In 1992, Bill Clinton was 46.
Barack Obama is currently 46.
George H.W. Bush was 64 when he became president.
Hillary turns 61 this year.
Okay, so what's the point? Most presidental ranking opinion polls place Bush Sr. and Clinton in the middle of the pack (not great, not horrible -- just average) -->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_United_States_Presidents
How can that be? Bush Sr. had so much more "experience."
And check this out: Theodore Roosevelt is generally ranked as one of the top 5 best presidents. TR was just 42 years old when he became president, and I believe he had only 3 years of public service before assuming the role!
The bottom line: there's a reason the constitution says you only need to be 35 to be president.
Good judgement has much more value than mere experience (experience just means you're older, really, anyway). And "experience" isn't a synonym for wisdom.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080313/us_time/clintonsexperiencedebate
"And check this out: Theodore Roosevelt is generally ranked as one of the top 5 best presidents. TR was just 42 years old when he became president, and I believe he had only 3 years of public service before assuming the role!"
ReplyDeleteHmmm. By what criteria are TR "ranked" as one of the 5 best Presidents? Are the kinds of problems the Presidents face included in the ranking? How about the capabilities of our perceived enemies?
Probably the three best in my lifetime were FDR who taught the people in the US to have some confidence in themselves but incidentally set the machinery in motion for "giving away the farm" then, unfortunately, died before he had a chance to experience the possibly unforeseen results of his ideas. I have for many years thought that FDR was intelligent and wise enough to have made needed changes in his programs had he lived. It is the case, however, that even Prsidents are mortal.
Then Truman who was chosen because he was thought to be a mediocre politician who would be no threat to FDR, but who turned out to have a mind and in my estimation did a better job of upholding the constitution than most, then Eisenhower who essentially did nothing for his time in office, but allowed the people in the country to have confidence. Ford who was also chosen because he was thought to be pretty much a nonentity, Reagan of course, and I compare the problems that have confronted George W. Bush with the problems that confronted Abraham Lincoln, and the way they have reacted also seem comparable.
Good judgment indeed calls for experience. Good judgment means one makes correct chjoices and decisions. How does one usually learn to do that? By experiencing what hapens whan once makes bad judgements and poor deicisions. (And learns from them!)
Then there is Reagan, of course, who also gave us hope, Hmmm. I must have liked him. I listed him twice.