Experience: "Only in America could John McCain campaign for leadership as a symbol of the past."

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: The Value of Newness
By David Ignatius
Sunday, February 24, 2008; Page B07

....The assumption that experience equates with good judgment is a hard one to shake. We tend naturally to defer to the person who has been there before, measured the adversary, learned how the game is played. Yet if ever there were a test of the efficacy of experience, it was the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq and its subsequent management of the postwar occupation. Bush's national security advisers were arguably the most experienced in modern times. But their performance was often very poor. That was partly, I think, because they overlaid the post-Sept. 11 challenges on a Cold War template about the uses of military power.

We are the last major nation to make the transition from Cold War thinking to something new. China and India are rising thanks to new leadership elites that understand how to succeed in global markets; Russia is about to elect a new president whose formative experiences came after the fall of the Soviet Union; Pakistan has just rebuffed its own durable Cold Warrior, Pervez Musharraf; even Fidel Castro, perhaps the iconic survivor of the Cold War, has decided to step down. Only in America could John McCain seriously campaign for leadership as a symbol of the past.

The utility of inexperience was explained to me last week by Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir Putin. He said that what's attractive for Russians about Dmitry Medvedev, who is certain to be elected as Putin's successor next Sunday, is that he embodies "a generation that was not shaped by the Soviet Cold War way of thinking." Putin himself is a transition figure, a man formed by his experiences as a KGB officer. But after him, explained Peskov, comes a generation of Russians who don't carry the same baggage. They have traveled the world, seen things their parents could never imagine, looked at problems with fresh eyes.

To prepare for the next stage of the U.S. presidential campaign, try this thought experiment: Imagine the television footage of Barack Obama's first trip abroad as president -- the crowds in the streets of Moscow, Cairo, Nairobi, Shanghai, Paris, Islamabad. Now try to imagine the first visit by President John McCain to those same cities. McCain is a great man, and he would be welcomed with respect, deference, perhaps a bit of fear. Obama would generate different and more intense reactions -- surprise and uncertainty, to be sure, but also idealism and hope. Now tell me which image would foster a stronger and safer America in the 21st century.

Obama has liabilities as a candidate, but his inexperience paradoxically may actually bolster one of his core arguments -- that he would give America a fresh start.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/22/AR2008022202175.html?nav=most_emailed

[Demeter]

1. McCain Harks Back to Those "Golden Years"

The years when other countries asked "how high" when the US told them to leap;

The years when the dollar was worth a dollar, not 30 cents;

The years when he made a killing robbing savings and loans (ooops! did I say that?) and BCCI was known as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals, Inc. and the CIA's lender or laundress of first resort.

Ah yes! Golden moments for the Golden Oldies (otherwise known as Bush's base).