Are We Moving Past Experience As a Criteria in Our Elections? (2024 and future elections)

Politics & Elections
1

Inspired by our many current discussions on Harris’ qualifications for 2024, and the qualifications of any VP picks, I want to actually dig down on the subject in the title.

First, the orange elephant in the room: Trump. I think it’s safe to say that for MAGA/Republican candidates, it’s been a given that qualifications were not a front and center requirement since at least 2016. The MAGA wave elected concurrent and post-Trump, at least in terms of primaries seems to support this as well.

But for Democrats, or those that lean that way, it seems to be heading in that direction as well. We’ve moved far past any pretense (and for good reason to be clear!) of strong bipartisanship on anything but the most immediately critical issues. So ISTM the view that getting the Win (House, Senate, President, and local elections) is more important than skills in office.

Taking a step back to a prior election, when it was Obama v. McCain, I was concerned with Obama as a candidate, because I felt that McCain had better experience on the national and global scale. I still voted for Obama, because (1) he was a better match on almost all of my priorities (2) I felt it was needed for the nation to be able to see that we could succeed with a “non-traditional” race or gender as a president and (3) he had IMHO far more Charisma, in that he could lead and not just govern.

Obama proved me right on all three points, and proved to be skilled in governing as well, although I had plenty of disagreements with him on various issues. Which is to be expected, he’s wasn’t just my President, he was everybody’s president.

But (again IMHO) increasingly the “safe” choices for political candidates that don’t inspire emotion don’t seem able to easily compete with candidates supported by a semi-rabid base, or one solely driven on wedge issues. With razor thin margins in many elections, if a candidate is going to win, they need to inspire the vote, rather than campaigning on accomplishments if said accomplishment isn’t one of those specific wedge-issues.

Personally, I think it’s best (duh) to have a grand slam, someone who can inspire, govern skillfully, and at least try to listen to the (non-crazy) issues of the other side. I hope Harris can do so, and certainly is infinitely more able to do so than Trump, but the political future of the nation doesn’t end in 2024.

I currently see zero evidence that the MAGA party is going to turn back to non-culture war based issues of the former Republican party, and if that’s the case, I see that the Democrats will have to at least consider that appeal will be a key factor going forward. In a sub-ideal but practical world, we can have a candidate who is at least willing to listen to carefully evaluated experts, and who can actually READ the briefings supplied to them so they can make informed decisions even if it isn’t based on their personal experience.

No, I don’t want to be in a world where we have another “My Opinions are more valid than your Facts” President, even if they come from the party I largely support, but again for the foreseeable future (especially with the stacking of the SCOTUS and never ending efforts for mostly Republican states to subvert and dilute the will of their voters) it’s going to be all about winning.

Your opinions and better options are greatly appreciated.

2

When was it ever about experience? Or issues?

For the voting public it’s about who’s taller, better looking or makes the best zingers during our largely farcical debates. I learned this in second grade when the popular kid became class president rather than the one who talked about actually doing things. Ever since, I’ve always wished we could vote on issues or policy slates rather than individual people. Yes, I realize there are problems with that too, but it’s hard to see how things could be much worse. I’m deeply uncomfortable with being in favor of a particular person.

Experience doesn’t matter to voters. Case in point: Trump’s chances apparently getting better right after the assassination attempt. That didn’t change any of his policies or those of the Republican party. It only changed peoples’ sensibilities, and somehow made them think he was more electable for a moment. Likewise, the seeming reversal with Harris now being the Dem nominee - again, nothing has really changed except the individual in the spotlight. People are largely reacting to drama, same as they do to reality shows.

Talk all you like about leadership, but the fact is we elect a group of people whose policy goals and beliefs are largely known (or at least put forth). I think that’s what we really vote for (Edit: What I think we SHOULD vote for). Not to say the person at the top is inconsequential, but I think their influence is sometimes overblown. Nobody is truly ready to be president until they get the job, and they have many people around them to help. Can a bad president do harm? Sure, but I think that’s true regardless of their experience level. An experienced, knowledgeable president with a terrible agenda can do a lot of harm. Not that the voters are thinking about that on the whole.

3

I’ve generally felt that having been either a Governor or a Senator was the appropriate prerequisite. In the one case, you get the executive experience, in the other experience with the Federal government.

But now people are talking up Pete Buttigieg, and I wonder…is being Secretary of Transportation really less important a job than Senator? Certainly he got a much closer look at how the White House works than a Senator would.

4

Part of what I was looking at. Again, we’ve discussed in the various Harris and VP threads, an ongoing emphasis on experience, or time in role, or an appropriately prerequisite as @Thing.Fish mentions. But that’s why I started the thread. We talk about it, but do we really voted based on it? IMHO, not so much, or at least, not so much as I’d like, and I included myself and my reasoning about WHY in regards to my votes for Obama.

It was bothering me about how MUCH we were talking about it in the various threads I mentioned, when we rarely adhere to it, and that’s as Left-leaning voters. The RWNJ have long abandoned it.

I’m reminded of the old Sci-Fi story: 2066 Election Day.

We’re never going to have someone be qualified enough for the stresses and with sufficient knowledge to be a perfect president. I think the best we can do is try to avoid the absolutely WRONG presidents.

5

I always lean towards governors because of the chief executive skills gained. And I like to see governors winning in politically contested states. As we can see, Dems have a couple of those on the bench right now, a deep lineup set up for the long haul.

But it’s not a hard and fast rule with me.

6

Some of our most successful Presidents have had limited experience:

  • Kennedy was a one-term Senator
  • Eisenhower had never held political office
  • Obama had a few years in the Illinois State legislature and a partial Senate term

On the other hand

  • Lyndon Johnson had decades as the most important Senator
  • George HW Bush had been in Congress, head of the CIA, and VP
7

Do you think this is new?

John F. Kennedy was considered a lightweight compared to policy wonk Richard Nixon.

Ronald Reagan had spoken out politically but had no governmental experience when he ran for governor of California against political veteran and incumbent Pat Brown.

Barack Obama made a great speech at the 2004 Democratic convention and suddenly farmers in southern Illinois voted Democratic.

8

Many recent Presidents did not have a lot of experience. JFK was slammed for that, but in fact Nixon had even less since he was out of the loop during his eight years as Veep. Governors Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II had no foreign relations experience and it showed. Then Senator Obama was as given above not terribly experienced. Ford had tons of experience and Bush I had more high level jobs that anyone. Do we rate them high for that?

Do the Republicans abandon the standard processes of boosting Governors and Senators after Trump? Doubtful. No non-political outsider seem poised to move into the vacuum when, not if, Trump loses. People will yell about the inexperience of people like Vance, and he will be as much out of Trump’s loop as Nixon was of Eisenhower’s, but he did go through the process of winning a Senate seat in a major state.

Where are the exceptions coming from?

9

Are we moving past experience? To Republicans, it depends.

In 2016, experience was a handicap. The ideal candidate was an outsider, someone who had never been in government before, who wasn’t part of the deep state.

As of a couple days ago, experience is everything. We dare not entrust the presidency to a neophyte. She’s only 59 years old, still wet behind the ears.

10

George HW Bush is probably the most qualified candidate for president to ever run in terms of his CV. Two term vice president, CIA director, UN ambassador. Even just being the ambassador to China at the time the two nations were forging diplomatic relations was pretty significant. Plus he was a WW2 hero. Notably what is not very much spoken about is his unremarkable brief tenure as a congressman of only four years which was his only elected office outside of the White House.

He lost re-election to the governor of Arkansas.

In that case it didn’t appear experience was a criteria back then. It was vision and a president who appeared out of touch. However that brings about the question of what constitutes satisfactory experience. Bill Clinton spent a combined total of 13 years as governor of Arkansas across two different periods before becoming president at the age of 46. He was a very young governor, a very young former governor after being defeated in 1980, a still quite young governor when he reclaimed the office, and then one of the youngest presidents elected. Did that adequately make him prepared for the presidency because he had more executive experience than Bush in terms of being able to say he had the final say on matters that came to his desk? He never argued so because it sounds absurd but his famous debate answer about how being governor means he knows everyone in his state and understood the implications on the kitchen table when the economy is not lifting people up and jobs are going down came across genuine and authentic which helped him win.

For that reason I think the unwritten rule that governors will always have it much easier to ascend to the presidency than senators is going to stay true. Having experience in executive experience in the governor’s mansion will more often than not be more impressive than someone whose best work is a speech to a half empty chamber in the Capitol. JFK and Obama were almost fifty years apart from going from the senate to the White House. Joe Biden spent 36 years in the senate but it took him taking the VP job to become in the frame to become president. Kamala Harris’s VP shortlist appears governors only.

The no experience mantle I think is dead on the democratic side because of Trump. Any lingering thought that an Oprah could just waltz into the job on the power of celebrity and bring about utopia is over. They want qualifications. On the republican side in the future I don’t think there will be another Trump 2.0 in terms of going from no experience to president either but there will be plenty of prototypes becoming governors (Huckerbee Sanders, DeSantis) and congressmembers who will be elected to those offices and become nominees on Trumpism.

11

I’m not sure why you’re saying this now. Harris has had four years as Vice President. There are only two Democrats who have more relevant experience than her, and Biden is the younger of the two.

As for the senator vs. governor question, ideally, I’d like a President to have both federal experience and executive experience (even if one of those two is small-time, the likes of mayor or the House), but of the two, I think that federal is more important.

12

You mean “elected office”, right? He was up to his eyeballs in politics before he even got his first star.

13

I’ll go with one more.

Five terms in the House
Ten years in the Senate
Served under two Presidents
Ambassador to Russia, and later to Great Britain
Secretary of State

That was James Buchanan, ranked by scholars as the worst President in U.S. history, at least before Donald Trump.