David Lightman: It's Not About Experience, Experts Say
Many undecided voters have a common concern when they size up Barack Obama: his inexperience.
"I have nothing against Obama. I just think John McCain has more experience," said Steve Viernacki, an Ashley, Pa., restaurant owner.
Experts say that such worries are overblown.
"Experience matters, but its importance is terribly overstated," said historian Robert Dallek, the author of recent books about Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.
Presidents with sterling resumes often have turned out to be busts, usually because they lacked the key quality a good president needs: sound judgment.
"John Quincy Adams understood the world, but he didn't have a political gene in his makeup," Richard Norton Smith, a presidential scholar at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va., said of the nation's sixth president, who isn't remembered as successful.
Yet presidents with far lesser credentials have triumphed. John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he took office in 1961, four years younger than Obama. Kennedy's early years were rocky, Dallek said, but "he was a quick learner" and his third and final year as president was masterful.
Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has been a U.S. senator for 3 1/2 years, but since the 110th Congress began in January 2007, he's missed about 45 percent of all votes while running for president. He's never chaired a major committee.
McCain, 71, the presumptive Republican nominee, was a member of the House of Representatives from 1983 to 1987, and has been a senator ever since. He's chaired Senate committees and authored several major bills, notably the 2002 campaign-finance overhaul.
Not accurate predictors
Experts agreed that none of these experiences — or a lack of them — is an accurate predictor of either man's likely White House performance.
"The presidency has too many moving pieces. Trying to gauge whether experience matters really eludes measurement," said Carl Pinkele, a presidential expert at Ohio Wesleyan University, in Delaware, Ohio.
Scholars suggest two yardsticks — executive background and foreign policy expertise — but they also find both flawed.
Herbert Hoover was the widely admired U.S. food administrator in World War I, presidential adviser at the Versailles Conference and secretary of commerce in the 1920s.
"Yet his management of the economy was a disaster," Dallek said of Hoover's one-term presidency, which began months before the Great Depression.
Jimmy Carter also brought a management background, taking office in 1977 after one term as the governor of Georgia and more than 20 years running his family business. But "he was then universally criticized for being a micromanager in the White House," said John Baick, an associate professor of history at Western New England College, in Springfield, Mass.
President George W. Bush has a master of business administration degree from Harvard University, served nearly two terms as the governor of Texas and surrounded himself in the White House with experienced advisers. But after 7 1/2 years in power he holds a dismal public-approval rating rooted largely in the Iraq war and the staggering economy.
Foreign policy also has proved to be an unreliable barometer.
Two presidents regarded as among the nation's weakest — John Quincy Adams and James Buchanan — had extensive diplomatic resumes. Adams held several diplomatic posts, was the secretary of state under President James Monroe and negotiated an end to the War of 1812. But he met difficulty when he tried to improve the economy with a road- and canal-building program and high tariffs, and he was trounced when he sought re-election in 1828.
Buchanan, who served as James Polk's secretary of state in the 1840s, spent the three years before his 1856 election as minister to Great Britain.
Yet "he's quite possibly the worst president in American history, because of his inability to effectively manage Southern secession and the slavery issue," said Chris Dolan, a professor of political science at Lebanon Valley College, in Annville, Pa.
Similarly, Bush's father had been the U.S. envoy to China, United Nations ambassador, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and vice president for eight years.
But he was seen as an ineffective manager of the nation's economy, and the nation spurned his 1992 re-election bid, giving him the lowest popular-vote total of any incumbent president in 80 years.
What matters more than experience, scholars said, is an ability to hone and trust one's instincts.
Dallek and Smith pointed to Kennedy as a key modern example of a president who came to trust his judgment.
The young president made a series of highly public missteps in his early years in power, notably the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the May 1961 summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who found Kennedy weak.
The Berlin Wall went up three months later, followed by the Soviet effort to build missile bases in Cuba.
Kennedy would rebound, starting with his deft handling of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, which defused the most dangerous moment of the Cold War.
Smith also pointed to a two-day period in June 1963 as a key turning point. On June 10, Kennedy announced new talks on a nuclear test-ban treaty and called for an end to the Cold War. He'd sign the ratified pact in October...
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"I have nothing against Obama. I just think John McCain has more experience," said Steve Viernacki, an Ashley, Pa., restaurant owner.
Experts say that such worries are overblown.
"Experience matters, but its importance is terribly overstated," said historian Robert Dallek, the author of recent books about Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.
Presidents with sterling resumes often have turned out to be busts, usually because they lacked the key quality a good president needs: sound judgment.
"John Quincy Adams understood the world, but he didn't have a political gene in his makeup," Richard Norton Smith, a presidential scholar at George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va., said of the nation's sixth president, who isn't remembered as successful.
Yet presidents with far lesser credentials have triumphed. John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he took office in 1961, four years younger than Obama. Kennedy's early years were rocky, Dallek said, but "he was a quick learner" and his third and final year as president was masterful.
Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has been a U.S. senator for 3 1/2 years, but since the 110th Congress began in January 2007, he's missed about 45 percent of all votes while running for president. He's never chaired a major committee.
McCain, 71, the presumptive Republican nominee, was a member of the House of Representatives from 1983 to 1987, and has been a senator ever since. He's chaired Senate committees and authored several major bills, notably the 2002 campaign-finance overhaul.
Not accurate predictors
Experts agreed that none of these experiences — or a lack of them — is an accurate predictor of either man's likely White House performance.
"The presidency has too many moving pieces. Trying to gauge whether experience matters really eludes measurement," said Carl Pinkele, a presidential expert at Ohio Wesleyan University, in Delaware, Ohio.
Scholars suggest two yardsticks — executive background and foreign policy expertise — but they also find both flawed.
Herbert Hoover was the widely admired U.S. food administrator in World War I, presidential adviser at the Versailles Conference and secretary of commerce in the 1920s.
"Yet his management of the economy was a disaster," Dallek said of Hoover's one-term presidency, which began months before the Great Depression.
Jimmy Carter also brought a management background, taking office in 1977 after one term as the governor of Georgia and more than 20 years running his family business. But "he was then universally criticized for being a micromanager in the White House," said John Baick, an associate professor of history at Western New England College, in Springfield, Mass.
President George W. Bush has a master of business administration degree from Harvard University, served nearly two terms as the governor of Texas and surrounded himself in the White House with experienced advisers. But after 7 1/2 years in power he holds a dismal public-approval rating rooted largely in the Iraq war and the staggering economy.
Foreign policy also has proved to be an unreliable barometer.
Two presidents regarded as among the nation's weakest — John Quincy Adams and James Buchanan — had extensive diplomatic resumes. Adams held several diplomatic posts, was the secretary of state under President James Monroe and negotiated an end to the War of 1812. But he met difficulty when he tried to improve the economy with a road- and canal-building program and high tariffs, and he was trounced when he sought re-election in 1828.
Buchanan, who served as James Polk's secretary of state in the 1840s, spent the three years before his 1856 election as minister to Great Britain.
Yet "he's quite possibly the worst president in American history, because of his inability to effectively manage Southern secession and the slavery issue," said Chris Dolan, a professor of political science at Lebanon Valley College, in Annville, Pa.
Similarly, Bush's father had been the U.S. envoy to China, United Nations ambassador, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and vice president for eight years.
But he was seen as an ineffective manager of the nation's economy, and the nation spurned his 1992 re-election bid, giving him the lowest popular-vote total of any incumbent president in 80 years.
What matters more than experience, scholars said, is an ability to hone and trust one's instincts.
Dallek and Smith pointed to Kennedy as a key modern example of a president who came to trust his judgment.
The young president made a series of highly public missteps in his early years in power, notably the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the May 1961 summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who found Kennedy weak.
The Berlin Wall went up three months later, followed by the Soviet effort to build missile bases in Cuba.
Kennedy would rebound, starting with his deft handling of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, which defused the most dangerous moment of the Cold War.
Smith also pointed to a two-day period in June 1963 as a key turning point. On June 10, Kennedy announced new talks on a nuclear test-ban treaty and called for an end to the Cold War. He'd sign the ratified pact in October...