Hoover was a cabinet official overseeing an area that impacts the national economy.
Benjamin Harrison was a Senator longer. Harrison also led a regiment in the Civil War.
I’ll give you Arthur, but he wasn’t elected President, a crucial distinction. Zachary Taylor and Ike(who you didn’t mention), clearly qualified to be Commander in Chief, arguably the most important part of the job.
So what? This is good experience, but not “better” than 4 years as a Senator and 8 as a State Senator.
And had no state legislative experience.
Not for your statement, which I’m glad to see you’re now taking back. Try to avoid saying such things in the future that you’ll inevitably just have to retract. Lincoln also applies, of course. A few years in the militia as a kid + 2 years Congress and 8 years state legislature is not “better” (or worse, in my opinion – looking at all the presidents, quality and quantity of experience seems to correlate to about zilch when it comes to the quality of the Presidency) than Obama’s 4 years in the Senate and 8 years in the state senate.
“arguably” means squat. Federal and state legislative experience is just as “useful” for a potential President as military Generalship, albeit in different ways.
What your argument boils down to is that there are hundreds of people as qualified to be President as Barack Obama was when he started running. Perhaps thousands. Way to go after the best and brightest.
I’ll stick with governors, generals, and Senators with deep foreign policy experience and decades of experience, like Joe Biden and John McCain. Junior Senators who just got elected to their first term need not apply. I’d sooner take a small town mayor.
Your argument also strongly implies that Barack Obama was less qualified than his fellow Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, and well, 95 other Senators. And you’re right!
We’re just talking about “on paper” experience. In terms of this sort of experience, I see no correlation whatsoever between a President’s “on paper” experience and his performance.
So I don’t particularly care, assuming a candidate has met some sort of minimum bar, which one has more experience. Obama had less “on paper” experience than both of his opponents, and he’s been much, much better than they would have been (IMO). Way, way, way better. Like a thousand times better. A McCain or Romney presidency would mean many, many more Americans dead – probably thousands more. And if we take McCain at his word, Bin Laden would still be alive.
Temperament and intellect are obviously more important than political experience, as President Obama has proven over and over. If political experience mattered most, the republicans wouldn’t have been played by him so easily for the past six years.
This is rich, coming from you.
Lincoln’s military experience was limited at best. He told of wanting to get his unit through an opening in a fence but couldn’t figure out how to do it so he said something like “Company dismissed! We will reform in five minutes on the other side of that fence!”
Military experience is pretty much unrelated to governing. Generals aren’t used to hearing the word “no” or being told that something can’t be done. They’re used to getting their way because the stars on their shoulder make people see things their way. As Washington and Eisenhower found out, being president is a different skill set than being president. We overrate military experience because of the current patriotically correct practice of soldier worship.
Running for president in many ways qualifies one to be president. Campaign organizations are large organizations quickly put together with the need for constant oversight and adjustment. Pretty much like running a cabinet.
If he didn’t have any more dirty laundry I’d like to see Richardson try again, or perhaps as VP. And I didn’t hate Huntsman, who seemed like a Republican I could cautiously possibly vote for in a pinch. 
Don’t forget Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower (military experience, but zero pre-presidential experience in civil government or public office).
Dwight Eisenhower ran an organization that was actually bigger than what FDR and Truman were running, since the Commander in Chief does not actually manage the day to day operations of the military and the generals do. And the military in WWII was much, much larger than the rest of the federal government. So arguably Ike had more experience running large organizations than anyone in the United States. And he was an effective President. If not for him, the liberal agenda would have failed much earlier. He spent eight years consolidating the gains liberals made under FDR and Truman. The government needed to absorb all the new responsibilities it had received over the previous 16 years. Adlai Stevenson would have piled on more and more stuff and the whole edifice might have fallen apart sooner than it did.
Ike also had a major role in foreign policy. Unless one considers the much smaller domestic side of the US government in 1952 to be more important than the job of Commander in Chief and running foreign policy, there was never anyone even close to as qualified to be President as Ike. And in the middle of the Korean war, there’s just no way to justify an egghead President over an experienced Supreme Commander of Allied Forces.
An issue with the technical aspects of drill is different than a lack of skill in leadership. That’s actually a pretty good but simple example of a smart, results oriented leader. “Fall out and fall back in over there” is still a used technique by people with more time in uniform than he had. Been there, seen that, and done that. 
You have an inaccurate but common view of the realities of typical modern military leaders. The power that comes from being a general of officer can reduce obstacles, frighten, and mean they hear dissent less. They were all young company grades once with Senior NCOs that spoke “frankly” to them. Some do forget that experience or get so busy they don’t remember the lessons. That’s different than saying they don’t have a lot of developmental experience hearing “no” sometimes with great passion and large amounts of profanity.
Hell I’ve disagreed strong hints from a GO that the my plan should be modified in a certain way. He didn’t directly say it and I didn’t directly say no. We danced. He did get my case for why my plan was the best option given the realities faced and why the change would be a very risky plan. He didn’t have the resources to commit to modify those realities and reduce the risk. That was active dissent to his strongly implied guidance in front of well over a hundred people. My consequences - I got approval for my plan. I also got a friendly toned “Thanks (nickname), good brief.” The only real surprise I had in the reaction was that he knew my nickname. I was not in the least surprised that he let me get away with savaging the implied guidance with the reality saw.
In my experience on both sides of the fence military leaders tend to take dissent better than civilian business leaders and get it more often (when military leaders don’t though the power they have can make them more insufferable.) There’s a different vibe and content in the dissent. The differences of culture across the gap can make it seem like dissent is not tolerated to civilians. That difference CAN be a problem. It’s not the same as saying dissent isn’t in the military culture.
Pretty much like running a military staff or being a commander. I do agree that’s a real bit of experience.
With campaigns, the candidate doesn’t manage anything though. Once he hires the professionals, he’s essentially the subordinate in most cases. He does what the campaign staff tells him, goes where they tell him, adopts the message they tell him to adopt. The candidate is the product being sold to the public. The actual leader of a campaign organization is the campaign manager. That’s why David Axelrod, Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, and James Carville are so famous in their own right. Nearly all of the strategies and tactics and setting up the organization and deciding where to put resources and how to adjust on the fly was decided by them. Apparently I can’t get most Dopers to realize that Obama’s ability to govern has been vastly inferior to how his campaign was run. So maybe the example of GWB’s incredibly effective and disciplined campaigns would provide a better example. Does anyone actually think for a minute that GWB was the guy who was responsible for those two outstanding campaigns?
Besides, when you’re campaign has only just gotten started and you’re blaming your staff for campaign missteps, it’s a pretty blunt admission that you aren’t running things:
By the time the campaign ended, Obama had blamed his staff 17 times for errors instead of owning up to them publicly himself.
That’s all you want? Okay. Obama ran brilliant campaigns. He’s been a good to very good President. Brilliant is a lot better than “good to very good”.
They weren’t “outstanding”, they were just good enough to beat poorly run Democratic campaigns. They were decent. His presidency was a lot worse then decent, certainly.
How many errors do you think his campaign staff made? I’d be surprised if it was less than 17. Also, how many times did Obama take responsibility and place some blame on himself? I haven’t counted, but I’ve heard him take responsibility many, many times.
If you are actually in charge, there’s no reason to blame subordinates in public. When you do that, you are saying pretty directly, “I’m not in charge.”
Then I guess no President has even been “actually in charge”. Every President has placed blame on others on some occasions.
Not so explicitly. But I agree that you’re half right, Presidents tend to avoid accountability. The buck does not stop at the top in politics.
Perhaps we should vote for actual change next time.
Then Chris Christie wasn’t in charge, was he? He was quick to throw his staff under the bus after they disrupted traffic in Fort Lee for the sake of political vindictiveness.
And I do hold that against him, although he looks better than Obama because he actually fired them. When Obama blames his staff, he rarely names them and never fires them. Which means he’s not in charge. People in charge get rid of incompetent or corrupt subordinates.
I’d also note that in the Bridgegate scandal, it wasn’t Christie that named his subordinates. It was the media. Obama blames subordinates then refuses to tell the media who he’s blaming. Not sure why he doesn’t just man up and quit blaming his failures on imaginary people.
Obama blaming his subordinates is at least better than the Republican habit of ordering one’s subordinates to blame themselves.
At least then someone is accountable. Who has this administration held accountable? They just blame imaginary staffers.
It doesn’t bother anyone that the President actually says “the buck stops with me” but then you guys don’t actually believe that?