When Talking About Doing Ain’t Doing: Does Experience Really Matter? A Simple Way For Obama to Beat Hillary Clinton’s Experience Argument

February 19, 2008
Category: Keys to Victory

We have heard so much about Hillary Clinton’s experience argument. This argument has been, for close to a year now, the bread and butter of her campaign strategy. However, it would seem after careful analysis that her claim dwells on shakier grounds than she could ever imagine.One line would, in fact, suffice for Obama to defeat Hillary Clinton’s argument that experience matters and that she will do a better job than him because of her 35 years of experience solving problems.

If the way both candidates have run their campaigns so far is to be the yardstick against which to judge each candidate’s ability to run the country, then Obama easily wins.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been a real disaster. From not being able to control her husband’s campaign rhetoric to her inability to hold on to a specific message-she has changed campaign themes several times in an attempt to find “her own voice” (New Hampshire seems to have become another wrong voice of Hillary’s: the voice she thought she found there has already been lost)-and from her real sense of desperation to her losing two pillars of her campaign, including Patti Solis Doyle, her Hispanic campaign manager, Hillary Clinton has now totally abandoned her pledge to run a dignified campaign. Recent days have seen her going on the attack, scorching Obama with harsh criticism on his being only rhetoric and “just word,” his lack of experience, the vagueness of his proposals, and his not having been tested and vetted. And the attacks are growing more vicious by the day.

One thing is certain: if Obama wins the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton will have so thoroughly tested and vetted him with her attacks and campaign of “personal destruction” that she will end up deserving credit for having prepared Obama for whatever the Republicans will throw his way later on in the presidential race.

Obviously, if Hillary Clinton’s White House is going to be as chaotic, disorganized and badly run as her Campaign has been so far, then Obama’s ability to run a tight, effective campaign must be seen as a sign that his words are not just rhetoric: he can get things done and is more in the “solutions business” than Hillary Clinton. His White House would certainly appear much more effective at offering a much stronger image of stability and cohesion than any of the Clintons’ White House could ever be.

Hillary Clinton can certainly keep boasting her 35 years of experience in politics over and over again, she may continue to assert that she is “in the solutions business,” that she is a “doer, not a talker,” but if her campaign woes and her failure to reform the health care system during the 8 years of Clinton presidency are anything to go by, one thing that Obama can say to her during the debates and on the campaign trail is certianly that “Hillary Clinton can talk about doing all she wants, but talking about doing ain’t doing either.”

Dr. Daniel Mengara
The author is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Montclair State University (New Jersey). He is also the leader of Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go), a movement of expatriated Gabonese citizens opposed and seeking an end to the 40-year-old dictatorial regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon.

Comments

3 Responses to “When Talking About Doing Ain’t Doing: Does Experience Really Matter? A Simple Way For Obama to Beat Hillary Clinton’s Experience Argument”

Ruth Wanjiru on February 19th, 2008 11:31 am

Hillary’s attack on Obama based on experience

Hillary’s argument that she would be the better candidate compared to Obama thanks to her 35 years experience needs to be questioned. What exactly are her accomplishments in those 35 years? The only one I can think of is her attempt to reform the healthcare system under Clinton’s administration which failed miserably. Sure, one can point out the fact that she is a junior Senator for New York and is currently serving her second term in Congress; Obama is also a junior Senator for Illinois. If experience is anything to go by, then both candidates have relatively the same amount of experience in the US Congress so far. So to claim that she has more experience in politics is not a distinguishing feature between Hillary and Obama. One can even go further to argue that, experience as we know it comes with number of years on the job. Let’s take the age factor into account: Hillary is almost two decades older than Obama, so of course, she has lived longer and if that counts for anything, we can say that her experience is relevant to her age.

Secondly, people have always used lack of experience as an excuse for not giving younger people the opportunity to hold a position. The corporate world is one good example. Haven’t we all heard this familiar line that someone did not get the job because they did not have experience? How did those people who hold their jobs get their jobs in the first place? Someone must have given them the chance to have a first job in order to gain that experience which they can then in turn use in another interview to obtain another job.

Experience is relevant, but you cannot deny someone the chance based on that. People need to be given the chance to prove themselves. Going back to Hillary’s charges against Obama, he does have experience. Obama’s experience as a community organizer put him in a position to deal with real issues that affected people in his hometown of Chicago. So to say that Obama does not have experience is to denigrate his experience. Any experience is experience. What more experience would you ask of a new candidate who has dealt with people at grassroots level than the one Obama has? It means that he understands real issues that affect people in their very own lives. Because communities make up this nation, he understands the common American. That experience will help him lead an even bigger community, the United States of America. So the argument that Obama does not have the relevant experience to be the president of the United States is a weak one to me. After all, being the president of the United States is a job vacancy and one does not necessarily have to have been a president in order to go for this position. Go for it Obama!

Ruth, Montclair, NJ.
Billy Small on February 29th, 2008 4:17 pm

Today Bill Clinton was talking about Obama, and he said that Obama says he can bring about change, even though he was n’t involved in change in the 90’s.. He says he and Hillary were involved, and he is proud of the 90’s. Well he and his wife caused us millions of dollars with that white water investigation, and the Paula Jones mess, and don’t forget MONICA. And when he says he is proud of the 90’s, does that include his impeachment ?We can’t afford for the republicans to bring back Bart Starr, and cause us millions more, because she is now president, and we never did get a fefinitive answer about white water. . Now about that 3 am call her ads keep referring to. If experrience was so important, why didn’t Bush get up from tha school on that fateful day in our history, and start making the right decisions, instead of peein in his pants ? And who was in charge of the white house during that whole planning phase of 911 ?
Joe Black on March 1st, 2008 2:15 pm

Good point Billy. People forget how divided America was under Bill Clinton, don’t they?

And you make a good point about the 3am call ad. The real question is: at 3am, will she be worrying more about where her husband will be at 3am with another intern?