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This man may have had less experience than anyone who ever ran for
president. He had little education, no experience beyond his native state,
no sense of foreign policy. He served a few terms in the state Legislature
and one term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He lost in his single
race for the U.S. Senate. He was an awkward and ungainly man who dressed
unfashionably. His family life was not happy. He had some skill at spinning words but was not esteemed by the nation's intellectual elite. He read the Bible a lot, but his religious faith was not clear. He was certainly not a pious Christian. He even went to the theater to see a comedy on Good Friday. The comedy was "Our American Cousins," and the place was Ford's Theatre. And now almost everyone will agree that Abraham Lincoln was one of the nation's greatest presidents. So much for experience. |
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Or consider John F. Kennedy. Like an earlier Democratic president, FDR, Kennedy was considered an intellectual lightweight. He had served with total lack of distinction in the U.S. Senate. He had achieved some reputation in Washington circles for his reckless pursuit of women. It was suspected that his health was poor. He was the designated Kennedy to replace his elder brother who died in the war, an inkblot for Joe Kennedy's demented family pride. Kennedy was a flawed human being (who isn't?) whose time in the White House was not long enough to form any definitive judgment about his presidency. Yet he made two major contributions to American life and culture. His Peace Corps transformed the experience of youth for Americans and launched a volunteer movement that spread around the world. It may account in part for the decline of priestly and religious vocations. A couple of years of volunteer work seems less rigid and less daunting than lifetime vows, particularly in institutions that are monumentally unappealing. |
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Moreover, when the world hung on the brink of nuclear war and the American military was prepared to attack the Russian bases in Cuba, he stopped them at the last minute. He may have had some character defects, but his restraint during those days in October saved the lives of many of us and began to turn the tide in the Cold War. Or consider Harry S Truman, a haberdasher from Independence, Mo., the handpicked senator from one of the most corrupt political machines in the history of the country. The news media exulted in Truman's exit as much as they rejoiced in the end of the Bill Clinton years. Yet now it is generally admitted that he was at least a near-great president. There is considerable agitation in the current presidential race about the importance of experience -- though some of the claims of experience might not hold up in the face of detailed examination. Yet, as the stories of the backwoods lawyer, the failed haberdasher and the lightweight senator tell us, experience is in the final analysis no substitute for vision and character. If you are looking for experience, there are plenty of available candidates, two of whom served in the Congress and in the White House and the Cabinet. You want experience? Go find Democrats like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld! The Iowa caucus should have settled the question of whether ''experience'' is enough for a plausible presidential candidate. However, it will not end the ''experience'' argument. That's the only asset that some candidates seem to possess.
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 A Stupid, Unjust, And Criminal War: Iraq 2001-2007 Father Greeley calls to task those who justified, planned and executed the war and reminds us that God weeps at the destruction of war, whether lives lost are ‘ours’ or ‘theirs.’  Order
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