Obama claims to be like Lincoln and JFK, but both were seasoned politicians, not novices like Obama

[candice]

Being President of the United States is the most difficult job in the world. Qualifications should be utmost in everyone's mind. Why someone would decide to run with as little experience as Obama is troubling. Doesn't he understand the magnitude of the job? Not to say he wouldn't be the most extraordinary President ever, but we the People would need to have seen him stick it out through at least one Senate term. This is not a popularity contest, and hope is NOT enough. The president who takes over now is assuming the role in the most difficult of times. Obama said he'd hire the expertise, but we have just come out of having an unqualified (but with more direct governing experience than Obama) person in the world's most difficult job, who was going to outsource his duties. Can Obama master the job of being a senator?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wilentz26jan26,0,5561702.story




"Few will disagree that it is very rare for a candidate with as little experience in politics and government as Obama to capture the imagination of so many influential Americans. One way for a candidate like this to minimize his lack of experience is to pluck from the past the names of great presidents who also, supposedly, lacked experience. Early in the campaign, Obama's backers likened him to the supposed neophyte John F. Kennedy. More recently, some have pointed out (as did New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, among others) that Abraham Lincoln served only one "undistinguished" term in the House before he was elected president in 1860.

These comparisons distort the past beyond recognition. By the time he ran for president, JFK had served three terms in the House and twice won election to the Senate, where he was an active member of the Foreign Relations Committee. In total, he had held elective office in Washington for 14 years. Before that, he was, of course, a decorated veteran of World War II, having fought with valor in the South Pacific. Kennedy, the son of a U.S. ambassador to Britain, had closely studied foreign affairs, which led to his first book, "Why England Slept," as well as to a postwar stint in journalism.

This record is not comparable to Obama's eight years in the Illinois Legislature, his work as a community organizer and his single election to the Senate in 2004 -- an election he won against a late entrant, right-wing Republican Alan Keyes, in a state where the GOP was in severe disarray.

The Lincoln comparison is equally tortured. Yes, Lincoln spent only two years in the House after winning election in 1846. Yet his deep involvement in state and national politics began in 1832, the same year he was elected a captain in the Illinois militia -- and 28 years before he ran for president. He then served as leader of the Illinois Whig Party and served his far-from-undistinguished term in Congress courageously leading opposition to the Mexican War.

After returning home, he became one of the leading railroad lawyers in the country, emerged as an outspoken antislavery leader of Illinois' Republican Party -- and then, in 1858, ran unsuccessfully for the Senate and engaged with Stephen A. Douglas in the nation's most important debates over slavery before the Civil War. It behooves the champions of any candidate to think carefully when citing similarities to Lincoln's record. In this case, the comparison is absurd. "