Does experience actually help?

[damonm]

From a recent TIME article:

As Anders Ericsson writes in the introduction to the 901-page Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (2006), "The number of years of experience in a domain is a poor predictor of attained performance."

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1717927-2,00.html

And, from the same issue:

But if one moral of the Bay of Pigs is "Beware of charisma" or "Timeworn trumps callow," what do we make of the mistakes and miscalculations of deeply experienced leaders? Franklin D. Roosevelt's failed court-packing scheme, for example, or Woodrow Wilson's postwar foreign policy? For that matter, Kennedy would not have faced such a harsh early tutorial if the venerable warrior and statesman Dwight D. Eisenhower had not allowed the Cuba-invasion plan to be put in motion during the last of his eight years as President.

Wouldn't it be nice if time on the job and tickets punched translated neatly into superior performance? Then finding great Presidents would be a simple matter of weighing résumés. Take a Democrat like Bill Richardson — experienced in Congress, in the Cabinet, as a diplomat and governor — and have him run against Republican Tom Ridge, a former soldier, governor and Director of Homeland Security, with the winner chosen by a blue-ribbon commission of all-purpose elders. The Danforth-Mitchell commission, perhaps, or O'Connor-Albright. But it has never worked that way, which is why Lincoln's statue occupies a marble temple on the Mall in Washington, while his far more experienced rival William Seward has a little seat on a pedestal in New York City. "Experience never exists in isolation; it is always a factor that coexists with temperament, training, background, spiritual outlook and a host of other factors," says presidential historian Richard Norton Smith. "Character is your magic word, it seems to me — not just what they've done but how they've done it and what they've learned from doing it."

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1717926,00.html

Food for thought on the "experience" meme...

[baldguy]

1. Experience doing things wrong makes things worse.

[MADem]

2. Well, JFK wasn't married to a two-term president, either.

Had he been, it's unlikely he would have made that Bahia de los Cochinos misstep. He wouldn't have been so ready to succumb to rosy scenario groupthink. He would have walked back Ike's cat to the VERY BEGINNING, and told those anxious to roll it out to just wait until he got the bubble--and if the timing didn't cut it, there would have to be ANOTHER time, and another plan.

It's helpful to be able to ask someone who just happens to live with you for advice at four in the morning, and not worry about picking up the phone and waking someone up to get advice you trust.

Your larger point is valid--"experience" is not a be-all or an end-all, but it sure can count for something, and experience AND "contacts" (with said contacts having solid "experience" on the international stage) CAN make a difference.

[damonm]

5. The one problem with Clinton's experience...

is the chronic poor judgment she's exhibited despite it. Witness:
-The IWR vote (and the vote AGAINST the Levin amendment)
-The YES vote on the bankruptcy "reform" bill
-The NO vote on the amendment to ban cluster munitions in civilian areas & refugee camps

In ALL these cases, she had a two-term President living with her, and STILL made the wrong call.

And Obama, with all his "inexperience", and NOT having a two-term President in residence, nevertheless had the good judgment to be on the right side of each of these. Witness:
-Early opposition to the Iraq war when it was unpopular to be so
-The NO vote on the bankruptcy "reform" bill
-The YES vote on the amendment to ban cluster munitions in civilian areas & refugee camps

As my flight instructor always said: "practice alone doesn't make anything - practice of the RIGHT KIND makes perfect."

[MADem]

6. I disagree with your assessment of her IWR vote. Everyone second-guesses what

she was thinking and what she thought Monkey would do with the authority, but she was representing the state that took the hit during Nahn Wun Wun and the theme being shopped at the time was the false one that Eye Rack had sumptin' to do with it. It was a political vote, certainly, one that I disagreed with from the outset, but one I can understand.

It is plain she hoped that the moron wouldn't use it except as a big stick. That didn't happen. Had she voted against it, she would have been a one term senator, classified as "weak on defense," and the first-term Senator Giuliani (R-NY) would be cruising to a White House victory this November.

Love your cherry picking, though. I could go through the rest of your list, and then provide you with three to refute, but suffice it to say we'll never agree. I just don't think your candidate is very sharp, I find him uninspiring and a bit of a liar, frankly, a regular Chicago pol who got elected to the Senate by ripping off the accomplishments of others, and a bullshitter of a Petit Reagan quality. The fake preacher voice from a Hawaiian suburbanite is as "inauthentic" as it gets.

I do, however, think, that as bad as he is--and he is bad, as he hasn't had much "right practice" either with Rezko and pals, to say nothing of his shady dealings with General Dynamics folks and the "Clean Coal" (ha!) lobby--he wouldn't be worse than Popeye McCain. If he gets the nom I will hold my nose and vote for him, even though I think he'll have a hard time winning the general.

[LisaM]

3. It matters in my job!

Of course, it's pretty specialized, but we have had several people start with little or not experience who just take longer to get up to speed, whereas we just hired two people with lots of experience and they hit the ground running. It's made an enormous difference.

[earthlover]

4. I hope experience is not the big issue in November. If it is, Hillary loses....

How on Earth could she say other things are more important than experience when McCain plays his experience card? She couldn't say squat!

Obama's campaign has not been centered on experience, he has built in counters to the experience arguemtent. After all, he is beating Hillary right now, and she has the experience meme going for her, even though she really doesn't have that much experience.

So, if experience becomes an issue in Fall, Obama has more experience countering this meme....

[FrenchieCat]

7. That's how I always saw it.

[housewolf]

8. The truth is... no first-term president has any experience of being president

Not even being the wife of one for 8 years.

Each term brings it's own issues and challenges, and they will always be things a president has never dealt with before. That's why presidential advisors are so important, and why it's so important for us to take that into consideration before casting out ballots.