Damn.
Times do change.
People may remember the 1988 Vice Presidential debate where Dan Quayle was repeatedly questioned about having a really thin resume and a slight political record which caused him to be destroyed by referring to JFK which brought about the infamous “You’re no Jack Kennedy.”
Of course at the time he was nominated for VP Quayle had served for four years in the House or Representatives and eight years in the Senate.
And I’d counter-counter.
As I noted, military experience doesn’t always translate into political expertise. Some generals have been good Presidents and some have been bad ones. The same is arguably true about businessmen but it’s hard to say because we’ve actually elected fairly few Presidents on the basis of their business credentials.
The average age of a presidential candidate is 55. Obviously, they’ll have been doing something with their lives and will have some kind of experience. So when we talk about experience or inexperience for the Presidency, we usually mean political experience. The Presidency is a political job and it’s generally a good idea of the person holding that job to have experience in politics.
As for being President of the Constitutional Convention, Washington viewed his role as being nonpolitical and above the debates. He deliberately avoided taking an active role in the convention.
I’m not saying Washington wasn’t qualified to be President. I’m just pointing out his qualities were not the kind of thing that showed up on a resume. On paper, men like Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Monroe all had better records - but all these men recognized Washington would make a better President.
It wasn’t so much a lack of experience as a lack of substance that people felt was Quayle’s problem.
She’s the only candidate ever to have fucked a previous president.
Although who knows what those Kennedy boys got up to?
I thought the only thing he ever did that made money (besides marrying Martha Custis) was buying land in the Ohio Valley. That was smart, surely, but anybody with money could do that.
His business ventures, IIRC, never paid off.
His political acumen in the presidency - particularly in foreign affairs - seemed to come out of nowhere.
Well, there’s also his investment ventures in the Patowmack Company. He and his colleagues made a bit of coin selling their land to the Feds after GW conveniently placed the District of Columbia there. That isn’t in most history books, naturally.
My thoughts exactly.
You’ve just reminded me that Walter Mondale – who thanks to the GI Bill made it through law school before serving as state attorney general – spent four years as VP after twelve years as a Senator, which I figure narrowly beats out four years as Secretary of State after eight years in the Senate.
I can’t find any cite that Washington and colleagues made money from the Patowmack Company. Can you?
I can’t even find a cite that they sold any of their land to the feds, although whatever land they owned must have been right along the Potomac River, and thus cut right through DC.
The Potomac Company eventually failed. I don’t know that any investors ever got money back out of it.
No, he was very active in managing his plantation. He studied agriculture and experimented with new crops and growing methods to improve the value of his farmland.
The moral downside of this was Washington also treated his slaves as an investment. He was interested in issues like how many children were born and what their commercial value was just as he would be interested in his livestock. He was angry when one of his slaves ran away because she represented a loss of money to him and he went to considerable lengths to recapture her.
No, but it would be hard not to. Apparently they didn’t, though. Or maybe they pissed it away.
I should have been clearer and added “and anyone else who recognized that there’d be an entire city there, with much more valuable real estate”. It wasn’t just the feds they planned to sell to.
The allegation may be unfair to Washington, but if he really had planned to cash in, what he did is exactly what he would have done.
Perhaps Reiner meant ‘the most qualified candidate currently under serious consideration’? Maybe?
Still, as mentioned upthread, despite her experience - which is pretty good - she fades next to Biden. There’s no doubt at all that the person most qualified to be president right now - who isn’t already - is Joe Biden. The republican party simply has no one with the quals to dispute Hillary or Joe because the GWB adminsitration didn’t produce and heir apparent. Heck, it didn’t even produce a plausible alternative. From a party standpoint that was a terrible mistake.
All Republican qualifiers need to prove - at some level - their bona fides while Hillary just has to say “You know me. Fuck those guys, I’m Hillary.” and people will accept it. Ditto for Biden really.
Ironically, the Obama administration is kinda sorta giving Chuck Hagel the SecDef qualification to match Hillary after the guy racked up more time as a Senator than she did. But that would be pretty weird.
Failing that, I guess there’s Mike Johanns: on track to follow up six-plus years as Mayor and six-plus years as Governor with six-plus years as Senator by the time 2016 rolls around, having taken time off for those years as a Cabinet Secretary – or maybe Lindsey Graham, to get that whole “military-officer-turned-state-legislator who spent eight years as a Congressman and has now been a Senator for over a decade” thing going on.
Plus, there’s always Jeb “the smart one” Bush.
I’d counter that Washington actually created what we know of as the office of the Presidency. Much of the President’s power is not fleshed out, he did that. So arguably there:
a) Could be no one with better experience for the Presidency as we know it. Washington in large part created that institution.
b) Since no one in America had ever held any sort of chief executive position even similar to the Presidency (Governors of the Colonies were typically extremely weak and / or Royal Appointments and thus not particularly involved in politics) it’s debatable if anyone was really qualified. It was a whole new office with no clear precedent in American history–the predecessor was the King, who functioned quite differently from the President.
c) Since Washington’s actions as First President significantly fleshed out much of the office, if anyone else had been the First President it’s likely they would have made the office slightly different. Such that the argument could be made that no one was more qualified than whoever served as first president prior to the office being filled, because that person was destined to actually define what the office would actually be.
I’ve been following along, and this has turned out to be an interesting and informative thread. Thanks.
Of the ones you mention Jeb is the top tier.
One of the items for ‘qualified’ - at least as I define it - is Q-rating. How well known is the candidate prior to beginning a run. That’s one of the reasons the R side doesn’t have a strong bench. They’ve got a lot of guys who could likely do the job but require some more time to build a national image to be taken seriously. It’s like there’s a ton of people - Jeb, Christie, Rubio and Cruz excepted - who could do better in 2020 after an unsuccessful run in 2016.
Weirdly, given the GOP’s tendency to look for the most recent primary loser to be the standard bearer, Rick Santorum has to be considered in the mix somehow…and not far from the top. But the Tea Party, ultra-conservative end of the candidate pool might be a bit crowded in 2016.
I believe I’m on record somewhere stating that it’s going to be Rubio, and I still stand by that.
True, but the issue here is what his qualifications were at the time he became President.
And it’s not true that there was a lack of people with political experience. Don’t forget there was a significant gap between independence and the enactment of the Constitution. Jefferson, for example, had served in the Virginia House of Delegates, then served two terms as Governor of Virginia, then served in the Confederation Congress, and then been appointed Minister to France. So when the office of President was created in 1789, Jefferson could have claimed experience in executive and legislative politics plus diplomatic experience.
Sort of, Jefferson’s stint as Governor of Virginia was widely considered an abject failure, both in his own time and in the eyes of historians. That would have certainly cast serious doubts on his fitness to be the first chief executive.
Plus, and this may in fact be why Washington in fact had the best qualifications of any person entering the Presidency–it is widely accepted that as the office of President was being designed at the Constitutional Convention it was being designed specifically with Washington in mind to fill it. The position was almost crafted for the man. That makes it hard for me to cotton to any argument that Washington had poor qualifications to assume the Presidency.
I don’t intend for this to sound like a swipe at Hillary, but think back over the last fifty years: Kennedy’s VP assumes the office, because that’s the whole point of serving as VP; he easily defeats two-term Senator Goldwater, and then Johnson’s VP is of course the logical choice to run against Eisenhower’s VP, who wins and years later gets re-elected against two-term Senator McCarthy.
And then, after the weirdness of Nixon’s VP assuming the office, Governor Carter gets the big job, followed by Governor Reagan – who of course runs for re-election against Carter’s VP, before Reagan’s VP beats Governor Dukakis before losing to Governor Clinton, who then beats Senator Dole, after which Clinton’s VP naturally squares off against a Governor who beats a Senator before another Senator beats another other Senator before winning re-election against a Governor.
All thrilling stuff, of course, but – not a single one of them was a Cabinet Secretary. It’s as if America does not give a crap at all about that credential.
Go back even further: before Senator Kennedy got the big job, it was Eisenhower beating Governor Stevenson; before that, Roosevelt’s VP Truman defeats Governor Dewey; before that, FDR got the job by dint of his own Governoring.
And none of 'em were Secretary of Anything, right? The electorate didn’t care about that, didn’t want to hear it, probably didn’t notice.