Oct

2

The Experience Canard

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There has been a lot of talk in the last few days about Gov. Sarah Palin’s experience–whether she has enough to be vice president or not. Even some conservative writers suggest that she just doesn’t have what it takes.

The whole discussion is silly. Experience is important, but we need to understand what experience we’re talking about. Usually people compare her to Biden or McCain and point out her relative youth and provincial attitudes. In reality, if she should be counted out for not measuring up to their tenure, then the top of the opposite ticket is out of luck too.

But what about this whole “experience” thing in politics anyway? Is experience really necessary? Gov. Palin’s critics seem to be equating experience with knowledge. She supposedly hasn’t been around long enough and therefore doesn’t know enough. But does experience always lead to knowledge?

I say no. And here are three arguments:

First, the kind of experience matters. It’s one thing to get to sit in on a board meeting of a major corporation. You might learn a lot. But it’s quite another thing to run the meeting. No amount of watching can fully prepare you to actually run the thing. Likewise, many Americans have the “experience” of watching politics (filtered by their televisions). But relatively few could actually do what politicians do (or ought to do). Teachers know that teaching a subject requires far greater understanding than just soaking it up in a chair. We can over-emphasize the value of “hands-on” experience, but we cannot deny that doing is not the same as watching. Governor Palin is the only candidate with actual political executive experience. Does that make her qualified? Not necessarily, but her experience of running things is somewhat different than the others.

Second, the content of the experience matters. We could find some aged musician with lots of frequent flier miles, but he wouldn’t necessarily be a reliable source on foreign policy. (Then again, he might be.) If a crime boss ran for political office, he might be able to claim lots of executive experience, but it isn’t quite the executive experience that most people are looking for in a leader.

Third, and most important, experience doesn’t necessarily produce knowledge. We could take a behaviorist tack and claim that, after a while, everyone can be trained to do certain things. But this is not the kind of knowledge we want in a leader. We want someone who will learn from mistakes (both theirs and others’). Moreover, we want someone who can learn without experience–i.e. by direct instruction1 . When someone persists for years in foolishness, they probably aren’t qualified for public office. This would be a problem for Senator Biden. His weath of “experience,” particularly in foreign policy, has managed to land him on the wrong side of nearly every major foreign policy issue in the last decade. Further, he doesn’t seem to have learned that when he doesn’t know what to say, he shouldn’t say anything at all. For all his “experience,” his knowledge, judgment, and wisdom are certainly in question.

Governor Palin needs more knowledge, as we should expect. (She is, after all the governor of one of the states furthest from Washington D.C., and governors aren’t always in the “need-to-know” loop of national security and foreign policy.) But as I anticipate tonight’s debate, I hope Gov. Palin will have an opportunity to demonstrate that she learns quickly and that she can draw on the wealth of knowledge among her advisors. If she does so, she will further convince me that the media doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about. She can’t attack “experience” per se, since her running mate is running on that very thing (in an earlier post I suggested that this might not be all good). But she can attack Biden’s knowledge and judgment, and I hope she does.

It would be great to have someone with real experience in the White House again.


  1. Consider how often the book of Proverbs connects wisdom, understanding, and instruction with “hearing.” back↩

Sep

3

Republican Convention Wednesday

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I discovered tonight that I can watch the Republican National Convention live from their website without the hassle of commercials and insipid commentary. How nice.

Of course, not very many speakers tonight were nice–at least not when they were talking about Obama. Actually, is it unkind to tell the truth about someone’s public record when they are aspiring to the highest political office in the land? Maybe they were being nice by not mentioning houses in the Chicago suburbs and brothers in Africa.

I can’t wait to see tomorrow’s media commentary. I thought the media reaction to Tuesday night was intriguing.

Huckabee impressed me. His speech was very thoughtful.

Guiliani actually squeezed some relevant policy discussion around his sarcastic pot shots at the Democratic ticket.

Palin’s speech. Very nice. More subdued than I thought it would be, but that was probably a good thing. She moved nicely from the revivalist preacher mode into a serious explanation of her own record (read: accomplishments), then into a fairly coherent discussion of policy1. Of course, she generously peppered her comments with sniper shots at the Democratic ticket–the comment about being a mayor vs a community organizer was great. When Obama picked Biden, the word was that the latter would be the “attack dog” for the Democratic ticket. I would caution him against underestimating his Republican counterpart.

Some bloggers have already claimed that her speech was like a high school speech. Great. That’s what we need: a clear, concise, direct statement. Skip the “nuanced” approach. Try communicating. Amazingly, there are a lot of high schoolers out there who are far better speakers that most political types. And they write their own speeches. And they deliver them without teleprompters. So it sounded like a high school speech. Great. That means it sounded genuine.

A genuine person in high political office. What are the odds?


  1. Discussing difficult things like public policy never plays well on TV, and, as much as we hate it, candidates have to play to the TV. Palin did a nice job. back↩