Letters to the Editor

• The experience fallacy

  [Read the article: A Democratic donnybrook]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I think that Obama's 'lack of experience' in a non issue. For the record, he has had only four years in the senate, that is true, but he served for seven years in the Illinois Senate. And sure, that's not a national office, but its not like he was just hanging out at home watching soaps before 2004.

  But take a quick look at previous Presidents and what experience they had going into their terms.

  Ronald Reagan- Served two terms as Governor of California. Gives him a decent claim to experience credentials, but not in respect to foreign policy, where he arguably shined the best.

  Dwight Eisenhower- While Ike obviously had a good deal of command experience during the WWII and after, before becoming President he had not had a single days' worth of experience in elected office of any kind.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt- Before his four terms as President, the only experience FDR had in elected office was four years as New York Governor, and two as a state Senator in New York.

  Woodrow Wilson- Before his Presidency, Wilson served a whopping two years as Governor of New Jersey. Not even a full term.

  Teddy Roosevelt- After charging up San Jaun Hill, TR served one year as Governor of New York and then roughly six months as Vice President. So in total, he had eighteen months in elected office before becoming President.

  Abraham Lincoln- Two very insignificant years in the US House of Representatives. Before that, eight years as an Illinois State Rep. That's it.

  We'll stop at Lincoln. Before him Presidents had even less experience before assuming office, but then again people didn't live as long back then so you couldn't wait around too long, and the Presidency really wasn't the same kind of job before Lincoln as it was after.

  Even without going back past Lincoln, here is a list of six Presidents, all of whom it can be argued were weak on experience; some which you can say had practically no experience at all. And at least five of these men, maybe all six, are widely seen as among the ten best Presidents we've ever had.

  So really, I ask you, is experience really all that important?

  Permalink Sunday, January 6, 2008 11:05 AM

• Hillary's Rosebud Moment

  [Read the article: Clinton gets emotional]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  To play Sunday Morning Psychologist for a sec, if these tears and this emotion are in fact real (and I stress if), listening to what she was saying at the time I really don't see it being about the state of the country or anything even close to that altruistic.

  It was all about her. And all about how much the country will "suffer" if she is not President. Because nobody else can possibly be as right or as talented to deal with everything as she is. It just isn't possible.

  So no, while it may have been an emotional moment, I really didn't see any empathy in it. What I see is a woman who might be coming to terms that this goal of hers to become President, which has shaped just about every single thing she has done for the last forty years at least, is not ever going to happen. So she's looking at over half her lifetime wasted. Hard to see that really, considering she still is rich, still is a US Senator, and still is one of the most powerful women in the country. Of course all of those things were supposed to be the ends to get to her to the means of the Oval Office, so I can imagine in her eyes they all are irrelevant.

  It's hard to finally give up life long dreams, as I am sure most everyone can relate to. But the fact that her tears seem to come for her own personal goals being dashed and not out of any genuine feeling for the country, is exactly why she is not going to be President. She lost any amount of positive dream or sense of politics as service too long ago. Perhaps the woman she was thirty, or even twenty years ago, would have been fantastic in this campaign, but the blindly ambitious woman of ugly calculation has been one giant dud.

  Then again, it's been a long campaign, so maybe she was just really friggin' tired.

  Permalink Monday, January 7, 2008 02:22 PM