What's All This Talk About Experience?

Why is experience suddenly so important to Election 2008? Clinton or Bush had little or no, closer to no, experience and the question never came up during their campaigns. If experience would have carried any weight, neither one would have had a chance against their opponents. Clinton would have lost hands down against George Bush the father, and George Bush the child would have lost to Al Gore. Oh wait, the child did loose to Gore he just had his friends in the Supreme Court give him the election.

See, experience doesn't matter, it's just another political red herring that a campaign uses to give it’s candidate a perceived advantage over their opponents to draw attention away from the candidate’s shortcomings. Hillary has all the candidates talking about experience as if it matters. Anyone ever consider this; the only way to get experience in the presidency is to be president? Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

Hillary has experience being a US Senator as well as the wife of a president. She has no experience at being president as only that can come if and when she is elected to the office. The “experience” card is an attempt to make her appear to be out front of her fellow Democratic opponents in the primaries and, she hopes, her Republican opponents in the 2008 election. It seems to have worked because each and every opponent has given a great deal of lip service to overcome what they fear may be perceived as a huge advantage for her and her campaign.

Why wasn’t experience an important part of any previous presidential campaign? Perhaps it is because this is the first time a woman is running for President. Hillary and her advisers may feel that because she is a woman, must prove that she, in particular, is not only as good as a man but the best choice for president because she has experience, something her committee has invented and is attempting to make a major point of her campaign. It is sad that a woman is perceived in this country as having her place and that place is to support the man as leader of not only the family but in all leadership positions. This is pure nonsense that the Religious Right puts out as being the Will of God. To attribute the second class rating of women to the Will of God is ignorance at best; misogyny at worse.

Please rise above the media hype concerning both the importance of experience and the concept that women are somehow second class. Experience should count no more than what the candidate holds to be important; what he/she will fight for and support. A person’s competence is genderless and is based on what they have accomplished and/or are working on. Cut through the campaign and media hype and look at the whole person and their work ethic, expressed views, past record and promises in the future. Let’s attempt to make an enlightened decision on November 4, 2008. This is not an endorsement for Ms. Clinton or anyone else. It is an appeal for all of us to use our brain matter and make an educated decision and not one based on the sound bites and crap coming out from the media and the individual campaigns. Good luck to us all.