s advisers were running her husband’s campaign. They never spent much time looking past Super Tuesday, which they assumed would set dynamics in play to seal the nomination. They raised money the old-fashioned way, on the rubber chicken dinner circuit and by networking their well moneyed friends, instead of the tapping the power of the Netroots and the Internet. Bill Clinton certainly did not help her. His own vaguely racist comments solidified the African American vote for Obama, which polls suggest she actually led at the end of 2007.

Mostly Clinton lost because when Democrats pondered it long enough she was not quite the candidate the majority of Democrats were looking for. As much as many of us wanted a woman president, she came with known baggage. Her negatives were well known and overall she was as unpopular a political figure as a popular one. Obama understood that this would be a change election. Clinton did not represent a clean break with the past and a fresh face. Given this dynamic, it is remarkable that she did as well as she did. It is doubtless cold comfort, but she came very close and split the last two primaries with Obama. She was not trounced. She set an excellent example of how to a woman should run for president. I am sure she inspired the woman who will someday hold the job.

Her claim to be the more experienced candidate struck me as rather strange. Like with her dubious claim of having won the popular vote, one can also play the numbers with experience claim. If one counts only time in elective office, sorry, Obama wins. Obama spent eight years in the Illinois senate and is closing in on his fourth year as a U.S. senator. Let us call his political experience a dozen years. By the same yardstick, Clinton’s political experience is eight years, all of it as a U.S. senator. Clinton of course wishes to discount Obama’s time in the Illinois state senate, but it was certainly a political office. She also wants to count her time as First Lady. The position is of course an honorary one and not a political one, although she did manage (and ultimately bungled) an attempt at national health insurance. Yes, she worked on other political campaigns, but Obama also spent many years as a community organizer making $12,000 a year. Personally, I think it is a wash. I do not think either candidate could credibly claim more experience. Clinton could legitimately claim the experience of being in the White House and understanding its unique political culture. There is a big difference though between observing it as First Lady and actually having the responsibility that her husband assumed.

So what drives the animus against Obama by a sizable number of her supporters? I have been reading blogs, news stories and asking Clinton supporters personally trying to find out. Clinton supporters cannot credibly claim that Obama is a misogynist. Quite the contrary, he arguably has as good if not a better record on women’s issues than Clinton. Throughout the campaign, he has been uniformly polite and deferential with Clinton. I will grant you that many commentators showed their misogyny, as this will attest. Mostly they represented forces that already disliked her, and were principally on the right. Remarks about her cleavage, for example, irritated me as much as it did millions of women.

Obviously, given their passion Clinton partisans saw more in her than I saw. Even so, I was overall impressed with her as a politician and as a candidate. While not the perfect woman to run for this office, she was at least eighty percent there. I actually did shake Hillary’s hand once when her husband was running for president. This was in Atlanta in 1992. The brief time I spent in her presence convinced me that she was a woman of substance.

Clearly, I am not a woman. However, I think I can put myself briefly into the minds of her supporters. I think women who supported her felt at last here was a woman who could truly be elected president. She had the right set of political and personal skills to pull it off. Many women also feel victimized by life. This is likely because most of them have been repeatedly victimized. (Men get victimized too, but that’s for another blog post.) They get crass come-ons from horny coworkers, bosses and construction workers. They earn on average 70% of what men earn. They are stuck with the majority of the childrearing business. They have people anxious to tell them what they can do with their own bodies. They were denied the vote until the 1920s. It is our time, it is our turn, I suspect is what they were thinking. Then out of nowhere comes this mixed race African American, another damn man, and snatches away her victory in an incredibly close contest with what looks like unearned charisma and smoke and mirrors. If this is how Clinton women feel, I can understand their anger and exasperation.

I am sorry that this election will mean that we will have another damn man in the Oval Office. I am sorry that no male president can think like a woman because he has a sex organ hanging between his legs. Nonetheless, it would be a profoundly stupid thing for any Clinton devotee to sit this election out or vote for John McCain. It is counterproductive to the values Clinton supporters claim to stand for. A vote for John McCain is a vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. It is that simple. I hope their anger can be redirected before November where it belongs: on McCain and Republicans in general.

No, we will not have a woman president this go around. But it looks likely that we will have a distinguished and energetic man of mixed color who has fought for women’s issues all of his adult life and whose wife is a die hard feminist. It may be half a loaf, but it is at least half a loaf. Sit tight, American women. I think you will find America will have a woman president much sooner than you think.

June 12th, 2008 at 09:05pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2008 | no comments

Do the delegate math and the outcome is no longer hazy

It is probably just as well that I did not bet any money on Hillary Clinton being our next president. Last summer I gave her 4 out of 5 odds that she would be our next president. I certainly was not calling the election more than a year in advance but I pointed out that the dynamics were heavily in her favor. More recently around Super Tuesday, I said I still had confidence that she would be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. No longer. What happened? Clearly, Barack Obama proved to be a very formidable candidate but overall the primaries and caucuses have been quite close. While neither has enough delegates to claim the nomination yet, CNN calculates that Obama has a lead of 137 delegates. It gives Obama 1,622 delegates (1,413 pledged, 209 superdelegates) to Clinton’s 1,485 (1,242 pledged, 243 superdelegates).

2,024 delegates are needed to win the nomination. John Edwards also has 18 pledged delegates. So 3,125 delegates have been awarded. 692 delegates (566 pledged, 126 superdelegates) have yet to be selected in the remaining primaries and caucuses. By my calculations, this leaves 232 superdelegates uncommitted.

You can see the result of my math below. I used recent polling where available, and split the difference where unknown. Clinton has to rustle up 539 delegates to win the nomination. Obama needs 402. Hillary must win 59% of the remaining delegates and superdelegates to clinch the nomination. How likely is that? It is very unlikely. My estimate is that she will get 479 delegates, or fall 60 delegates short. I might add that I was being optimistic about many of her primary wins. I awarded committed superdelegates in proportion to those currently earned, where she has a 52% to 48% advantage.

It does not take a rocket scientist to say Hillary Clinton faces very long odds at winning the Democratic nomination at this point. I put her odds at 1 in 15. Moreover, I suspect I am being optimistic.

If somehow she does manage to eke out a win, it will be either because Barack Obama’s campaign imploded (which is very unlikely) or because she managed to convince a very large number of superdelegates to vote against the majority of the pledged delegates. The latter outcome, if it happens, would be the worst thing that could happen to the Democratic Party. It would likely tear it asunder. It would also make it very likely that John McCain will be our next president. Republicans praying for a miracle are praying for this one.

I doubt very much that either of these scenarios will happen. Hillary Clinton will not win this nomination but Barack Obama will. Despite Hillary’s claims that she is the more electable candidate, I strongly disagree. Unless the Democratic Party implodes, the dynamics are highly in the Democratic nominee’s favor.

As for Michigan and Florida’s delegates, it is clear that neither state will redo their primaries. In neither primary did candidates compete openly. Therefore, it is likely the DNC will split their delegates 50/50 between Obama and Clinton, effectively giving no candidate an advantage.

It is not clear to me why the media has not picked up on this story. Perhaps if they were to explain it the way I explained it to you, much of their revenue would dry up. Pretending there is suspense in the Democratic nomination when in reality there is little probably feeds their bottom line.

Barring some catastrophe, Barack Obama will be our 44th president.

March 26th, 2008 at 08:52pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2008 | one comment

Brought down by Bill?

Does Bill Clinton have a passive-aggressive relationship with Hillary? I sometimes wonder. If Hillary Clinton does not become the Democratic presidential nominee this year, it can probably be traced to her husband. Before Bill Clinton said this in response to a reporter’s question, polls had put Hillary Clinton even with Barack Obama in the South Carolina primary. Indeed, prior to mid December 2007, polls showed Clinton holding a steady lead over Obama. While Bill Clinton’s remarks were not overtly racist, they were implicitly racist. When asked why it takes two Clintons to beat Barack Obama in South Carolina, Clinton drew attention to the fact that Jesse Jackson won the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina twice in the 1980s. The implication was clear: if given a choice, blacks will vote for other blacks. What was more interesting than his words though was the little “Ha ha ha” he uttered after being asked the question. The tone was unmistakable.

When I heard it, I just cringed. Some part of me thought that if Hillary Clinton did not end up mortally wounded by his January 26th remark, Bill’s remark would definitely knock her out for at least a round. Unquestionably, that was achieved. Hillary has been down for three rounds so far. Since Super Tuesday, there have been eight more Democratic primaries and caucuses. Barack Obama has won all of them, in many cases winning by double digits or more. This week in the so-called Potomac Primary, my state, Virginia, picked him over Hillary Clinton by 29%, which was nearly the same margin that Obama won in his home state of Illinois (32%).

It was a spectacularly bad and ill-timed remark by Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton is way too smart of a politician to say it without considering its likely the consequences. This made me wonder if he subconsciously wants Hillary to lose. His words, which were quickly broadcast and transmitted all over the country, caused South Carolinians of all races to reassess both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Many African Americans, who long thought of Bill Clinton as America’s first black president and consequently were inclined to give Hillary the benefit of the doubt, suddenly felt disillusioned. Perhaps they felt more used than disillusioned. Our 42nd president may have come from what many consider a trailer park trash household, but apparently, even trailer park trash households had their standards in Arkansas. I am left to conclude many in Arkansas like Bill had lingering racist feelings. Hey, at least they weren’t black.

I think African Americans across the country felt used and betrayed when they heard these comments. Moreover, by implication Hillary Clinton was slimed too. After all, she had married the man. She was still married to the man, in spite of his infidelities (perhaps because he promised the lure of a Senate seat for the price of staying in their marriage). It is nice to have white politicians who consistently vote to improve the lot of African Americans, but how do they really feel inside? Bill Clinton’s “ha ha ha” was a window into his soul. Consequently, almost overnight South Carolinians changed their mind. At least they knew that Barack Obama was a man of character. He grew up effectively in a single family home too, but he had never stepped out on Michele. His vision was uplifting. Bill Clinton’s vision was more political smoke and mirrors. South Carolina, which January polls suggested was a toss up, moved quickly into the Obama camp. The last poll taken near the end of January showed Obama with a 15% lead over Clinton. He actually won by 28%, winning more than twice the number of votes she received.

Barack Obama may be running a post racial campaign, but clearly, America remains racially sensitive. Many now seem inclined to make bigots pay a political price. Bill Clinton, the ultimate triangulator, was focused on what appeared to be short-term tactics to boost Hillary’s chances. The remark was a mistake. His wife’s campaign now feels like a balloon slowly deflating. It remains to be seen whether his remark will ultimately end it.

Many people, including myself, found much to admire about the Clinton presidency. Bill Clinton deftly navigated the 90’s surrounded by Republicans. Under the circumstances, his accomplishments were quite extraordinary. None of us voters though ever were disillusioned by Bill Clinton’s character. We always knew he was a Wile E. Coyote. Most of us liked what he did for the economy and loved what he did to our pocketbooks. It allowed us to overlook his moral transgressions.

This remark though reminded of us what we did not like about Bill. We hear remarks like “If you elect Hillary, you will get two Clintons for the price of one.” On the stump, Bill Clinton is talking about “our campaign”. These remarks just raise the question: just whom are we electing if we elect Hillary Clinton? Who will really be in charge? By having Hillary’s ear, are we in effect giving Bill Clinton a third term? Will he transform himself into the new Dick Cheney and be the secret power behind the throne? Is that how we want to remember the next Clinton presidency with a sixty something Bill Clinton holed up in Cheney’s old office on the phone working backdoor deals?

For many of us on the fence the answer is “No!” While it is generally better to go with the enemy you know than the one you do not know, Bill’s remarks on a Bill and Hill presidency feel more alarming than reassuring. This is probably why not just blacks, but white men and women, and increasingly Latinos are moving in the Barack Obama column. Given the realities of being president, offering hope may seem at times sophomoric. However, the Obama vision is at least a clean break from the past decades of endless political infighting and partisanship. It is a compelling vision, and one that Bill Clinton now makes look especially alluring.

Bill Clinton may have triangulated his wife right out of the presidency.

February 14th, 2008 at 06:58pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2008 | no comments

Still betting on Hillary

Last July, I weighed the odds and said if I had to place a bet, I would bet that Hillary Clinton would be our next president. I still believe she will be even though I am rooting for Barack Obama. Here is why.

First, I am calling the Republican nomination for John McCain. (I wisely did not place any wager on the Republican nominee.) This may seem a bit hasty prior to Super Tuesday. By picking McCain, I line up with the current conventional wisdom. I might add that I am one of many who are surprised by his sudden ascent. If you had asked me last autumn if he would be the nominee, I would have judged him as one of the least likely. Rudy Giuliani had the money and the momentum and Mitt Romney had an unlimited bank account. McCain was broke and took the desperate step of buying a life insurance policy, which he used as collateral, to keep his campaign going.

Then one of those political stumbles that I wrote about occurred. Namely, America got to know Rudy a little better and decided they did not want another arrogant prick in the Oval Office. His ship struck a fatal leak when word got out that the citizens of New York City had been subsidizing his immoral lifestyle when his current wife Judith Nathan (Wife #3) was just his mistress. Apparently, New York City’s finest provided her security (maybe from Wife #2?) and even walked her dog. It did not help that Giuliani’s choice for police commissioner, Bernard Kerik (whom he recommended as a new chief for the Department of Homeland Security) was indicted on multiple charges. More astute political observers knew all along that Giuliani was an extraordinarily vindictive and petty man. Like our current president, he had few qualms about breaking city ordinances in order to get his way. While he looked good in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, his actions prior to 9/11 contributed toward many deaths. For example, he centralized the city’s emergency response center within the World Trade Center. In addition, although brought to his attention he did not address the issue of incompatible communications devices between the city’s police and fire departments. Real leaders work to prevent tragedies from occurring in the first place. Giuliani offered only a lot of moral support after the tragedy happened.

So McCain is the fortunate beneficiary of an imploding Republican Party. The conservative wing of the Republican Party is having a hissy fit with McCain’s ascendancy. He represents something close to pragmatism and moderation, which is anathema to their ideology. Repressed moderate Republicans are emerging all over and many are running for president too.

Nonetheless, all the Republican candidates are paying homage to Ronald Reagan, but it is largely because they feel they must. The reality is there is virtually nothing left of the Reagan legacy left to run on. Reagan had one great idea that proved successful: end The Cold War by outspending the Soviet Union. Beyond that, his policies proved to be failures. Tax cuts only seemed to generate demand for more tax cuts, but never plugged the deficit. Our prosperity under George W. Bush has proven tenuous and was made possible due to the largess of foreign creditors. If these supply side policies had solid moorings, we would not be dealing with recession fears today.

The reality is that because its policies have failed so universally, the Republican Party is splintering, much like the Democrats in 1995. The social conservatives hate the green eye shade moneyed Republicans, who always treated them with condescension. Old guard Republicans want to go back to Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gerald Ford and be a party of sensible moderation, not a party enamored by extreme ideology, endless tax cuts and more debt. The Reagan Revolution is dead and George W. Bush put a stake through its heart. In a way, he did the Republicans a favor. Now they must reinvent themselves as a party with some grounding in reality. Currently, they have zero credibility.

Republicans who vote are more pragmatic than the ideologues running their party. They realize that if they want to have any chance of winning the general election they need a moderate who can draw a clear distinction between himself and President Bush. McCain can potentially win many independents so he is the sensible choice. The price is that McCain will return the Republican Party to its pre-Reagan pragmatism.

Therefore, John McCain will get the nomination, against the general wishes of the party leaders. However, he is still likely to lose the general election. I could say it is because his call to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan indefinitely is a loser politically. I could add that his age (71) is part of the calculus too. Both are true but there is a more obvious reason. Look where the energy lies. In states that offer both Democratic and Republican primaries and caucuses, look at the numbers turning out. In South Carolina, for example, Hillary Clinton lost to Barack Obama, garnering only 27% of the vote. Yet she pulled in nearly as many votes (141,128) as John McCain, who won the Republican primary with 147,283 votes. Every candidate running is pitching change. Yet voters are dubious that Republicans can bring any meaningful change. If you are a Republican and want to embrace real change then your only choice is a radical like Ron Paul. This probably explains much of his appeal.

Yesterday I sent another hundred bucks to the Barack Obama for President Campaign. Obama is riding a lot of momentum. His rallies are packed to overflowing. Sometimes people are left outside unable to get a seat. I plan to vote for Obama the following Tuesday when Virginia has its primary. Do I think Obama will win the Democratic nomination? While I am hopeful, I am also realistic. Hillary Clinton has the advantages. Obama is closing the gap but depending on which polls you read he is about five points behind Clinton nationally. If you look at state polling in the Super Tuesday races though the outcome looks clear. It is possible that in the few remaining days that Obama can close the gap. However, Clinton remains comfortably ahead in the delegate rich states of California and New York, as well as most of the Super Tuesday states. She has the edge.

Moreover, Clinton has a likely secret weapon: superdelegates. These are delegates who are not apportioned based on primary or caucus votes, but who represent the political establishment. One of these superdelegates is Bill Clinton. Any guess which way he is going to vote? Roughly twenty percent of the delegates at the convention will be superdelegates. Currently Clinton has accumulated roughly twice the superdelegates that Obama has. Most likely, those who run the party will lean toward the more established candidate, so Clinton is likely to maintain a majority of the superdelegates. This in turn gives her an extra edge.

Therefore, I also predict that Hillary Clinton will be the eventual Democratic Party nominee. Republicans also prefer Hillary Clinton as their nominee because she has high negatives, which means she gives their nominee a fighting chance. Their dislike of Clinton will doubtless help the Republicans raise plenty of money to defeat her. I doubt very much that their attempts will succeed. The energy in this election remains with the Democrats. Polls indicate that Independents are leaning close to two to one toward Democratic candidates in general. It is hard for me to see how these dynamics can be changed, even though November is a long way off. Add in the likelihood of a recession and it is understandable why disproportionate numbers of Republicans in Congress are finding convenient reasons to retire.

While I root and work hard influencing friends, family and neighbors to vote for Obama, I am also realistic. As I predicted last year, I still expect Hillary Clinton to be our next president. I can be happy with Hillary Clinton as our party’s candidate, but my heart is with Obama. I hope I prove myself wrong.

February 2nd, 2008 at 09:21pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2008 | no comments

Hoping for no clear winner

Since I announced that I will be voting for Barack Obama, you would think that I would be bummed by the result of last week’s New Hampshire primary, which was unexpectedly won by Hillary Clinton. Far from it. I am glad that Clinton won the primary. I hope she wins some more primaries. I hope Obama does too and I even hope (although it seems an unlikely hope) that John Edwards wins some state primaries.

I have many motivations. First, I am tired of not having my vote count. It is bad enough that since I live in conservative Virginia its electoral votes will go for the Republican candidate for president. (This year may be an exception, since Virginia may be becoming a swing state.) Since I live in Virginia, my primary falls after Super Tuesday. Typically, after Super Tuesday the party’s nominee is clear. This means that unless the remaining states suddenly breaks ranks and decide en masse that they prefer someone else, whoever is leading after Super Tuesday has a lock on the nomination. This year, when I vote on February 12th, my vote may actually be meaningful.

I also think that candidate competition is healthy for the election process. Granted that the nomination process is grueling on the candidates, but you learn a lot about a candidate when they are under stress. In some ways, running for president is far harder than actually being president. The stress of a campaign tends to expose flaws in our candidates, which is a good thing. How many of us Democrats, after John Kerry had locked up the nomination, subsequently had buyer’s remorse? I know I did, particularly after Kerry later said rather inept things. With the competition of a longer primary campaign, perhaps these sorts of statements would have come out earlier. Thus better informed, we could have selected another candidate.

Given that the presidency is such an important position and given that Obama, Edwards and Clinton are all excellent candidates, I could be happy with any of them as our nominee. While I intend to vote for Obama, who knows? Perhaps he will make a misstep or I will learn something new about Clinton or Edwards that changes my mind. Democrats in New Hampshire learned something new about Hillary Clinton when she choked up last week. They apparently learned that underneath her often-icy veneer was a vulnerable woman. Some found comfort and felt fraternity in the revelation. It may have made the difference that led to her win.

Therefore, I will keep my fingers crossed that Super Tuesday will leave the picture of whom our nominee will be muddled. Perhaps a few of the candidates will even deign to pay visits to Northern Virginia where I live, so I can hear them speak live and form my own impressions.

In fact, I did meet Hillary Clinton once, in 1992. I happened to be in Atlanta at a conference at the time. The Clintons and Gores were in town to be seen working with Jimmy Carter on a Habitat for Humanity project. It was also apparently an opportunity to do some fundraising. Bill, Hillary, Al and Tipper all came out the hotel where the fundraising was planned. I shook all of their hands. However briefly it was nice to meet the candidates in person. Why should the residents of New Hampshire and Iowa get all the face time? If I get anything, it will simply be campaign commercials.

It is unlikely but the result may be the first brokered Democratic convention in living memory. This would certainly make for an exciting convention. If so, I hope to be there to blog about it. In that unlikely event though, Hillary Clinton will have the edge. As I mentioned, superdelegates also get to vote. Presumably, they would favor the status quo, which would mean that Hillary Clinton would likely be the party’s nominee.

Meanwhile, let the campaign continue and may it remain murky for some time to come. Just once, I want my primary vote to mean something.

January 13th, 2008 at 09:17pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2008 | no comments

The Fallacy of the Experience Argument

I am probably not the only one shaking their head over the arguments flying around in the 2008 presidential race. Each candidate has a host of reason on why I should prefer him or her to the other Joe. One of the arguments being bandied about by the Clinton campaign in particular is “the experience argument.” It asserts that because Hillary Clinton was First Lady for eight years and also spent four more years in the Senate than her rival Senator Barack Obama that she is more qualified to be president than he is. She repeatedly says that because of her experience she will be ready on day one to assume the complex job of the presidency. Therefore, we should vote for her.

Yeah, as if most of us vote using the left side of our brain. Most of us trust our guts when it comes to something as important as deciding who will be our next president. We may listen to the candidate’s arguments but what we are really tuning into is their body language, tone of voice, inflection and their ability to connect with people. Supposedly, more than eighty percent of communication is nonverbal. Perhaps some of us are studying a candidate’s credentials and position papers and are making our choices based on their stands on the issues. Most of us do not have that kind of time. I would argue this by itself is a lousy way to choose a president.

Granted that in many professions, experience is very valuable. I prefer mechanics with lots of experience to those just out of trade school. On the other hand, education is important too. A recently certified board-practicing physician is probably better equipped to understand the nuances of an advanced medical condition than a sixty-year-old doctor is. For most jobs, the value of experience crests after a couple years. I am an example. For much of my career I was a computer programmer. At some point, I realized I had hit a glass ceiling. I could keep learning new higher-level languages, but that merely kept me employed. It was not a good reason to prefer me as a programmer to someone half my age earning half my salary. I eventually leveraged my experience to become a technical leader. Now I am an IT manager. I have not had to write code to earn any part of my living for at least six years. This is just as well. It is likely that otherwise my lifestyle would be more moderate.

Yes, I do want a president with some relevant political experience, but I also recognize that it is not the deciding factor. If I were to vote solely on a candidate’s experience, I would be voting for Bill Richardson. Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Biden each have far more political experience than Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama combined. Yet they are at the back of the presidential candidate pack.

Clearly, voters are looking for something beyond just experience, which is why Hillary Clinton’s experience argument feels rather weak. While her husband was president, except for leading the health care task force (an activity that turned into a fiasco) she had no official duties. As for her time in the Senate, she is a fast learner as senators go, but she has yet to complete her second term. Her senate job is the only political office she has ever held.

Formal education is also of limited value to a politician. Obviously, it is better not to be an ignoramus. Having a master’s degree in a relevant field like public policy, while helpful, is also not the determining factor. The most crucial skill a president needs is the ability to persuade people. This is developed by having razor sharp people skills, a natural extroversion and sufficient personality so that you will be both heard and respected. Bill Clinton was often referred to by his enemies as Slick Willie. This was actually a complement because an effective president has to be slick. Effective presidents know that utilizing the veto pen is one of the worst ways to be effective. It is far better to have that certain something that turns your enemies, if not into your friends, then into temporarily allies. If a president is not continuously greasing the wheels of government, he is not doing his job.

This ability cannot be learned from a book. It is either something you have or do not have. It is not something you pick up as president; you acquired this is a skill long before you ran for the presidency. This is why presidents of the United States were often first class presidents. An effective president is a master persuader. The best presidents though do not persuade simply to have their own way. They persuade to move the country in a direction that is in the best long-term interests of the American people.

What is this form of persuasion called? It is called leadership. Leadership that demonstrates sound seasoned judgment, not experience, is the most crucial criterion for the presidency. It is why Hillary Clinton’s argument runs weak. Her husband was the lowest paid governor in the United States when he became president. He had zero foreign policy experience. While many disliked him as president, by the time he left office the American people overall felt otherwise. In spite of his impeachment, he left office with near record high approval ratings. This is because Bill Clinton, for all his faults, worked for the American people. It was borne out in our higher standard of living and the progressive government he engendered.

It is particularly curious that Bill Clinton is barnstorming Iowa using the hollow argument of his wife’s experience as a crucial reason to vote for her. He knows better. Perhaps he uses the experience argument because he knows her leadership credentials are too thin. If this is the best hand his wife can play before the caucuses on Thursday, she is likely to be playing a losing hand.

January 1st, 2008 at 09:18pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2008 | no comments