False Dichotomy: Experience or Judgment

POSTED BY Chris Broussard, 10 April 2008

Last night, Chris Bowers over at Talk Left asserted that Democrats should not argue over experience and that they should be focusing the campaign on judgment and ideology. He was commenting on an exchange between Obama and Hillary:

Obama on his choice for Vice President: "I think a lot of people assume that might be some kind of military thing to make me look more commander-in-chief-like. Ironically, this is an area -- foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain."

To which Hillary responded in an interview: "Well I'm somewhat shocked by that since I don't see any evidence of it. This is kind of hard to square with his failure to ever have a single policy hearing on the only responsibility he was given, chairing the European and NATO subcommittee the foreign relations committee... Making an assertion like that belies the facts and the record."

Bowers ducks the discussion of whether or not Obama's foreign policy qualifications are affected by his complete non-performance the only foreign policy duty he's ever had. Why? Because he doesn't want to: "Democrats should not engage in value-neutral and non-ideological arguments over qualifications to be President, including foreign policy experience, foreign policy knowledge, and the number of times someone has held a committee hearing."

He goes on to say "...the amount of time someone has spent dealing with or studying foreign policy does not, in and of itself, make someone better at foreign policy." Bowers is arguing that knowledge and familiarity with issues doesn't affect the success of foreign policy. He's suggesting that the conduct of foreign policy is unlike any other job function in the world. Replace "foreign policy" with "management," "medicine," "accounting," "blogging" or even "modeling," and the absurdity of his statement is clear. 

Of course knowledge, experience and understanding matter, otherwise we wouldn't have schools, internships, apprenticeships and fellowships. Education and knowledge do not necessarily mean you're the best one for the job, but it's pretty hard to be good at something you don't know much about (this is the Democrats' argument against McCain on the economy, after all).

Experience and knowledge don't necessarily mean someone will be a good President (see Dick Cheney, Herbert Hoover), but it won't hurt them. The problem with Cheney and Hoover was really their ideology: Cheney believes in an unprecedentedly strong executive, while Hoover believed in a weak one.  And a President without sufficient experience and knowledge will be hurt by their ignorance, as we've all seen these last seven years as Cheney, Wolfowitz and others have shaped Bush's decisions on the threat of Bin Ladin, Iraq, torture and domestic spying.

Bowers is right when he says the nation is favoring progressive and center-left viewpoint; we've gone so far to the right there's not really any other direction to go.  But Bowers is wrong to suggest that ideology is the answer to the problem.  An inexperienced Democratic president surrounded by leftist ideologues would just be a different flavor of the same problem.  What we need is a President who has both the judgment and the experience to pick good advisors, recognize when advisors are trying to manipulate decisions, and ultimately make moderate policy in the best interest of the nation. We need professionalism back in the White House.