What the media did not show about WrightFollow

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, however, that McCain is more qualified to be President by some arbitrary standard.

By the same standards let's examine the last 10 elections:

Bush v Kerry, Kerry's more qualified, loses.
Bush v Gore, Gore's more qualified, loses.
Clinton v Dole, Dole's more qualified, loses.
Clinton v Bush, Bush's more qualified, loses.
Bush v Dukakis, Bush's more qualified, wins!
Regan v Mondale, Mondale's more qualified, loses.
Regan v Carter, Carter's more qualified, loses.
Carter v Ford, Ford's more qualified, loses.
Nixon v McGovern, Nixom more qualified, wins.
etc.

Were we going to write up a criteria of a winning Presidential candidate, experience in government would be about 1000th on the list.

Arbitrary standard? It's not arbitrary at all. As a general rule, experience for the US presidency tends to run in the following order of importance with regard to public office:

Incumbent Presidents
State Governors
US Senators
US Representatives
Other State offices


Number of years weights the value of any given position, but not as much as having held the higher position usually. Military service tends to add somewhat universally. Being the incumbent obviously gives you a huge advantage, but being the previous VP is hit or miss.

That's just off the top of my head, but I've never run into anyone who'd disagree with this as a good standard for determining the degree of qualification for US president. I've heard this, or something very similar to this used when discussing Presidential qualifications pretty much without exception.

That's just off the top of my head, but I've never run into anyone who'd disagree with this as a good standard for determining the degree of qualification for US president.

I disagree. I would offer that what you've listed has borne absolutely zero relation to the success of a President throughout the history of the nation.

I'd offer instead, that there is a certain threshold of experience in government that must be met, after which any additional experience is largely irrelevant. Holding any high office, be it Senator, Governor, or in the unlikely event that one had held some other very high cabinet level office like Secretary of State or VP without first being one of the former would be sufficient.

I think we'd both agree that Ted Kennedy probably isn't more qualified to be President than Colin Powell is, wouldn't we? You're arguing that he's not, that McCain isn't, and that Bush wasn't.

Is that really the case you'd like to make here?

Electoral-Vote.com looks at experience vs. "greatness"

As the well-worn example goes, Lincoln was one of our least experienced and yet greatest presidents. Buchanan was our most experienced president and almost universally ranked as the worst in US history.

Of course he has. He's ancient.

Wright on! Everything's going to be all wright! He spins me wright round baby wright round like a record baby!

hahaha, I have a meeting now. kthxla~

Nexa

Yeah, I'd rather not spend the next four to eight years cringing every time the President speaks without a Teleprompter.

I've been ignoring things down there lately. You guys still giving the slightest inkling of care towards that NAFTA crap?

Lol. Sure. But Ted Kennedy isn't more qualified, not because of his experience in the Senate, but because he's Ted Kennedy. Kind of a bad example, but I get your point.

I think we're also going off track a bit here. We can debate the degree to which experience indicates future success as a president, but I was specifically responding to a post that suggested we should ignore these nagging concerns about Obama's patriotism and positions on race because of his "service to his country". That poster made this a presumed qualification for President that should override things like not showing acts of patriotism or attending Trinity church for 20 years. I was simply saying that *if* that's an overriding criteria, Obama doesn't have much of it, especially when compared to McCain.


Certainly, there are other things that add up to qualification for President, but wishful thinking isn't one of them I don't think. My concern is that it seems like everything that we're told Obama is about, we keep finding out he's done things that indicate he's *not* about those things.

We're told he's about unity and getting past the partisan divide. Yet, in his brief time in the Senate, he's managed to rack up the most Liberal voting record in that body. McCain, on the other hand, has a long standing record of reaching across the aisle to the other side.

We're told that he's a new kind of politician and not part of the establishment, yet he's also managed to rack up an impressive amount of earmarks for his state, and seems to use money quite well to aid his political fortunes (which seem like pretty "traditional" politician things to me). Meanwhile, McCain does not accept earmarks at all, and has run his campaign despite very little funding. Which one is running on ideas, and which one's running on power and money? Hmmm...

We're told that he's not a black politician cut from the same cloth as Jackson and Sharpton, so white people shouldn't worry about his racial politics. He's "above race". Then we find out he's attended this radical black liberation church for 20 years.


So far, almost everything we've been told that Obama stands for appears to not match the actual actions he's taken himself in his life, both politically and non-politically. So yeah. These are problems. Big problems...

One other point, just because I'm curious...I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean. I'd respond to it but I have no idea what, specifically, you're complaining about.

Just commenting that he's running as a populist, but he's collecting a "huge" amount of campaign funds. Yes. His money is almost all from individual contributors, but that's not the point. He's been able to go into most of the states in the last 3 months and outspend Clinton almost 2 to 1 on media and message.

I'm not saying there's anything innately wrong with this, but let's not pretend that he's winning primaries and caucuses purely because people just like him or his message more or something. He's spending huge amounts on advertising. I'm just heading off the "Obama miracle" argument that he's able to buck the traditional "money wins elections" assumptions, be cause he's not bucking those assumptions. He's the guy with all the money...

If anyone is bucking that traditional assumption, it's McCain. He had no money, almost went bankrupt and had to take a risky loan out to continue, and yet won anyway. He won votes, not because he outspent his competitors, but because his message resonated with the primary voters. Barack Obama simply cannot claim the same. His upward swing in terms of votes followed the increase in funding, not the other way around.

Obama is very much running his campaign in a traditional "buy the voters" manner. He's not waltzing into states with nothing more then a message that people agree with and magically getting people to vote for him. He's spending money. Massive mountains of money...