Why is experience important?

[quakerboy]

No.. Really. Why is it important?

It strikes me that with all the different types of leadership and life experience, what weights experience in politics so heavily in our considerations?

[Mz Pip]

1. We've had some

pretty crappy Presidents who had lots of "experience". Nixon comes to mind.

Eisenhower didn't have legislative experience and he didn't wreck the country.

It's a talking point. McCain has been around for years so I guess he has experience - experience in voting wrong on all sorts of issues.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[grantcart]

2. Because when it comes to a really important issue like knowing

whether or not you should go to war or not you will make the right decision


oops never mind

[progdog]

4. Thanks for the laugh.

[TexasObserver]

3. Experience can be good. Obama has the kind that is good. Hillary doesn't.

If a candidate's experience is mainly her husband's experience, that doesn't count for much. If it's 6 years of nonstop selling out in the senate, that doesn't count for much either.

[DesertFlower]

5. no one has the experience to be a president,

unless he's been president. that's sound kind of zen, doesn't it?

seriously, that's why they hire advisors.

[cloudbase]

6. It's not as important as some make it to be.

A person can have twenty years of experience, or one year of experience twenty times.

I'll always remember back to my early days as an engineering officer in the merchant marine. I had a new second assistant engineer's license, and took a job on a San Clemente class tanker, a type I'd never sailed on even as a third engineer. The old chief engineer asked me if I'd sailed on this class of ship before, and when I told him I hadn't, he said

"That's good. At least you haven't picked up any bad habits."

I used that line a few times myself when I was a chief engineer and had a young pup come aboard.