Actually, that’s incorrect. Experience does not matter “enormously.” It doesn’t even matter, mostly because there is no experience that is equivalent to being President, as pretty much every President ever has stated repeatedly. If you look at the list of Presidents that we’ve had, there is no real correlation between “experience” and performance in office.
Actually experience matters, in the presidency and everything else in life. There is a correlation, all right. How did Bush the Dumber’s lack of experience work out for us? Of course there are exceptions, like Nixon - because having experience does not guarantee success, but having little or none guarantees failure. Every president was grateful for the experience they did have. Jack Kennedy famously said nothing can prepare one for the presidency - and he had only 14 years’ legislative experience (without much to show for it, quite frankly) with PT-109 being his executive experience. The older and wiser you get, the more you see the importance of competence and the consequences of incompetence. Dad was right on that one.
No, there really isn’t. The most experienced President of the past 50 years or so was probably George H. W. Bush. He was only a middlin’ President. Obama was one of the least experienced and yet he did pretty well.
Bush the Younger’s problem wasn’t lack of experience, it was lack of intelligence, just as is true of Trump. You cannot find a pattern among our 45 presidents where “experience” matters.
The least experienced, after Trump, was Bush the Dumber. And the truth about Bush 41 (who had less experience than Nixon or Johnson, for that matter) is for all the positions he held, were for short periods. Go ahead and study the guy. Obama is the best definition of outlier there is, and he still had a hell of a CV.
Maybe just anyone can do your job; I don’t know. Not mine. Not most that count. Certainly not the Cabinet positions. Or the woman or man who will do your next colonooscopy.
We’re talking about the Presidency here, not about other jobs. There is no job that truly prepares you for being President. I’m sorry you’re having so much trouble with this but a quick Google search would show you that this question has come up over and over again.
I repeat: there is no correlation between “experience” and performance as President. Shrub and Trump were both ignorant, intellectually incurious, and blindly partisan. No amount of “experience” can correct for these faults.
So every meaningful job except the President of the United States requires experience. Got it. I need no Google search, quick or otherwise, because I have studied the presidents, especially the modern ones, many of whom I have lived through.
No one is overlooking that stuff. It takes far more political skill to almost win a Senate seat in Texad than it takes to win a Senate seat in Illinois.
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You crib your remarks from Trump’s speeches?
Neither Trump nor Bernie are in a good position to talk about arm waving.
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[quote=“philmore, post:59, topic:86083, full:true”]I need no Google search, quick or otherwise, because I have studied the presidents, especially the modern ones, many of whom I have lived through.
[/quote]
Clearly, you have not, since you don’t even have your basic facts right and you are not able to defend your assertions. Put the Presidents in order of performance, 1 through 45; then do the same exercise for experience. Check the cross-correlation between those two lists. After you have done that, which you will not do, of course, you can come back here to talk about how much you have “studied the presidents.”
Or, hell, I’ll make it easy for you: just do the top 10 and bottom 10 of each list. You cannot and you will not, since that would make it clear that you simply have no idea what you’re talking about.
ROFL… Oh, I do so love a self-refuting post and the projection. Thank you for confirming that you cannot back up your assertions. Next time, do try a bit harder, won’t you? This was too easy.
Back at ya, including your own projection. Your infantile rants are unworthy of my attention. But hey I do recommend James McGregor Burns ('56, '70), and the new Joseph Levyveld is hugely underrated. But to each his own.
Beto is running as the telegenic wealthy white male who jumps up on coffeeshop counters and panders to Republicans. I think that fully covers it. On the other hand, Warren, for example, has serious and sound policy proposals. Therefore, Beto might do very well. After all, this is America, where Trump has >40% approval. Jumping up on coffeeshop counters could be a winning shtick.
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Dear heart, you were the one insisting that experience mattered, even though you have not, and cannot, define precisely what that “experience” consists of. You were the one insisting that you could show that experience correlated to performance in office. You were the one who insisted that you didn’t need to do even a basic Google search since you already knew so much.
And you were the one who has been completely unable to back up any of these assertions with anything resembling logic, reason, or data, which means that all you have left is childish attacks. It has been, and continues to be, absolutely hilarious watching you squirm, though.
I also found it hilarious that you compared the position of the President of the United States to a physician who performs colonoscopies. That one was so mindboggingly stupid that it didn’t even warrant a response.
Bernies’s policies.
Beto has policies and an enthusiasm and joy Sanders can’t muster.
Because just anybody can do just anything - especially if it is the President of the United States. The notion that experience doesn’t matter in who would become President is do demonstrably stupid it is unworthy of adult discussion.
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Thank you again for confirming that you cannot back up your assertions. Here they area again, dear:
Dear heart, you were the one insisting that experience mattered, even though you have not, and cannot, define precisely what that “experience” consists of. You were the one insisting that you could show that experience correlated to performance in office. You were the one who insisted that you didn’t need to do even a basic Google search since you already knew so much.
And you were the one who has been completely unable to back up any of these assertions with anything resembling logic, reason, or data, which means that all you have left is childish attacks. It has been, and continues to be, absolutely hilarious watching you squirm, though.
Edited to add that’s what really hilarious is the combination of arrogance and ignorance, as even a basic web search would show you that the “notion” that you think is so “demonstrably stupid” (even though you have not and can not actually “demonstrate” that it is, in fact, stupid) has been visited and revisited hundreds of thousands of times, which means that “demonstrably,” it is, in fact, “worthy of adult discussion.”
More drivel. You’ve got nothing. As usual. But, my, what a lot of words.
Thank you again for confirming that you cannot back up your assertions. Here they area again, dear:
Dear heart, you were the one insisting that experience mattered, even though you have not, and cannot, define precisely what that “experience” consists of. You were the one insisting that you could show that experience correlated to performance in office. You were the one who insisted that you didn’t need to do even a basic Google search since you already knew so much.
And you were the one who has been completely unable to back up any of these assertions with anything resembling logic, reason, or data, which means that all you have left is childish attacks. It has been, and continues to be, absolutely hilarious watching you squirm, though.
Edited to add that’s what really hilarious is the combination of arrogance and ignorance, as even a basic web search would show you that the “notion” that you think is so “demonstrably stupid” (even though you have not and can not actually “demonstrate” that it is, in fact, stupid) has been visited and revisited hundreds of thousands of times, which means that “demonstrably,” it is, in fact, “worthy of adult discussion.”
What’s even more hilarious is that, if you really did have a case, it would be trivially easy to totally humiliate me by demonstrating the correlation between experience and performance in office, something that you think is so obvious that to even question it is “do [sic] demonstrably stupid it is unworthy of adult discussion.”
And yet, somehow, you are not able to demonstrate that correlation, define what you mean by “experience,” and show that such “experience” is predictive of performance as a President. And all of this, despite having “studied the presidents” and having “forgotten more about our presidents than [I] ever learned.”
(None of that “study,” of course, has been reflected in any of your posts. All you’ve been able to demonstrate thus far is childishness and evasion. But hey, you’re funny, so there is that.)
You missed my reference to FDR; note Kennedy, Bush the Lesser and Trump - all of which you ignore. Too bad my high school, undergrad and graduate education is superior to yours, you sad, pathetic uneducated man-child.