The Experience Fallacy

The experience fallacy
By PHIL VOGELS | 8/5/08 4:53 AM EST Text Size:

How experienced is Barack Obama? Does it matter?
Photo: AP

Critics of Barack Obama and supporters of John McCain have long harped on how critically important experience is for a potential president. The implication being, of course, that Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, does not possess the necessary experience and that McCain, the presumptive Republican standard-bearer, does.

But is this true? And does more experience make for a better president? The best way to answer these questions is to take a look at our past presidents and the number of years of political experience they had at the federal, state and local levels before becoming president.

To judge their quality, the chart below uses the 2000 Wall Street Journal poll of historians, which touted an ideologically balanced composition of liberal and conservative historians. Note that William Henry Harrison, James A. Garfield and George W. Bush are not ranked in this poll: Harrison and Garfield, because they were president for only weeks or months; Bush, because the poll was conducted before his presidency.

Beyond the obvious fact that having more experience does not make someone a better president, there are several things that should jump out from this list:

• Of those ranked in the top 14, only Thomas Jefferson and Harry Truman had more than 20 years of total experience.

• Six of the top 12 had 10 years or fewer of total experience.

• Having more federal experience also does not help: The top president with 20 or more years of federal experience is James Madison at No. 15. In fact, most of those in the top 12 had six years or less.

• It is important to have some federal experience; most of those with none fall in the mediocre-to-poor range.

• A larger amount of state experience, up to 10 years, is a good thing.

Click on the link for the chart (if someone knows how to, feel free to post the chart):

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12290.html

Here is a follow up story by the same author on the topic:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-vogels/a-critical-examination-of_b_118154.html

How history has judged them compared to experience...