Political Experience: What Matters, and Why?

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by KSigkid

I don't tend to look at experience when looking at a Presidential candidate. For me, the most important things are the candidate's platform, their stances on the issues, and whether I think they can surround themselves with intelligent people.

I would tend to agree, and would only add one other thing important to me: whether the candidate has demonstrated good judgment. I don't discount experience, but these other things -- position on the issues, judgment and picking (and listening to) the right people in the right positions -- can outweigh lack of experience. In some ways, the main value of experience is that it gives a view to measure some of these other things.

Also, frankly, I value a candidate's ability to communicate well. I don't mean necessarily to be eloquent, but simply to communicate well. I wonder, for example, if the American people would have rallied quite like they did during WWII had it not been for FDR's ability to communicate with the American people. It was certainly one of Reagan's gifts, and it had an effect on his ability to get things done (and to reshape the GOP). There are times the president needs to inspire or cheerlead.

[KSigkid]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

Also, frankly, I value a candidate's ability to communicate well. I don't mean necessarily to be eloquent, but simply to communicate well. I wonder, for example, if the American people would have rallied quite like they did during WWII had it not been for FDR's ability to communicate with the American people. It was certainly one of Reagan's gifts, and it had an effect on his ability to get things done (and to reshape the GOP). There are times the president needs to inspire or cheerlead.

That's one thing I forgot, but is definitely important. A President holds a lot of power in the words he/she speaks, so having the ability to communicate well is extremely important.

[DaemonSeid]

Let's make a list of past POTUS'es since the end of WWII and how much prior experience they had before the job and how thier presidential ratings were when they left office.

[KSigkid]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

Let's make a list of past POTUS'es since the end of WWII and how much prior experience they had before the job and how thier presidential ratings were when they left office.

I think that approach may be slightly flawed:
1) What counts as "experience?" Are you talking state or national?

2) Presidential ratings are hopelessly inaccurate, and it's widely accepted by the academic community that it takes a number of years to properly assess a President's impact. For example, I think Truman had terrible ratings when he left office, and he's considered one of the top 10 Presidents.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

Let's make a list of past POTUS'es since the end of WWII and how much prior experience they had before the job and how thier presidential ratings were when they left office.

So you want to make a subjective list of attributes (because you'll have to make arbitrary decisions on how to "combine" experience - all governors together? All congressmen? What about people who did both? What about 1940 versus 1840?) and then look for correlation with a temporal poll that serves as a singular and poor stand-in for performance?

Not to mention the sample-size issues, since we haven't exactly had approval ratings dating back to the XYZ Affair.

My point was that we can't "prove" that one set of experiential attributes is best - it would be impossible. Instead, I want to know what's important to us individually - what you think is best, since you can't "know" for certain.

[AKA_Monet]

Can you all separate the two? Experience vs. knowledge--doesn't one lead into the other?

I think there is an issue of "leadership" that comes into question. If elected (or selected depending on where you sit), the persons will be our leaders.

We currently have a leader who had plenty of leadership experiences including his own VP. But they still ran our country into the ground. Our troops fight with little gear doing the best they can do and come back home to what? A job doing what? Health support services doing what?

We had an economic surplus 10 years ago, now, we have a gajillion dollar deficit. So no matter whose platform any of us support, regardless of what we think, these will have to be cleaned up before we go full throttle into any other country exacting our military might...

There will always be poverty, suffering is the human condition, and war is not the answer to it. But as human beings apart of this planet--this Global Economy--we have to play in this pool and try to make something better of it.

So, for me I am looking for revelation and revisionist thoughts. Something that can help may children's grandchildren... (Not that I have any...)

[UGAalum94]

It's a really interesting question. We seem to want an impossibility: someone with extensive government experience who is still somehow an outsider and in touch with the common person.

Along with the good judgment thing, I think assessments of overall character play in. I know that opens the door to a lot of personal life crap, but I have known very few people who were completely crappy in their personal lives and yet exemplary professionally.

I'm not saying that I'm looking for someone without sin because I certainly don't expect that, but I think the kinds of mistakes that people make and their reaction to them are revealing and may be kind of predictive of the leadership you can expect. Charismatic and charming but not particularly faithful got us one kind of leadership; reformed ne'er do well after religious conversion got us another.

Certainly every person is unique, so I don't mean you could expect that based on a certain type of mistake in the past you could expect a certain type of leadership, but the patterns of a person's life do reveal something worth knowing about how they are likely to handle things in the future.

And maybe oddly, past successes could reveal traits that would harm a person's effectiveness in office because the demands of one job are different than the demands of another. Someone who in congress was devoted to building consensus and compromise might actually struggle with the sort of singular leadership of the executive. (I realize that the pres. has to work with congress, so I don't mean that consensus building could in itself be a bad thing, just that it's a different job.)

But in terms of kind of resume-based government experience, I want to see enough evidence, preferably in terms of a voting or veto record to be able to determine what a person might do or what agenda he or she might advance. I'm not particular about whether it's at the state or national level.

[texas*princess]

I think Captain of the Basketball team experience is absolutely essential b/c I think it's the captains who call the plays, so in the grown up world, they can call plays in DC.

[a.e.B.O.T.]

-Someone of great character who can fully represent the US to the world

-Someone of fair judgement. I try to figure out a candidate's definition of fair. I am not going to find a candidate who aligns perfectly with my beliefs, and as it stands now, both POTUS candidates have a little bit of this and a little bit of that. So, figuring out if they are going to be fair or bias, or what they think of as normal protocol is to lean towards strictly their side of the political area or if they are willing to be the president of all of us.

-Someone who won't be a Veto whore.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by texas*princess

I think Captain of the Basketball team experience is absolutely essential b/c I think it's the captains who call the plays, so in the grown up world, they can call plays in DC.

[KSigkid]

Originally Posted by texas*princess

I think Captain of the Basketball team experience is absolutely essential b/c I think it's the captains who call the plays, so in the grown up world, they can call plays in DC.

I don't think you got the memo:

Originally Posted by KSig RC

(Try to keep this clean - argue your point, but disparaging comments that are off-topic will result in me punching your mom. You are forewarned. Be a freaking adult.)

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

So you want to make a subjective list of attributes (because you'll have to make arbitrary decisions on how to "combine" experience - all governors together? All congressmen? What about people who did both? What about 1940 versus 1840?) and then look for correlation with a temporal poll that serves as a singular and poor stand-in for performance?

Not to mention the sample-size issues, since we haven't exactly had approval ratings dating back to the XYZ Affair.

My point was that we can't "prove" that one set of experiential attributes is best - it would be impossible. Instead, I want to know what's important to us individually - what you think is best, since you can't "know" for certain.

KSig and Ksig kid....

Both of you brought up very good points which in that case...the broad word of 'experience' alone without a clear and agreeable definition of what that is, good or bad, qualitive vs quantitive and whose judgement it is of what weighs the most in making 'experience' counts, renders discussing this subject, moot.

[KSigkid]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

KSig and Ksig kid....

Both of you brought up very good points which in that case...the broad word of 'experience' alone without a clear and agreeable definition of what that is, good or bad, qualitive vs quantitive and whose judgement it is of what weighs the most in making 'experience' counts, renders discussing this subject, moot.

I don't see why it renders the discussion moot. It was a general question, asking for personal opinions on the subject; I don't think it was meant to start some debate on whether one type of experience matters more than another.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by KSigkid

I don't see why it renders the discussion moot. It was a general question, asking for personal opinions on the subject; I don't think it was meant to start some debate on whether one type of experience matters more than another.

" without a clear and agreeable definition "

I think it does, is saying that we need to have a few guidelines in place...and to a degree, I agree...what qualities are we looking for that would have rendered past POTUS'es more or less experienced than others?

I mean starting with both Clinton and Bush, there are various degrees of their experience we could debate over and their final out come upon leaving office.

Basically as you said, it would be difficult to even have a general discussion without more detail....

So...would you like to think of some ideas?

and actually looking back on it, the title more or less does ask the very question...what do we consider 'experience'?

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

Both of you brought up very good points which in that case...the broad word of 'experience' alone without a clear and agreeable definition of what that is, good or bad, qualitive vs quantitive and whose judgement it is of what weighs the most in making 'experience' counts, renders discussing this subject, moot.

There is a clear and agreeable definition of "experience" - it's the application that we disagree upon, and that application can certainly be discussed among reasonable people because it is entirely personal.

There is no "right or wrong" or "good or bad" in this sense. If that invalidates discussion, then it invalidates all discussion over anything that is not quantitative, and discussion over quantitative items should actually be moot (since, presumably, the data will speak for themselves).