Ex-Clinton official pans Bill's experience argument

Bill Clinton is attacking Obama's experience?

Chicago Tribune
By John Schmidt
December 19, 2007


Bill Clinton on the "Charlie Rose Show" last week compared Barack Obama's experience unfavorably to his own before he was president. That brought back vivid memories of conversations with him in the fall of 1991 when he came to Chicago looking for support. I ended up agreeing to be co-chairman of Clinton's Illinois finance effort. But it was certainly not his experience that persuaded me.

He had spent 11 years as governor of Arkansas. He was, he said on "Charlie Rose," "the senior U.S. governor." Well, yes, but of a state with a total population less than Chicago's. And Arkansas is not only small but poor, with an overwhelmingly rural economy. Clinton had no experience at all in the national government.

His most striking limitation was the fact that his entire adult experience outside government consisted of three years teaching at University of Arkansas Law School, during which he ran unsuccessfully for Congress. I sat there thinking: Can someone with such limited experience be a successful president? I decided the answer was yes because of his obvious intelligence and because of the way he had put that intelligence to work in thinking about critical issues facing the country. He was remarkably free of Democratic orthodoxy.

...He did not have Barack Obama's experience in the government of a large and diverse state like Illinois, or in the national government as a U.S. Senator, or any of Obama's experiences outside government. But he sounded a lot more like Barack than like Hillary today. Of course, Clinton also had what he conceded to Charlie Rose are Obama's "enormous political skills."...

John Schmidt, a partner at Mayer Brown LLP in Chicago, served as associate attorney general in the Clinton administration. He is a co-chair of Lawyers for Obama.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped1219clintondec19,0,4787815.story

I think he is biased. And look at what he is attempting to argue: that 11 years in government office gives him less experience than the one year Obama had!

Right. I have a bridge to sll you.

slightly more than one year in the Federal government, but he does have state experience.

From Wikipedia:

Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996 from the state's 13th District in the south-side Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park.<31> In 2000, he made an unsuccessful Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush.<32> He was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998 and 2002, officially resigning in November 2004 following his election to the U.S. Senate.