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Are you Experienced?
I suspect that talking to my mother about politics is, on some level, a decent indicator of the pulse of the average American voter. She is, after all, a voter in the swing state of Ohio, who although a registered Republican has probably voted for Democrats about as often as she's voted for Republicans.
Talking to her this weekend, politics came up, which is why I mention it. I get the sense that, for the most part, she's more interested in "what's happening" with the election (i.e. the media coverage and spin of it) than she is with what the candidates' actual positions are. She seems turned off by Obama, though the only reason she could cite for it was his "lack of experience."
The "experience" argument has to be one of the most infuriating pseudo-arguments out there. It is seductively appealing, isn't it? For most jobs, we assume that experience is important, dont we? But don't I just have to give one example to show the fallacy here? If he wasn't constitutionally barred from running, George W. Bush would be the most experienced candidate in the field, with a staggering 13 years of executive experience, 8 of which were in the very same job for which he'd be running. Does anyone seriously think that this experience would be a good reason to vote for him?
And we have to acknowledge that the "experience gap" between Bush on the one hand and McCain, Clinton, and Obama on the other is huge, since none of the others have had any executive experience--so if this wealth of experience wouldn't move us to vote for Bush over the others, why should the far narrower experience gap between the three candidates be decisive?
Anyway, why do we assume that experience is so vital to the job of President anyway? Aren't the President's biggest jobs to 1) hire the people below him who do most of the administrative work and offer expert advice and 2) make the broad policy decisions. How important is "experience" in either of these things? Character and political beliefs would seem, to me, to be much more important than experience.
Don't get me wrong here--I have no doubt that there are areas of the job where experience would be extremely helpful, but there's no way it would top my list of characteristics to look for in our next President. Given all the negative views most of us have of politicians, do we really think that more time spent being a politician is a huge asset?