Experience?!

Kev_ps3

What do people mean when they say Obama doesnt have experience? I mean, everyone running for president doesnt have experience (besides presidents running for a 2nd term of course). How can you have experience at a job you've never done before!
How does John McCain/Clinton have any more experience than Obama? They have all been involved in politics for a good period of time, yet MaCain/Clinton have lots more experience than Obama? I dont get it...
Plus, I think its rich the Republicans talking about experience and using it as a weapon against Obama. They would run a monkey if it got them more power.

Stark

Hilary and Obama are both junior senators. Obama actually has more experience in this regard, however Hilary has been playing the "four years of foreign policy as pillow talk" angle to her advantage and Obama has been doing himself no favours by admitting to inexperience.

McCain is highly experienced. He's a senior senator and has been in politics since the 80s and has about 20+ years of military service preceding that.

snow scorpion

Kev_ps3 wrote: »

What do people mean when they say Obama doesnt have experience? I mean, everyone running for president doesnt have experience (besides presidents running for a 2nd term of course). How can you have experience at a job you've never done before!

They mean he has no executive experience. "Executive experience" is just a fancy way of saying "managerial skills". The President is basically a manager. He (or God forbid she ) spends his day doing the things that managers do: reading and evaluating reports, memos, etc., attending meetings to get an accurate understanding of the big picture, having discussions with experts on how to solve problems, and delegating responsibility to others to apply those solutions.

Obama has no experience doing this. Hillary has some (the Arkansas Dept. of Education in the 1980s, her health care plan in the 1990s, and running her campaign for the Presidency) and she has never gotten good results.

The same criticism applies to McCain. All three of them are senators and senators simply don't do managerial work. Senators are deal-makers and fighters for their piece of the pie. A senator's set of job skills have very little overlap with a manager's set of job skills. Hence, the criticism.

Manic Moran

The same criticism applies to McCain

You've got to be kidding. There is no executive power on God's green (or blue, in this case!) Earth the same as a senior Naval officer, and other military command assignments are just only slightly less so. The man trained for twenty years not just to fly airplanes and blow things up, but to command, manage, and lead men. To make decisions under stress (slightly more than most politicians have to deal with) to achieve certain defined goals, and to manage the careers of those under him. He has authority of judge and jury over subordinates (let's find a civilian who's not a judge with the power to confine someone for a month on bread and water), writes personnel evaluations, mentors juniors, and is directly responsible for absolutely everything which goes on beneath him, from the number of DUIs his men get through whether the wives and children are satisfied with the condition of the squadron swimming pool. I can think of nothing offhand which is done by any civilian executives to include State Governors which is not expected to be done to some extent by field-grade officers. Except run for office.

On the larger scale, the US electorate tend to like in order of preference: State Governors, military flag officers, Senators, and Everyone Else. In this case, it's a rare example of no Governors being available at this point. They are effectively Presidents of small countries, with their own Judicial, Legislative and Executive branches, so it's a good dry run for the Presidency. Military types have their own proven experience, but Senators are pretty much decision makers without direct responsibility for anything of note.

Between Obama and Hillary, the best you can do is compare Senate experience to see who has been around the block longer, and knows how things work. Getting things done requires personal relationships which are built up over time, as is knowledge of the infrastructure and process. Again, Hillary has a little bit more than Obama. McCain's been doing it for two decades. (Plus his military experience).

NTM

snow scorpion

Manic Moran wrote: »

You've got to be kidding. There is no executive power on God's green (or blue, in this case!) Earth the same as a senior Naval officer, and other military command assignments are just only slightly less so. The man trained for twenty years not just to fly airplanes and blow things up, but to command, manage, and lead men. To make decisions under stress (slightly more than most politicians have to deal with) to achieve certain defined goals, and to manage the careers of those under him. He has authority of judge and jury over subordinates (let's find a civilian who's not a judge with the power to confine someone for a month on bread and water), writes personnel evaluations, mentors juniors, and is directly responsible for absolutely everything which goes on beneath him, from the number of DUIs his men get through whether the wives and children are satisfied with the condition of the squadron swimming pool. I can think of nothing offhand which is done by any civilian executives to include State Governors which is not expected to be done to some extent by field-grade officers. Except run for office.

You're right.

I was thinking about McCain's Senate career only.

I stand corrected.

Dazrd

The following is from the march 8th edition of the Daily telegraph and reveals David Trimbles views on Hillary's claim to have brought peace to the north.

" Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets" during elections. "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player."

She should just stick to her senate records methinks and stop claiming acheivments she was peripheral to, by making silly claims like this

"I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland," she told CNN on Wednesday. But negotiators from the parties that helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 told The Daily Telegraph that her role was peripheral and that she played no part in the gruelling political talks over the years"

which makes her sound delusional or at the vary least undermines her husbands legacy by seeming to confirm what many always thought she was the real power behind the throne.

snow scorpion

Hillary built her campaign around the idea that her experience proved she was "ready to lead on day one."

:rolleyes:

Just one little problem on the road to day one:

...chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all.

Source: Time magazine

Her hand-picked "Chief Strategist" didn't even know basic high school civics.

And apparently, not a single member of her entire advisory team didn't know basic high school civics.

And for that matter, apparently Hillary herself didn't know basic high school civics!

"Ready to lead on day one" my butt.