No Loss for Words

I continue to be amazed at how many pundits suggest that all the OUTSIDER candidates including Trump, Carson and Fiorina lack the EXPERIENCE to be our President.  They all think that being a politician is the training necessary to be a leader.  I wonder about that.

None of the guys that have served as professional elected officials have the experience necessary to be our President either.  Realistically, no person elected to the Presidency has come to the job with Presidential experience.  They all have to learn on the job.  The question is how fast and how well do they learn?  I’ll take a smart guy who can learn fast every time.

Senators without experience managing a bureaucracy of any kind have demonstrated that their background is no recommendation.  I suspect that all the OUTSIDER Candidates have more experience managing a bureaucracy that they do.

Governors certainly have been in a position to manage large bureaucracies, but that experience by itself is no recommendation either.

And the pundits suggest that experience at the legislative process is a necessity.  I would only suggest we look at the success of the Democrat’s current president and their leading candidates and their legislative accomplishments.  Zip.  Then I would look at the legislative accomplishments of the Republican candidates.  Let’s look at the Senators first.  Senator Rand Paul…nada.  Senator Marco Rubio….nada.  Senator Ted Cruz….nada.  Senator Lindsey Graham and former Senator Rick Santorum.. …ditto.  Then let’s look at the Governors.  We have either active governors or former governors of Florida, Wisconsin, Texas, Ohio, New Jersey, Arkansas, New York, Louisiana and Virginia.  Depending upon whether they had the luxury of working with legislative majorities from their own party or had to struggle with majorities of the other party, their records vary.  Rick Perry makes a case for his own candidacy if a Republican Governor in a Republican state (the size of Texas) touts the collective accomplishments.  Scott Walker’s battles in Wisconsin are legend but his legislature is also from his own party.  Chris Christy, John Kasich and Bobby Jindal all have some success working with majorities from the other party and they speak to that struggle of working in a bi-partisan manner to make deals but none are so wildly successful that their record speaks for them.  Bush, Huckabee, Pataki and Gilmore have been out of office quite a while and their records are not stellar.  So where does that leave us?

Each of the candidates in this race bring experiences to the table.  Trump’s bravado diminishes his record of building a substantial business empire, but he has indeed amassed a fortune measured in the billions of dollars.  That’s no small accomplishment.  He has an MBA from Wharton so he’s no dummy. Does that make him more or less capable than Jeb Bush or Chris Christy?  I don’t know.

Dr. Carson and Carly Fiorina have very respectable résumés with lots of experience managing a bureaucracy and negotiating with a board of directors.  They are both very well educated along with being bright.  I think they have both learned to adapt to the changes within their fields.  They don’t have experience caving in to partisan string pullers.  Does that disqualify them from serving as President?

As the campaign season unfolds, the three non-politician candidates seem to be saying things that appeal to non-political citizens and annoying the hell out of the partisans.  That has some appeal to me too.

For me, I need to be convinced that one of those other MORE EXPERIENCED candidates has my interests at heart rather than the interests of a political party or special interest group.  In the last couple election cycles we elected folks to the Congress with the expectation that a Republican majority was all we needed to enact a conservative agenda and we got absolutely nothing from The House or The Senate.  Guys like Boehner and McConnell are likely to vote with the Democrats if the Conservatives in Congress get stronger.  Leadership positions are primarily determined by seniority rather than actual leadership so I’m not sure what legislative experience has to do with a candidates’ qualification to run for President.  It does suggest that they have learned to kowtow to the money.

I encourage all voters from both parties to listen to what the candidates are saying and tell me if Jeb Bush is any more specific with his proposed future for our country than is Trump, Carson or Fiorina.  Or for that matter any of the others.  Few of them have gotten too specific so far.

And finally, when Hugh Hewitt asked Trump about some General named Soleimani who is the military leader of the terrorist Quds, he did it with the expectation that Trump wouldn’t be knowledgeable about the guy and he would make him appear ignorant… I mean stupid and unfit for the job of President.  My expectation is that all of the candidates running for President will get to know the significant leaders and many of the insignificant leaders of other countries.  Whether it’s terrorist leaders or some other less known facts, guys like Hewitt have their special candidates and often will do whatever they can to belittle the ones that threaten their guy.

The pundits seem to think that when Perry, Pataki, Gilmore, Jindal, Huckabee, Graham, Santorum, Christie, Kasich and Walker fade, their supporters will all flock to Bush or Rubio leaving Trump, Carson or Fiorina out in the cold.  I guess time will tell.