Why Experience Matters – No, Not Obama’s Experience…Palin’s.
David Brooks
Philosophical debates arise at the oddest times, and in the heat of this election season, one is now rising in Republican ranks. The narrow question is this: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be vice president? Most conservatives say yes, on the grounds that something that feels so good could not possibly be wrong. But a few commentators, like George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and Ross Douthat demur, suggesting in different ways that she is unready.
The issue starts with an evaluation of Palin, but does not end there. This argument also is over what qualities the country needs in a leader and what are the ultimate sources of wisdom.
There was a time when conservatives did not argue about this. Conservatism was once a frankly elitist movement. Conservatives stood against radical egalitarianism and the destruction of rigorous standards. They stood up for classical education, hard-earned knowledge, experience and prudence. Wisdom was acquired through immersion in the best that has been thought and said.
But, especially in America, there has always been a separate, populist, strain. For those in this school, book knowledge is suspect but practical knowledge is respected. The city is corrupting and the universities are kindergartens for overeducated fools.
The elitists favor sophistication, but the common-sense folk favor simplicity. The elitists favor deliberation, but the populists favor instinct.
This populist tendency produced the term-limits movement based on the belief that time in government destroys character but contact with grass-roots America gives one grounding in real life. And now it has produced Sarah Palin.
Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to do battle with the corrupt establishment. Her followers take pride in the way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the liberal elite. The feminists declare that she’s not a real woman because she doesn’t hew to their rigid categories. People who’ve never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany.
Look at the condescension and snobbery oozing from elite quarters, her backers say. Look at the endless string of vicious, one-sided attacks in the news media. This is what elites produce. This is why regular people need to take control.
And there’s a serious argument here. In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation’s founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and rooted people like Palin.
I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.
And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.
What is prudence? It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events — the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight.
How is prudence acquired? Through experience. The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.
Experienced leaders can certainly blunder if their minds have rigidified (see: Rumsfeld, Donald), but the records of leaders without long experience and prudence is not good. As George Will pointed out, the founders used the word “experience” 91 times in the Federalist Papers. Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared.
Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.
The idea that “the people” will take on and destroy “the establishment” is a utopian fantasy that corrupted the left before it corrupted the right. Surely the response to the current crisis of authority is not to throw away standards of experience and prudence, but to select leaders who have those qualities but not the smug condescension that has so marked the reaction to the Palin nomination in the first place.
September 25th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
What about Biden’s experience?
Fox News catches Joe Biden in another goof, this one in a major foreign-policy address:
“After seven years, in which our senior diplomatic personnel were not allowed to make a single contact with Iranians, the Bush administration realized the absurdity of its own policy and sent our leading diplomat to Iran,” he said. “The Assistant Secretary of State as he went to Tehran, sat down at the instruction of the President of the United States.” . . .
Trouble is, the event Biden described never actually happened.
In point of fact, the one “meeting” that has taken place was in Geneva, Switzerland, when Under Secretary of State William Burns sat in on a discussion between Iranian representatives and the other “P5+1″ political directors involved in nuclear talks. The meeting, while a first, was not a negotiation; Burns was there merely as an observer, and had no formal role or talks with the Iranians.
So, point by point: Burns was not sent to Tehran; he did not go to Tehran; and there was no such instruction from the President.
It is very sad to think that in less than six weeks, Joe Biden will return to the obscurity of the Senate–or ascend to the even greater obscurity of the vice presidency
September 26th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Biden made a slip up–fine. But at least the democratic vice presidential candidate doesn’t have a video surfacing of her being blessed by three priests so witchcraft will not harm her. I had to watch it twice. You’re telling me someone who believes in witchcraft is going to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? Scary thought.
October 7th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Just checking—Sarah Palin’s level of experience is important, but Barack Obama’s is not? Though it may be a little difficult to find comparisons written without a bias, the facts are still easily verified: Palin has a great deal more executive and legislative experience than does Barack Obama—but wait, he has a much better way with words, not to mention that messianic glow… Let’s not forget that the one with the least experience is the one running for president.
October 7th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
True she might have more executive experience…But she hasn’t been to more than three countrie–she admitted to not knowing what a VP does on a daily basis. It’s scary. The fact that people said she tied in the debate because she manage to not have a stroke during the debate says somehting about her altogether. How you can even argue that she is an intelligent person, ready for the job, or did well in the debate is more than disturbing.
October 8th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Gabriel,
First of all, the point of this article was to argue for the value of experience as a qualitative factor in determining our leadership. I simply turned the argument on itself to show that the conclusions being drawn from it had to be false (e.g. if we said that experience is the MOST important quality [just for argument's sake] than we would be required to say that Obama is not qualified to be a leader, due to having the least amount of experience). If the author wanted to make a case against Sarah Palin, that wasn’t at the same time even more against Barack Obama, he should not have used the argument of executive and legislative experience. Also, regardless of what I may, or may not, think of Palin, I did not make any assertions regarding her intelligence, readiness, etc. —all I said was that she, as a vice presidential nominee, has more experience doing the job (executive and legislative experience) than the presidential nominee, Barack Obama.
As for the comment about Palin “admitting” to not knowing what the vice president’s does on a daily basis, it is long past time that the American public should have learned the way the mass-media abuses sound bytes, and loves to show things out of context (and I mean that in regards to any side of the political spectrum—everyone is unfairly subjected to it). I will admit that Palin does not have the same effusive way with words, or the acquired skill of dealing with aggressive interviewers. I will also admit, that in simple terms of effectiveness in a debate, she lost sorely—Biden performed much better. However, I think that we would all be well served to rent “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” to witness not only the difficulties faced by newcomers to the bright beam of the political spotlight, but also the value that can be brought by someone who has not yet been corrupted by it—that, I believe, is a quality in Palin’s favour. Feel free to disagree with me, it’s just an opinion.
October 29th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
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