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The Absurdity of the "Executive Experience" Argument
It always helps when your opponent does a better job of refuting his or her argument against you than you could yourself. I think this happened the other night during Rudy Giuliani's speech. In his attack on Sen. Obama's lack of executive experience, he made the following claim:
"as far as I’m concerned, the first day she was mayor, she had more
experience as an executive than — than Obama and Biden combined."
This claim illustrates the emptiness of the executive experience argument. Somehow, if Giuliani's argument is to be believed, ONE DAY as the mayor of a town of around 7,000 people gives Gov. Palin a kind of experience that is more valuable than Sen. Obama's 12 years of legislative experience and Sen. Biden's 36 years in the Senate. Surely, this is an absurd conclusion.
The obvious point is that not all executive experience is created equal. The mere fact that one has some executive experience (something Sen. McCain entirely lacks as well) proves nothing at all. Even Karl Rove can't make up his mind. As Jon Stewart recently noted, Rove was on record dissing the experience of Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, claiming that being mayor of a city like Richmond, Virginia, with a population of 200,000 was just not that impressive. Yet, a week or two later, Rove is singing the praises of Palin, the former mayor of a town of 7,000.
Experience is important, but what is important is what the experience demonstrates, not the modifier that is placed before it.
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