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Executive Experience Is A Joke (Guest Voice)

September 6th, 2008
By CAGLE CARTOONS

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Is executive experience a serious issue in the campaign or is something politicians in both parties pull out when it’s in their best interest to try and use it against an opponent? What does recent political history show? Columnist Bill Steigerwald in this Guest Voice takes a look at it. Guest Voice columns do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Moderate Voice or its writers.

Executive Experience Is A Joke

by Bill Steigerwald

Good thing George Stephanopoulos wasn’t a Sunday morning TV pundit in 1912.

That was the year an egghead named Woodrow Wilson won the Democrats’ nomination for president — on the 46th ballot — and chose Thomas Marshall as his vice president.

Based on his agitated reaction on his Aug. 31 show to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin being picked as John McCain’s VP, Stephanopoulos would have had a stroke over the combined executive inexperience of the Wilson-Marshall tandem.

And what qualified Wilson to become president of a far simpler, humbler America? Besides writing books pushing Big Government Progressivism and running Princeton University for eight years, that is? How about two years, one month and two weeks as governor of New Jersey?

Period.

Wilson’s veep actually had more executive experience than Wilson. Tom Marshall had been governor of Indiana for more than three years, having been elected in 1908 as a dark-horse compromise candidate.

And what else had qualified Marshall to be placed a mere heartbeat or stroke away from the presidency for eight years? Nothing –unless you count being “a popular speaker” and “competent small-town lawyer” in Columbia City, Ind. (current pop. 7,000).Stephanopoulos is a devout Democrat, so he wouldn’t have noticed Wilson’s and Marshall’s shallow leadership credentials — which still surpass Barack Obama’s and are almost the equal of Gov. Palin’s career executive experience.

But let’s get real. This whole debate over experience is foolish. Wilson did turn out to be one of our worst presidents ever, in terms of the long-term damage he did to America and the Western Europe. But no rookie president or rookie VP – no matter how supposedly experienced they are — is really ever ready to do his job.

And as for Gov. Palin, she’s Maggie Thatcher compared to many recent No. 2 choices — most of whom have become political trivia questions.

Even staunch conservatives can’t remember Bill Miller, Barry Goldwater’s running mate in 1964 and a former seven-term congressman from near Buffalo.

George McGovern’s initial pick in ’72 was Tom Eagleton, a first-term U.S. senator and ex-lieutenant governor of Missouri. Though relatively qualified, he had to resign after it was learned he had had mental problems. He was replaced by Peace Corps founding director Sargent Shriver, who had high administrative skills and lots of Kennedy in-laws but had never been elected to anything.

And Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, the veteran Texas pol George Dukakis chose in 1988? He’s remembered for ridiculing Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana, who eventually lived up to his questionable experience by setting the modern standard for bumbling VPs while serving George H.W. Bush.

Speaking of lots of inexperience, Geraldine Ferraro, Walter Mondale’s Hail Mary in 1984, was only a third-term congresswoman of Queens. And let’s not forget John Kerry’s North Carolina sidekick, John Edwards. Rich and almost as pretty as Palin, he was a trial-lawyer-turned-first-term-U.S.-senator.

With Obama and his thin resume atop their ticket, Democrats are throwing rocks at Palin from a glass house. But Republicans look as silly by insisting that Palin is “ready to lead on Day 1” if McCain falls over dead at Thanksgiving.

Republicans should speak the truth — that while Palin is smart, competent and conservative, she obviously doesn’t know diddly about foreign policy today.

But, GOP bosses should say, she’s cramming like crazy and we’re praying that President McCain lives at least four more years so she can learn on the job — just as tough guys like Coolidge, Truman, Nixon, LBJ and Bush I did.

Bill Steigerwald is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. ©Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc.



This entry was posted on Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Democratic Party, John McCain, Foreign Policy, Newsweek Blogitics, Sarah Palin, Guest Contributor, Barack Obama, 2008 Elections, Foreign Affairs, Democrats, Republicans, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 7 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    No one is ever ready for the job, perhaps. But who would you rather have taking over the controls of an jetliner if the pilot suddenly died, a person who had flown a small aircraft, or they guy who worked on the brakes?
    • ^
    • v
    Historians have ranked Woodrow Wilson as one of the better presidents, not one of the worst.

    And our most experienced VPs, Dick Cheney, is now reviled by most Americans and has broken both domestic and international laws and ignored our Constitution, in order to further the neoconservative's agenda.
    • ^
    • v
    Woodrow Wilson one of the best?

    ROFLMAO

    The League of Nations was such a sucess wasn't it? And Wilson really supported Ho Chi Minh when he wanted to make his country into a free and independent state, right? Just think, if Wilson had done that the whole Vietnam War might have been avoided.

    Anyhow if you want to look at a different type of ranking, and surely controversial, read this article in its entirety:

    http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/silveira4...

    It pretty much sums up my ranking system althought I'd move Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan up a notch to the middle tier, and include George W. Bush with Lincoln and FDR at the bottom of the list.
    • ^
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    The League of Nations was not a success because Republicans --- who wanted to return to the head-in-the sand isolationist foreign policy of the pre-WWI era blocked our entry into it. The organization was too weak to survive without US participation, but it was the precursor of the UN. The point of the league was to prevent another world war.

    After WWII, US isolationist policy was seen as a grave error, so we helped to establish the UN, in hopes of avoiding WWIII.
    • ^
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    If you believe in neoconservativism and voted for Bush/Cheney-- you should thank Wilson- who believed the spread of democracy and prosperity was vital to the prevention of another world war. He also opposed the harsh reparations levied on Germany and Austria after WWI--- reparations which sowed the seeds for the rise of national socialism- or naziism.
    • ^
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    This shows you how currently desperate the worst elements of society are because they cannot attack and reduce the case for Palin as VP in any logical sensible, decent manner.

    They're desperate, as well as scummy, and they deserve to witness backfire among better people and among the neutral in the vast electorate against their scummy "campaign."

    Leave it to them to construct McCain-Palin, if they continue, as America's toilet paper.
    • ^
    • v
    Read this for your daughters!

    Senator Clinton and Governor Palin are proof that women can and do diverge on important issues.

    Even on the question of whether women should vote!

    Most people are totally in the dark about HOW the suffragettes won votes for women, and what life was REALLY like for women before they did.

    Suffragettes were opposed by many women who were what was known as 'anti.'

    The most influential 'anti' lived in the White House. First Lady Edith Wilson was a wealthy Washington widow who married President Wilson in 1915.

    Her role in Wilson's decision to jail and torture Alice Paul and hundreds of other suffragettes will never be fully known, but she was outraged that these women picketed her husband's White House.

    I'd like to share a women's history learning opportunity...

    "The Privilege of Voting" is a new free e-mail series that follows eight great women from 1912 - 1920 to reveal ALL that happened to set the stage for women to win the vote in England and America.

    It's a real-life soap opera! And it's ALL true!

    Powerful suffragettes Alice Paul and Emmeline Pankhurst are featured, along with TWO gorgeous presidential mistresses, First Lady Edith Wilson, Edith Wharton, Isadora Duncan and Alice Roosevelt.

    There are tons of heartache on the rocky road to the ballot box, but in the end, women WIN!

    Thanks to the suffragettes, women have voices and choices!

    Exciting, sequential episodes are great to read on coffeebreaks, or anytime.

    Subscribe free at

    www.CoffeebreakReaders.com/subscribe.html
 
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