Osler's Razor

that argument didn't work for hillary and it ain't gonna work for mccain. the fact is this guy surrounds himself with brightest folks around. i mean, as evidence of that---and something that gets overlooked---is the campaign he ran against clinton. when it came down to it, the dude out organized her, by leaps and bounds. not by micromanaging everything, but by making sure he had really bright, talented folks working on his campaign. he's said time and time again that the key to his presidency will be listening to other folks---experts, world leaders, even iranians. ;)

and it's not like he's gonna take up the job and the only thing that he'll have to rely on is his experience. more important than that is, does he have good judgment?
 

they said the same thing about W.
 

They did say the same thing about W, and they were right! There isn't much of an argument left on that one.

At least he was a chief executive of something, and something big-- Texas.
 

tj - The problem is that he is not listening to others, especially those with extensive "inside the beltway" experience. The Washington Post ran an article a few weeks ago discussing how Obama is closing ranks with a small, select group of Chicagoans, much like W did with Texans. Like Osler, I'll probably vote for him, too, albeit for reasons that have to do more with avoiding another 4 years of Republicans than any particular issue. That said, his lack of experience and current lack of a truly seasoned team of political insiders is worrisome. Say what you will about Hillary, she did have both the experience and the stable of experts necessary to be president.
 

As far as I'm concerned, no candidate will ever agree with me on the substantive issues. It's also not like it matters who I vote for in Texas. But I'll probably vote for Obama because of his lack of time in office. The longer one is in DC, apparently the more one is corrupted.
 

I don't see Obama's lack of Senate experience as a disadvantage for several reasons:

1. Senate experience does not automatically translate into Presidential savvy. Some of our best presidents were never senators, and some of our worst presidents served time in the senate prior to taking office. It's a crapshoot.

2. The type of experience Obama has, I believe, is more valuable than any extra time in the Senate. In addition to being a professor of Constitutional law (something that is sorely needed after the last 8 years), he came out of Harvard Law and became a community organizer. What detriment could there possibly be from having experience reaching out to the community to hear their needs and work together to create solutions to their problems?

3. If you want a candidate with experience, vote for Bill Richardson. The guy has everything you can possibly ask for in terms of potential Presidential experience, yet he's not even in the race. Clearly this election is about more than merely who is the most experienced candidate.

4. Obama's experience growing up in a single parent multiracial home gives him a much broader cultural perspective than John McCain, which I think is very valuable in a leader and is becoming more and more valuable each day as our country changes and becomes more diverse.
 

Isn't the more important issue what kind of music they listen to:

http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/38867

Alright, so score one for Obama with Gimme Shelter, one of the great Rolling Stones tracks of all time. But, score one for McCain with Good Vibrations, an extremely awesome piece of music (though "God Only Knows" is the correct answer if the question is best Beach Boys' song).

And what is up with Obama choosing all the deep album cuts. Springsteen "I'm on Fire"?? U2's 'City of Blinding Lights'?? Who is this guy, Lester Bangs? Give us the hits Obama!! Give us 'Born to Run' and 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For'!!!! For such a populist candidate he sure has a bummer party playlist.

However, I think the election comes down to this. John McCain likes ABBA?!?!?! Seriously?!?! I mean, we all "like ABBA" in that way that if they come on the radio you might sing along for 20 or 30 seconds before changing it, but no self-respecting music fan would place them in the top 10 of anything other than "Top 10 Bands With Two Hot Swedish Chicks in Them and Wicked Beards."

Talk about poor judgment. I do not want my President rocking out to 'Dancing Queen' when the Ruskies invade.

At the same time, it takes a man of great conviction to look the American public in the eye and say, "I love ABBA, and I don't care who knows!!!"

So, it is McCain for me. A man who just wants to dance!!! And who loves Mighty Merle Haggard!!!
 

Hmm, on second thought, finding out Obama likes U2 makes me seriously reconsider his judgment and thus his ability to be President. Looks like it's Nader for me.
 

justin t:

1. Well nothing in the whole wide world "automatically translates" into Presidential success (except for being named "Ronald Reagan" obviously). But experience has to be some kind of factor. Maybe it just shouldn't be Senate experience, but he has never been a mayor, a governor, city council member, police chief, donut store operator, beauty queen....

2. I think if Obama was applying for a job as Constitutional Law professor at Baylor he would be a fine candidate for the job. But he is applying for President of the United States. Professors of government that became President...hmmm, one springs to mind....Woodrow Wilson. I rest my case. Oh, and community organizer is all well and good, except for the fact that he spent most of that time "organizing" with a former terrorist (William Ayers) and a convict (Rezko). This is more of that excellent judgment we so often hear about?

3. Agreed, this race is about more than who has the most experience. Hence my previous post regarding ABBA.

4. You would surely agree that they both have valuable personal life experiences that influence every decision they make. The question is not about weighing life experience against one another (because if it was then McCain is 176 years old and clearly has more life experience) but about leadership experience, political experience, and experience in government. In that area, Obama is severly lacking.
 

?! Woodrow Wilson was a great President. His leadership instituted support that led to programs like the Federal Farm Loan Act, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal reserve, not to mention helping ensure an Allied victory in WWI and helping usher in the study of government as a science, basically founding the field of Public Administration. If you're choosing to compare Obama to Wilson, you're not changing my mind that he'd be a good president.

And if you want to draw the Obama/terrorist association, what about Carl Linder, a prominent McCain backer who paid out around 1.7 million to a Columbian group recognized as a terrorist organization by the US government? Mistaken associations go both ways.

McCain hasn't done anything to show me that he is any more qualified to be President than Obama, and his only experience seems to be that he's been in Washington longer, which matters none in my book.
 

The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 outlawed criticism of the government. Thousands of socialists, unionists, foreigners, and communists were arrested, often without warrants.

Wilson sent US troops into Mexico in 1914 and 1916, Haiti in 1915, the Dominican Republic in 1916, Cuba in 1917, and Panama in 1918. He also maintained a US force in Nicaragua throughout his presidency. These "invasions" were meant to allow the US to set up colonies and/or install our handpicked leaders.

Wilson was an unabashed racist and a supporter of eugenics programs, including support for forced sterilization programs.

These are all the things that people say about George W. when they want to bash him, but sadly Wilson beat him to the punch in being the first true fascist in American politics.

And the Linder/Ayers comparison is at least slightly disingenuous. Linder was a director/CEO at Chiquita when that company made payments to Columbian terrorist organizations that threatened to kill their workers if such payments were not made. Bad, absolutely. But, not quite the same as a man that actually carried out terrorist attacks in the United States. Oh, and he once said when asked if he regreted his terrorism, "''I don't regret setting bombs, I feel we didn't do enough.''

Finally, "his only experience seems to be that he's been in Washington longer." Really?? You clearly need to pay more attention. Naval Academy graduate? Fighter pilot in Vietnam? Captured and kept in prison camp for 6 years? War hero? Father of six children, including three adopted children? 20 years in the Senate including service on a number of committees? Any of this ringing a bell?

Well, I guess all of that matters none in your book. Luckily, not many people read your book.
 

I am still waiting for anyone to tell me how being captured in Vietnam has anything to do with being qualified to be President. Please enlighten me on how being a prisoner of war, as honorable and admirable as it is, increases one's ability to politically, socially, and financially manage a nation's resources. I can't find the connection, and any time anyone questions it, the response is "HOW DARE YOU QUESTION HIS SERVICE! HE IS A WAR HERO!!"

Wilson had some negative qualities, I readily admit, but the difference between he and Bush is that Wilson's presidency left us better off as a nation when his time was up.
 

I think you're looking at Wilson's presidency, and its lingering effects, with rose colored glasses to say the least (another way to put it would be "Imagination Land must be a fun place to live"). But, I'm not a presidential historian so I will quit trying to prove that he was a horrific president and bad person (though I think the racism, eugenics, and suppression of public opinion gets that done).

Fair point, why does him being a prisoner of war qualify him to be president? In and of itself it doesn't. However, the fact that he was tortured for 5 1/2 years and never told them anything, the fact that he was offered an opportunity to leave but he refused because he didn't want to leave before others that had been there longer than him and because he didn't want to have to sign any statements that apologizing for ficticious "war crimes" he had committed against the North Vietnamese, etc. Those things are about the character of a man. And they certainly say something.

Certainly they say as much about his character, his courage, and his fortitude as does the fact that Obama came from a single parent multiracial home.

Oh, and you should tell these stereotyped Republicans that you've never actually had a conversation with, but that you already consider yourself superior to, that all caps are not necessary.
 

It says a lot about his character. So does the fact that Obama chose to forego jobs paying several hundreds of thousands of dollars per year out of law school and instead took a job that paid little more than $20,000 a year so he could use his skills to help organize the inner city communities of Chicago. That's a pretty admirable character-revealing act as well.

We could do this all day. In terms of qualifications to be President, both candidates have Senate experience in common, and a host of other individual experiences that grant them different skills and abilities. Do I think Obama is the absolute best person to run the country for the next 4 years? No, I 've always said it was Bill Richardson. But I think that since either Obama or McCain will get the job in November, Obama will be a better choice than John McCain for taking our country from the hole it's in right now and starting the process of digging us out.

As for Wilson, I never said he was an admirable person, and I detest the racism as much as anyone. And the sedition act was not pleasant, but he's not the only President to have done so (John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln come to mind). But in terms of establishing a long-term federal bureaucracy and increasing the government's efficiency, productivity and effectiveness of government programs, there are few presidents that can match him.
 

"In terms of qualifications to be President, both candidates have Senate experience in common, and a host of other individual experiences that grant them different skills and abilities."

There you go, something we can agree upon. And I know we agree upon it because it sounds remarkably like this:

"You would surely agree that they both have valuable personal life experiences that influence every decision they make."

We can also agree on this:

"Do I think Obama is the absolute best person to run the country for the next 4 years? No"

That is how I like to end Political Mayhem Thursday, in the spirit of agreement. Two sides reaching across the aisle to agree that experience is important and that Obama is not the best person to run the country for the next 4 years. Way to go us!!

Now, on that Wilson thing.....
 

No, I couldn't do it, couldn't leave it alone.

"[E]stablishing a long-term federal bureaucracy."

That is his big accomplishment? Seems to me that is exactly why he was a terrible President.
 

With the United States growing at the rate it was between 1900 and 1929, it was pretty impossible not to increase the size of government and not end up with largely deregulated industry, rampant unchecked immigration, an unstable and unregulated transportation infrastructure,and a banking system largely left to run on its own (and we saw how well that worked out in 1929 before industry regulation really took hold). Most of Wilson's bureaucratic increase was supported by Congress, and many systems that he initiated (like the Federal Reserve) are still in effect today.
 

I have held fire since I didn't have much too add, but it seems to me that the paralells between George W. Bush and Woodrow Wilson are pretty incredible.

Both had only been elected to one political office and had only served for comparatively short periods of time before running for President. Both ran on domestic issues and confounded their original supporters by greatly expanding the role of Federal Government. And both had grand ideas about foreign policy and the imposition of American ideals on the rest of the world.

It was a heck of lot easier for the U.S. to turn away from Wilsonian Idealism in 1921 than it will be in 2009, no matter who wins.
 

That's true iplawguy, and many of their presidential policies were driven by wartime concerns, but one of the biggest differences between the two is that during the Wilson presidency, we were engaged in an actual war with an identifiable enemy, instead of an ambigious undeclared war on an ideology with no clear picture of who the enemy is or what victory actually entails. Also, Wilson's policy was doing everything he possibly could to keep us out of war, which is pretty much polar opposite from Bush's policy regarding military engagement.

Man, I love political mayhem thursdays.
 

I drove down to NYC today, and en route listened to some commentary on WCBS-880 radio...

The guy (sorry-don't remember who) was quoting W & Condi and others about Russia's invasion of Georgia, and his point was that the reasons Russia has claimed as justification for its invasion are eerily similar to those the US gave for invading Iraq...

I fear that neither Obama nor McCain will be able to clean up the messes that W will have left behind.

But I'm voting Obama anyway.
 

I agree, Talltenor . . . it will be very very difficult for the next president to fix Iraq and Afghanistan and all the related issues, plus the economy which is all tied up with the foreign situation, too. Whoever is elected takes a huge risk that he will get tarred with the brush of messing it up if it doesn't go well, even though he wasn't the one that got us into the mess in the first place.

I struggle with the experience issue, as it's one that has always mattered to me, in my own life and when voting for President.

But I think this post brings up the issue of what qualities a President should have, and why, perhaps, those are not the typical qualities we assume an ordinary job candidate should have. McCain and Obama are not running for an ordinary job like you and I have. (Well, Talltenor maybe doesn't have the most typical job . . . definitely one where you have to have the relevant experience!)

I would love it if Obama had more experience managing something, or at least in the Senate.

And yes, whoever's elected will most certainly hire intelligent and experienced specialists around him. They already have done that, in fact, as US Senators. They have specialist aides working for them already.

During the last eight years of Bush, one thing I've realized that's sorely missing, that's usually present in our presidents, is a sense of gravity about the issues of the world. Any president who can leave a major summit on climate change with the parting line, "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter" as Bush did recently is sorely, sorely lacking in gravitas.

I think both Obama and McCain have that gravitas, without doubt.

But how do we tell how a candidate will handle a crisis? How do we tell, from the highly packaged appearances on TV and the endless ads? And is it really a matter of experience?

Maybe life experience is enough. I do think, as Justin or Talltenor said, that Obama's personal background, his multiracial status, and his own intellectual and spiritual questioning and self-discovery, as documented recently in the NY Times, convince me that he will have the ability to deal with world leaders and sensitive, complex cultural/ethnic-related conflicts, in the most sensitive and earnest way. And to make fair decisions.

And of course, although we elect the candidate herself, she belongs to a party whose agenda she will, to a large degree, be inclined to support.

I would like to be more inclined to just for the person, without regard to the party she belongs to. But the party has an influence, too, and ultimately for me it comes down to which party aligns most with my beliefs, because the President will always be beholden to his party, to a large degree.

I don't know how McCain is on gun control, for example (and I'm just pulling that issue out of the air as one that matters to me), but even if he were in favor of some gun control, you can bet he will be susceptible to huge pressure from the NRA and from conservative Republicans to stay quiet on that issue.

Anyway . . . my unorganized two cents. I'm voting for Obama, not so much for traditional job experience this time.
 

And I wish we had more than two political parties that were viable. Or else not so much a winner-take-all system. I think we've reached the limits of what can be done in a two-party system. I don't know what the alternative would look like . . . a friend of mine once suggested that we should all vote by internet for individual issues, to avoid party polarization . . . The Swiss have an element of direct democracy, voting by referendum and a 7-person elected ruling council . . . can we think of doing something radically different in how we govern ourselves, so that we aren't so party-affiliated? Or are we too big to change the direction of the ship?


The Swiss have a 7-person elected council that rules, that and changes every couple years. And they can vote by referendum, too--direct democracy.

Just throwing out alternatives here . . .
 

I am curious what most of you (being Texans or at least residing in Texas) think or thought about Phil Graham being an economic advisor to McCain. My personal opinion of Graham is not high. Coming from the Finance Industry I am well aquainted with the Enron and energy trading industry mess.

I think you really have to look at who the candidates are surrounding themselves with at this point in the ball game and their VP selections will be quite telling.

I personally don't know why anyone would want to clean up 'W' and Cheney's mess and I certainly don't see someone my Mom and Dad's age(no offense to my parents) having the energy to do it.
 

Man, this is so much fun.

I just wanted to jump back in and voice my full throated approval of Phil Graham. Talk about experience. This guy was a financial conservative from the Goldwater model, was a major force in the balanced budget fight in the early 1990s and was a constant voice in favor of lower spending and smaller government. We need more voices like him in government.

The "Enron Loophole" was a mistake, but nobody is perfect.
 

Personally, I like Phil Gramm's policies. But as a human being, he's lacking. And he's tone deaf to the American public.

Kind of like Woodrow Wilson in 1919 before his stroke. He could have gotten the League of Nations ratified if he hadn't been so arrogant. Probably wouldn't have had the stroke either...
 

I'm voting for Obama. This country deserves better than what has happened to it over the past 7 1/2 years.
RFDIII
 

I really like the guy.
 

Besides, I always voe for whoever Oprah tells me to.
 

Perhaps I'm naive for thinking that fresh blood is good. However, less time may mean less possibility for corruption or manipulation.
I don't think McCain would be any more experienced as a president because something tells me that there are different job responsibilities.

I think it is sad when the biggest criticism is a lack of experience. Perhaps the ads critical of Obama would be better off if they focused on politics. The celebrity ad amused me because it basically admitted that Obama is much more popular with the people.