vagyakartha

"It's 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing. Something's happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call."

So said an incorporeal voice in a recent Hillary Clinton campaign advertisement. The point of the ad was that Senator Clinton is better qualified than Senator Obama to answer that call. Let us not wonder about any covert messages in the ad, nor quibble about how such calls are actually answered. Let us focus instead on the issue being raised.

What the ad implies, given its context, is that Clinton is better equipped to be the president of the United States solely by virtue of her longer experience in public life. Clinton has not, I believe, claimed that she is smarter, more trustworthy, a greater leader or more honourable than Obama. While she has pointed out the differences between their proposed policies, she knows that these are hairline cracks compared to the chasm between campaign proposals and enacted, if ever, bills.

She has chosen to reduce the current contest to a single dimension, experience. The underlying hypothesis is that the relationship between performance and experience is an ever upward sloping one. No, Senator, it is not. Experience is a threshold issue; one must clear the threshold to gain admittance, but additional inches of clearance don’t grant preferential admittance. The point, I admit, is debatable. History often provides guidance, if not definitive answers, in such matters.

There is little need to cite the 30-somethings from Kapilavastu (Buddha), Macedonia, Nazareth and Kaladi (Adi Sankara). In the sixteenth century, a 13-year old was crowned king in Hindustan and a 25-year old was crowned queen in England. Akbar and Elizabeth went on to become two of the greatest rulers in history. More recently, another state legislator from Illinois became the sixteenth president of the US. He had received only eighteen months of formal education, but taught himself the law. He served for eight years in his state legislature and two years in the House of Representatives. That was all the national experience he brought to his presidency, but few historians would dare not to count Abraham Lincoln among the greatest leaders the world has been blessed with.

In the twentieth century, a president of Princeton University became the governor of New Jersey, but held that office for only two years. With that tenure in an elective office, Woodrow Wilson became one of the most enlightened presidents in US history.

If Senator Obama does indeed become the 44th president of the US (after eight years in the Illinois senate and four in the US Senate), he will be over 47 years old when he takes the oath. John Kennedy was 43 when he became president and Bill Clinton was 46. Clinton had been the governor of Arkansas for ten years. The population of Arkansas is about a third of that of the Chicago metropolitan area. It was then and is now among the poorest three states in the US. With this noteworthy experience, Bill Clinton ran against Bush Sr., who had been elected to his first public office before Bill Clinton was old enough to drink, legally. Change, not experience, was the Clinton slogan then.

Kennedy’s victim in 1960, Richard Nixon, had far more experience relevant to the presidency than any candidate since the signatories to the Declaration of Independence. Based on experience alone, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney would have made great presidents. Experience tells us otherwise.

The fact is that there is nothing in anyone’s experience that fully prepares them to be the president. Nothing in Lincoln’s experience prepared him for the Civil War. Yet, who else could have led the nation better then? Nothing in Kennedy’s experience prepared him for the Cuban missile crisis. Yet, he acted with greater equanimity and strength of will than anyone had expected. Nothing in Bill Clinton’s experience prepared him for Somalia and “Black Hawk Down”. He “cut and ran”, precisely what he promised in a national address that he wouldn’t do. Forgetting promises is a common presidential proclivity. However, he did recall with convenient clarity that his wife had been “the only one in Washington” to advise him against pulling out.

That recently disclosed advice and ducking sniper fire aren’t the sole bases of the Clintonian claim to experience. She has claimed to have played a key role in resolving the Irish conflict. Lord Trimble, co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, termed the claim “a wee bit silly”. She has also claimed credit for championing numerous bills in the US Senate. Of the 356 bills she has sponsored, 308 didn’t even get to a vote and only two were enacted. For many of these bills, she couldn’t find a single Democrat to be a co-sponsor. Or so it is reported. “Champion”, “solutions business”?

Experience ought indeed to be the determining factor, ceteris paribus. But, ceteris are never paribus. Integrity, character and ability to unite and lead may not be factors raised by the Clinton campaign, but they are in my mind. Full disclosure: After eight Bush years and the prospect of a stronger Democratic majority in Congress, I intend to cast my vote for the Democratic candidate. I hope it is Obama. I will vote for him with pride and loosely crossed fingers, and without cringing.

Labels: Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, US Elections

# posted by Vagyakartha : 8:02 AM  0 Comments