Jonathan Bernstein: Do Governors Make Better Presidents?

[Jonathan Bernstein is a political scientist who blogs about American politics, especially the presidency, Congress, parties, and elections.]

In his complaint about Barack Obama's failures on executive appointments, Brad DeLong says:

I think that the general rule in the future should be that nobody who has not served a full term as a state governor or managed a similarly large organization should be supported in any presidential run. FDR and DDE are certainly the class acts of the twentieth century.

Well, I agree that FDR and Ike were excellent presidents, but I also think Truman was an excellent president, and he had little or no executive experience. But since I have that Siena College survey on my mind, I figured I might as well do a quick test. I'll put the answer up front: there's not much of a difference, but what differences there are tend to suggest that legislators, and not governors, have a small advantage.

The details: I looked at the modern presidents, F. Roosevelt through Obama, because I really do think the job before that is different enough that I wouldn't expect the same qualities to be useful, especially when it comes to executive skills. I count George H.W. Bush as having experience, although it's a close call (and, as it turns out, it doesn't affect the results). The other VPs, however -- Truman, Ford, Johnson, and Nixon -- I think have very weak cases for having executive experience. They're legislators.