Why voting for President isn’t like hiring for a job.
March 2, 2008 at 7:56 pm | In politics | Leave a CommentTags: 2008 Presidential Election, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Bill Cinton, Bill Richardson, Experience, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, John F. Kennedy, John Kerry, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale
I have been all over the place over the last year in terms of who I wanted to get the Democratic Nomination for President. I wanted Al Gore to run and get what was stolen from him eight years ago. I thought Bill Richardson being Latino and from the swing state of New Mexico was a good person to go with. I thought John Edwards with his populist message and being from the south was most likely to win against a Republican.
But of course by the time I voted on February 5th in the Democratic Primary I had to choose between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (and Mike Gravel but who are we kidding with that one). While I acknowledge that Hillary has done a lot of good things I in her life I couldn’t bring myself to cast a vote for her. Knowing what I know about how she’s voted in the Senate, her corporate ties, the way her campaign has been run. I had to go with Barack Obama.
On Thursday night I saw Hillary on Nightlight. My heart softened for her. Despite the fact I am now fully supporting Obama I do feel sorry for her at time.
She made an interesting argument that was repeated by a friend of mine yesterday. You should look at voting for President as hiring somebody for a job. My friend said you wouldn’t hire somebody at Taco Bell just because he was charming, you would hire the person with the most experience.
Sadly, we all know that is not true. How often do more experienced people in their forties and thirties loose out to young up and comers in their late twenties and thirties because the younger people are most hungry. And voting in a primary isn’t choosing a person to do the job. It’s choosing the person who will be one of the final two people for the job. Why would you choose somebody to be a finalist when you don’t believe the hiring committee (in this case the American public) would pick that person for the position? Would you hire the person with the most experience even though they have made major mistakes in their past positions? Would you hire the person with the most experience even though it is very possible that the people who worked with her in the past will spend every night and day trying to get her fired once she is hired? No.
Another thing I don’t like about the whole experience argument is that it isn’t true. Wasn’t Nixon more experienced than Kennedy in 1960? What would this country be without a Kennedy Presidency? Isn’t that the argument that was used to promote Reagan over Mondale in 1984? If Mondale had won this country could have stopped the bleeding in the mid 1980’s instead of having to wait until the 90’s, plus there would have been a female vise president. Isn’t that the argument George H.W. Bush gave in 1992 against Bill Clinton? All the progress that Clinton made for this country would have never been if the American public had rehired the person with more experience in 1992. And speaking of rehiring somebody with more experience….George W. Bush had more experience than John Kerry in 2004. But do you want to tell the thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqi’s who have died since 2004 that it’s good that the American public went with the more experienced candidate. Do you want to tell Katrina victims that they were left like animals in the Superdome but at least we had the more experienced guy for Another four years. 
I didn’t think so. Come on Ohio and Texas vote Obama and end this thing.
No Comments Yet »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
