You Say That So Often. I Wonder What Your Basis of Comparison Is?

I was reading this back-and-forth between David Brooks and Gail Collins (an ongoing election season feature in The New York Times and one that I highly recommend) and one comment struck me:

“I do think as a rule governors make better presidents than legislators”

You hear this a lot in presidential races. Now I understand why it’s more difficult for Senators to become presidents than it is for governors. Senators have to vote more often and on more complex legislation than executives do. They have a more complicated record by which to judge them. Governors’ jobs are more directly related to the President’s job. It’s easier to compare.

But the statement bothers me because the fact is, we don’t know how legislators perform as Presidents. Out of all the former Congressional Representatives or Senators who became President, only six went from the Congress to the White House without an interceding executive position in between. Those are:

1. John F. Kennedy in 1960
2. Abraham Lincoln in 1860 (he was formerly of the Illinois State Legislature, had held no state executive or national representative position, and had a large gap between political representation and his Presidential win)
3. James A. Garfield in 1881 (sitting Representative who had already been elected Senator when winning the Presidency)
4. James Buchanan, 1856: I’ll include him since he wasn’t a Vice President or Governor between his Senate term and the Presidency, though he was Secretary of State for 4 years which could be construed as executive experience.
5. Franklin Pierce, 1836: Like Lincoln there was a gap between his Senate term and his run for the Presidency as he too returned to private law practice.
6. John Quincy Adams, 1824: Like Buchanan, never a Governor or Vice President, but a Secretary of State.

I won’t include James Madison since he was one of the Founding Fathers. I also don’t include William Henry Harrison since he died so quickly. Warren G. Harding did go straight from the Senate to the White House, but he’d previously been a Lieutenant Governor.

Data comes from the Office of the Clerk and additional Googling.

So that’s a pretty short list of people who’ve become President without executive experience of some kind. Even shorter if you discount those two who had served as Secretary of State. And for over 150 years we’ve only had one president with no executive branch experience. So how do we even know how a legislator behaves as president? We’ve had plenty of former Vice Presidents and Governors, all with spotty records of their own. You can no more claim issues with Lyndon B. Johnson and blame it on his Senatorial background than you can George H.W. Bush. Both were Senators and VP’s, both have mixed reviews.

One of the things I’m quite glad in this race is that both of the top contenders are Senators, not Governors. I’d like to see some new criteria in the qualifications for President. For too long we’ve dismissed those of mostly legislative backgrounds and we do ourselves a disservice by not expanding the pool.

And Governor Palin’s experience pales in comparison, by scope, with Barak Obama’s: Executive management of a tiny town of less than 7,000 and a state of less than 700,000. It’s also a state largely removed from the rest of the country in interaction, diversity of industry/economy, and geography. The experience simply doesn’t translate. Her private sector experience doesn’t translate either; she was a sports reporter and a leader of a 527 group for most of her private sector experience. Nor does her education shore up any areas where she’s lacking.

By contrast, Obama is a constitutional scholar. His state legislator experience alone is for a district estimated at ~500,000. As a state Senator, his constituency grew to almost 13 million. He was a teacher, an organizer, and a legislator. He’s an accomplished author. To compare Palin and Obama is simply ludicrous. I can read bullshit in any resume, and hers is bullshit for the job for which she is applying. And then don’t even start to compare her to Joe Biden. It’s simply not possible.

In terms of experience, it’s fair to weight both Obama’s and McCain’s against each other in terms of years. But years alone don’t do it for me. It’s the quality of the experience and when it comes to McCain, the quality of the last eight years doesn’t hold up.