Executive Experience. Who has it, who doesn't, and why does it matter?

Great Debates
1

I admit that, as a sprightly 28 year old, my true political awareness goes back only to somewhere in the middle of George H.W. Bush’s term as president, so please take this as a sincere question from someone who is working from a pretty narrow range of personal experience.

It seems that during this election I’m hearing/seeing the phrase ‘executive experience’ being tossed around by people who seem to feel that without a term as governor somewhere a person will be a failure as president.

My question is, what presidents, running mates, and opponents have had ‘executive experience’ and which ones have not? Can we truly look back at our political leaders of the past and say that based on their service to this country that electing someone without ‘executive experience’ is a bad idea?

2

Executive experience basically means you’ve been in charge. A mayor or a governor have been the head of a town or a state respectively and the thought is that this kind of experience is necessary to being a good chief executive (President.)

The argument is that basically Senators and Congressman aren’t ready to be President since they just serve on committees and panels and what have you whereas heavy lays the crown of those who actually ran something like a town or state.

George Bush had executive exerience as governor of Texas. Palin has it as Governor of Alaska. Biden Obama and MCCain haven’t had it. Being a governor or a mayor is supposed to be a lot more like being President than being a Senator or Congressman say proponents of the argument.

I’ll let you decide whether or not the argument has any merits.

3

My question is - where did this whole thing about “executive experience” meme come from in the first place? I don’t recall it ever being raised in a significant way in '04 against John Kerry or even back in 2000 when being governor of Texas for nearly two terms was the only significant political experience on Bush’s resume.

4

Just for yucks, I decided to see if this question can be answered in any kind of reasonable way. So I took this list at Wikipedia, which has a list of Presidents ranked from best to worst. The table in the cite lists 12 different surveys that have been done to sort out the best and worst presidents. I used the 1982 survey of historians, because I figured that A) it would be less partisan to discuss because these presidents are all dead, B) it would be more serious than a public poll, and C) because it’s no doubt biased to the left, so people can’t accuse me of cherry-picking conservatives.

And just so you know, I didn’t do this for other polls and pick the results that best suit the thesis - others are welcome to try.

What I did was list the top 10 and bottom 10 presidents, then see what their previous experience was to see if there was a correlation.

The top 10 Presidents:

  1. Abraham Lincoln
  2. Franklin D. Roosevelt
  3. George Washington
  4. Thomas Jefferson
  5. Theodore Roosevelt
  6. Woodrow Wilson
  7. Andrew Jackson
  8. Harry S. Truman
  9. John Adams
    10 Lyndon B. Johnson

The bottom 10 (starting from the worst):

  1. Warren G. Harding
  2. Ulysses S Grant
  3. Richard Nixon
  4. James Buchanan
  5. Andrew Johnson
  6. Franklin Pierce
  7. Calvin Coolidge
  8. Millary Filmore
  9. John Tyler
  10. Zachary Taylor

Previous experience of the top 10:

  1. Lawyer, member of the house. No executive experience
  2. State Senate, Governor of NY, Secretary of Navy
  3. Commanding General, U.S. military
  4. Governor of Virginia, minister to France
  5. Governor of New York, Asst Secretary of the Navy
  6. Governor of New Jersey
  7. Senator, Military governor of Florida, Supreme Court Justice
  8. Senator, Vice President
  9. Lawyer, Ambassador, Vice President
  10. Senator, Vice President

So, in the top 10 we have three former Vice Presidents, five governors, one general, and one who didn’t have any executive experience.

Previous Experience of the bottom 10:

  1. Senator
  2. General
  3. Senator, Vice President
  4. Member of the House, Secretary of State
  5. Governor of Tennessee, Vice President
  6. Senator
  7. Governor, Vice President
  8. Member of the House, Vice President
  9. Senator
  10. General

So, three Senators, one congressmen, two Vice Presidents, two governors, and two generals.

Looks to me like there’s a pretty good correlation between experience as a Governor and good performance in office. But it may not be the ‘experience’ that matters, but the fact that being a governor is close enough to being a president in duties that people can tell if you suck at it or not. The bad governors don’t make it to the Presidency.

But this is a very small sample set, and one thing is clear that executive experience is no guarantee of good performance, and lack of it is no guarantee of bad performance. But if you’re a betting man and want to know the best stat to look at to determine if someone will make a good president or not, being a former governor is a pretty good one.

If someone else wants to try the same analysis using other poll data, or for all the rest of the presidents, be my guest. It looks like it would make for some interesting debate.

5

“Executives”, be they governors, CEOs, project managers, football coaches, what have you, typically have to bear the burden of knowing that they will ultimately receive the lion’s share of blame (or credit) for not just the results of their decisions, but the decisions of their subordinates, as well as things that just happen on their watch. As an engineer, I’ve had the opportunity (or misfortune, maybe!) to manage the odd initiative or two, and being at the sharp end of the stick like that is very different from being a contributing team member. If you’re in charge, you get the angry phone calls when things go wrong, you have to mollify upset team members, you have to decide on a course of action when you know many people might not like your choice, etc. All while trying to successfully meet the goals that have been set. You also get an undeserved proportion of the accolades when things go well. How someone performs in that situation can be a good measure of their leadership ability.

Having said that, though, I think experience is only one of a number of traits that make a good leader. IMO, the best leaders don’t just have executive experience, they have a thorough knowledge of the relevant issues, the willingness to entertain all points of view before making a decision, and a strong vision of how they want to lead, as well as the ability to communicate that vision. Someone who is especially strong in one or more of these traits can overcome their lack of experience. It might be worth examining the presidents on Sam Stone’s list to see who had those traits and who did not.

6

Warren G Harding (1) was Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, Franklin Pierce (6) achieved the rank of Brigadier General in the army, and John Tyler (9) was VP (albeit for only a month). Also, I’d say Secretary of State (James Buchanan, 4) qualifies as “Executive Experience”, though I’d be open to debate as to why it doesn’t.

Also, this is a pretty good compilation of each president’s experience level in government, plotted against their average historical ranking.

7

There’s an awesome spreadsheet there that you can play around with. I downloaded it, and sorted the presidents by years experience as a governor.

It turns out that 20 presidents were governors - almost half. Of the bottom 25% of presidents, 8 had no experience as a governor, and only two did. In the next quarter, six were not governors, and five were.

Anyway, if you look at the graph visually, there might be a slight correlation - it certainly looks like the bad ones cluster towards the bottom as you decrease the number of years experience as governor. But the correlation looks pretty weak, and the sample size is small. Making it worse is the fact that the nature of the Presidency has changed dramatically over the centuries, so it’s not even a fair sample to use to evaluate a modern president.

In the end, I don’t think we can conclude much at all.

Quick Edit: If you have the spreadsheet, sort it on years in the Senate. A much stronger corrlation pops out - the more years you have the Senate, the more likely you are to suck as President. Good news for Obama, bad news for McCain. :slight_smile:

8

That doesn’t surprise me. If you are moving to the top very fast (like JFK and Barack Obama), then you’ll only spend a short time in the Senate, and a rapid achiever like that is more likely to be a good president.

(Note that also suggests Governor Palin being more likely to be a good president than Senator Biden is: she’s another ambitious person with a relatively fast rise to the top. It works on both sides of the party line.)