Palin, Experience and C.E.O.s

Matt Cooper reports from St. Paul: The argument's been joined. Democrats say Sarah Palin's too inexperienced to be governor. Republicans reply that she's got as much as Barack Obama.

That comeback strikes me as too glib. Obama's eight years in the Illinois legislature and three-plus years in the United States Senate seems like a lot more experience, and more of the kind that you want in a president. Yes, she has a year and a half of executive experience running the 47th smallest population state, but that hardly seems comparable.

The larger question is how we've defined experience down over the last 20 years. Both parties seem less interested in upholding a serious standard of experience. In 1988 for instance, Dan Quayle was a joke but he had four years in the House of Representatives and eight years in the Senate when he was named to the G.O.P. ticket by George Herbert Walker Bush.

Since then, both parties have defined experience down. George W. Bush had been in elective office a total of five years when he ran for president. John Edwards had been in the Senate three years, like Obama, when he first ran for president in 2004. Al Gore actively considered putting him on the ticket in 2000 with less than two years elective experience in office. Both parties have pushed the standards for seasoning way down. Palin takes it to a new level, but it's not as if the Democrats haven't played this game, too.

So now that we're in a new era, it's probably worth taking a deep breath and looking carefully about the candidates and their arguments, distinguishing the bogus from the absurd. It's worth looking at how Palin took on her party, but the argument that Alaska shares a border with Russia and she's thus experienced with foreign policy is laughable, as if she's stood down Vladimir Putin.

Jimmy Carter's elective experience consisted of four years in the Georgia state house and one term as governor when he was elected. I'm not sure that's a lot better than what Palin brings to office, although Carter's example is less than inspired. So I say keep an open mind. But forgive me if I'm nostalgic for the pre Obama-Palin days when Ronald Reagan had eight years running the largest state in America and Bill Clinton had more than a dozen years as a governor and leadership roles in the National Governors Association.

I suppose in the Blink era we shouldn't be shocked that experience is somewhat discounted. But as my friend Malcolm Gladwell has noted, his book isn't an argument for inexperienced gut decisions, but an argument for informed gut decisions. The opinion of a wizened doctor who senses something is wrong is worth more than the gut sense of a layman.

Matt Cooper

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-- The Portfolio.com Capital Index.