I’ve long thought it was important, but I just took a minute to review the eleven Presidents of my lifetime and realized it actually isn’t.
Five of them had been around Washington in various capacities, including Vice-President, for decades: LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Bush I and Biden. Not all these Presidencies were unmitigated failures; two of them actually won re-election by landslides. LBJ and Biden both narrowly got important progressive legislation through Congress. It’s reasonable to think their long experience in Congress helped them do that (actually, if you consider the ACA, Biden arguably did it twice). But the bottom line is clear: not one of them left the Presidency on their own terms. So clearly there is no evidence that having a lot of experience in Washington guarantees being able to succeed there.
Two of them were big State Governors, Reagan and Bush II. They both served two terms and were popular for most of them.
Three had relatively little experience, either being Governors of small States or serving only a few years in Congress: Carter, Clinton, and Obama. Two of those were very successful.
One was a reality show host and snake oil salesman. That did not go well.
So my conclusion is that some experience is good, but a whole lot isn’t necessary. Governors seem to be a somewhat better bet than Congressfolk, especially if they have served a long time.
I’ve seen it argued that being a governor gives the candidate a range of experiences which is closer to the actual job responsibilities for a president (i.e., being an executive, overseeing a range of departments under them) than does serving in Congress. On the other hand, someone who’s been in Congress (esp. the Senate) for several terms likely has strong knowledge of how the Federal government works.
It really has to be looked at carefully, though, because every case is unique. Bernie Sanders, for instance, had been in Congress over 25 years when he ran for President, but wasn’t actually influencing policy in any meaningful way. This year, we have Andy Beshear, who has been elected governor of fucking Kentucky three times while embracing trans rights and the rest of the national Democratic agenda (although he continues to stan for Netanyahu). On the one hand, that’s amazing. On the other, he hasn’t actually displayed any particular leadership skills, as all he’s ever been in a position to do is veto the craziest stuff to come out of the legislature. Which is crucially important, but you or I could do it if we had the stamp.
I’ve said this in other threads, but while the electorate claims it wants experience in the role (or use that demand as an excuse at least) but many (most?) of the voters don’t seem to care. A trend that is accelerating if anything in the last decade or so. Many people are voting against something, or for promises that are hard/impossible to deliver, tactics that are very popular with the (R)/MAGA team especially.
And an adjacent issue is that Democrats do generally pay more than lip-service to the need for “experience”, but that seems to be doing them a disfavor in some cases among the younger and/or more progressive elements of the party: who absolutely DON’T want someone who will generally push incremental change.
It seems intuitive that serving a long time in the Senate would be good preparation for the Presidency. But the list of Presidents in all of US history who have served more than one full term in the Senate is: LBJ, Joe Biden. And LBJ served just exactly two terms.
It’s clearly not true, at least historically, that Democrats have cared more about experience. Prior to Trump, no Republican candidate in living memory had as little experience as Carter, Clinton, or Obama.
You’re right, I should have specified “more recent history” - such as when Hilary and Obama were competing for the nomination.
I will mention that it seems obvious to ME because Bill Clinton was the first president I was eligible to vote for - and I did. And as suggested upthread, I do consider Governors to be a more appropriate form of experience than a member of the legislature, though not all agree. And that’s leaving out a wedge issue for me, in that unlike all the candidates I had seen before pre-voting age, that he seemed young enough to appreciate some of the concerns of us young voters unlike the fossils (to my young eyes) we were otherwise used to seeing.
But again, that’s on me for applying my generational viewpoint. Mea culpa.
(1) How important is experience in a presidential candidate—that is, what do voters care about? what helps a person get elected? This is what the thread title asks. and
(2) How important is experience in a president—that is, how important is it in helping that person be successful in the job once they’re in office? This is what the body of the OP seems to focus on.
Ninja’ed by @Thudlow_Boink. And IMO it’s not just a nitpick about the OP’s phrasing; it’s a core part of what we’re really trying to understand.
The obvious problem, as we see today, is that the skills necessary to win an election are largely unrelated to the skills necessary to properly govern the country. In fact arguably they’re completely antithetical to one another. Which leads directly into a crisis of governance.
As various cynical pundits have said for over a century in various ways, someday the American public is going to get the government it wants … good and hard. We did that and now have the t-shirts.
Coming back from that will be interesting. How to capture the radicalized vote? How to capture the cynicalized vote? How to capture the “Just make the chaos stop!” vote? How to be sincere while telling the three groups what will motivate them to vote for you? How to delivery what they want on a timeline that will move their personal life circumstances needle within the 2 years before the next election?
Idjit trump has demonstrated that in less than two years you can deliver a lot of vandalism to the government and to the public. Rebuilding is much slower than vandalizing, and building anew is much slower yet. Meanwhile folks are somehow expecting a similar speed of (re-) building as they’ve just witnessed of vandalizing.
(1) Experience hurts, at least in November. The more experience the candidate has, the more opposition research has to work with. Plus, voters can project their desires into a fresh face.
(2) Experience helps. Because of the small sample size of experienced/inexperienced presidents, I cannot prove this. But, logically, experience in working with a legislature has to help.
If experience mattered, Donald Trump would have lost in an enormous landslide in 2016 to a candidate with far better and relevant experience and education.
Well, he did have a term as president on his resume and his opponent did not, so to be fair, he might be considered the more qualified candidate. (But in 2016, the difference in experience was stark.)
And if experience mattered above all, the presidential elections in 1960, 1980, 1992 and 2000 might have gone differently. In those cases, the losing candidate was either the incumbent president or vice president.
Politics is a specific profession requiring a skill set all of its own. Further more, the phrase, “the art of politics”, is apropos because, much like a virtuoso in music, true mastery involves more than just a knowledge base.
For example, I really don’t believe that a skilled, seasoned politician would have started this all out war with Iran because of a delusional belief that Iran would just meekly knuckle under and surrender their regime.
I would think that executive experience at an organization above a certain scale would be helpful. I mean, being mayor of a big city like Phoenix is arguably more pertinent than being governor of a small state like Alaska or Wyoming. Same thing for being CEO of a large company, especially the multinational ones like Exxon or Procter & Gamble.
The point would be in having a more inherent understanding of how large organizations work, what the executive role is and how one goes about doing it, how to delegate, and how to work the internal politics to get stuff done. That kind of thing is a lot different in a large entrenched organization than it is in a smaller one, and it takes different skills. It’s not necessarily more difficult, it just takes a different skill set and mindset to be successful.
Where it gets blurry is when someone’s got executive experience in a smallish state or their experience is in something like a few terms in the House of Representatives or they’ve been a longtime state Senator or somethiing like that. It’s not so clear that sort of experience is directly applicable.
I suppose you could look at it as having two axes- length of experience and the level of experience, and maybe there’s a region on the plot where you get good candidates, but I think the question might be how you rate the level/depth of experience, because that seems to be the real wildcard.
Caveat: The above is talking about success as a President. Electability is something else entirely, and seems to be governed less by rational considerations and more on emotion and perception.
Yes, and totally required if I’m the one hiring! I remember years ago, the Republicans came out with the, if I may paraphrase, “Our candidate has had no experience or contact with politics before, so he is untainted by all sins we normally associate with politicians.” Of course, many people bought that statement because, in their minds, a “new” politician is like a newborn child, totally innocent and good.
On the other hand, if I went to a job interview and said, “I’m your best choice because I’ve never had a tech job before and have never done any tech work before, so I’m “untainted” by the mistakes that professional tech people make.”, they would escort me out the door forthwith.
Try seeing it from a different angle. The times make the president rather than the president making the times.
Johnson is the extreme example. An unforeseeable fluke put him into office and gave him enormous political capital. He choose to use that capital in a magnificent way, twisting arms and more to get the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts through a hostile Congress. He couldn’t have run on that platform. It probably wasn’t even a good political move. (In 1964, he ran on the Great Society, wider domestic issues). Instead it was the right move.
But then he had to confront the other gigantic issue of his administration, Vietnam. The Cuban Missile Crisis dictated enmity toward communism and he doubled down. That was exactly the wrong move. He should have countered the consensus wisdom once again. In both cases ego - going down in history for the former, never being a loser in the latter - triumphed.
Would Kennedy have made the same moves? We can’t know alternate histories, but in this case history moved as it did specifically because of the way Kennedy was removed from the position. I’d argue that for the rest of our history, experience mattered less than, say, temperament. Reagan had no positive policies but he read the public and projected positivity. Bush I continued Reagan’s policies without his temperament and got crushed. Clinton’s policies gave us a balanced budget but his temperament created a hole too deep for Gore to climb out of. Bush II was handed a chance to be great but didn’t have the temperament to seize it. Obama was black. This time the country failed us. Imagine McCain or Romney running against Clinton in 2016. Both had experience, each was vastly different from the other. Would it have mattered? They weren’t Trump; Democrats would have grumbled continuously but the outcome had to have been far better.
What do we want in a candidate in 2028? A good temperament is number one. Every viable candidate will have experience. What we need is a mensch.
I don’t disagree. Temperament is one of those less rational intangible things that matters in electibility far more than stuff like experience, intellect, policies, etc…
The thing is, a big chunk of the country likely voted for Trump because of his temperament. Not the criminality, but the general “I’m doing what I want” obnoxious mentality. He’s that person that a lot of people want to be- rich and powerful enough to disregard what others want or how others think they should behave. So they like it when “their guy” acts like that- to them it means they are backing a powerful person who doesn’t have to negotiate, etc… Which makes them feel good, and I’m also sure there’s a certain thinking that because he was on their side of the aisle, that he’s got their best interests at heart. That last one is untrue, but they’re mostly too ignorant of things to realize it.
Oddly, I think the Democrats need to run a similarly outspoken and belligerent candidate, only standing up for what he and the party believe. Someone to challenge these people’s perceptions of Trump’s bluster and BS as strong, and more measured, diplomatic Democrats as weak.
For president, or any leader really, it’s all about getting the most from your staff and communicating the results.
Specifically:
Emotional IQ: Aka temperament
Delegation: Ability to attract, hire, and retain good lieutenants, then delegate responsibility. Likewise be able to fire under-performing staff – particularly friends.
Communication: Lead, negotiate, and sell to staff to adversaries, and to constituents. Detect BS and lies. Intuition with one-on-one and group conversations.
These might be good places to look for qualified people, but being in these positions does not necessarily qualify one.
There is a difference between leading a company, with (mostly) complete authority, and leading a government where everything is a compromise. You still have to deal with the board of directors, shareholders, customers, and vendors, but everyone is aligned on the same goal – to make money.
A large company or institution can have a lot of momentum and infrastructure to support execution. The CEO might be doing an amazing job or they might have inherited an outstanding staff. Or the company is a dominant player and success breeds success.
Running a campaign and becoming president is more like starting a company or turning a failing one around. The leader needs to build everything from the ground up.
