On Vice-Presidential Experience

Ross quotes Frum:

Yes, if I had been a Democratic donor back in 2006, I'd sure worry about whether Barack Obama had what it took to be president. That was before he took on the toughest political operation in America, before he beat Bill and Hillary Clinton, before he won 18 million primary votes.

Obama's nomination was not handed to him. He fought hard for it and won against the odds. "Qualifications" predict achievement. Once you have achieved, it doesn't matter what your qualifications are. Who cares whether the guy who built a big company from nothing didn't have much of a resume when he started? But if you are applying to run a big company built by somebody else, the resume matters ...

According to Redstate, Obama himself has picked up on this meme and is testing out its mileage, asking us to count his presidential campaign as "executive experience".

There is a little dishonesty going on here. First, Obama comparing his campaign to the mayoralty of Wasilla, AK, is beside the point now that Palin is a governor. Second, I suspect that Obama "runs" his campaign the way Brit Hume "runs" Fox News: without slighting Obama's political skills or Hume's journalism skills, the "executive experience" credit properly goes to David Axelrod and Roger Ailes, respectively.

But let's stipulate Frum's point: in the course of his successful primary campaign, Obama has outperformed his portfolio on the national stage in a way that Sarah Palin hasn't yet.

But let's turn this question around and ask, what does this say about Joe Biden? His 36 years in the Senate have been a study in mediocrity: not stupendously bad, but neither especially good. His two runs for the Democratic presidential nomination miscarried early, and he's widely known as a gaffe machine. (This last is his most endearing quality, actually. But still.) In summary, the man has dramatically underperformed his portfolio, but Obama and the media want to wave this away, much as if Ken Lay, were he alive and seeking gainful employment, were to ask interviewers to consider his "experience" running a large company but not the fact that the company tanked.

Obama and his defenders can't have it both ways. If credentials matter, then Palin has more executive experience over larger enterprises than the other three candidates combined. If only successful campaigns matter, then Obama's VP pick is a proven failure. It will be very difficult for the Obama campaign to articulate an objective standard of preparation by which it will compare favorably to McCain-Palin. How did we even get here? This should have been a race between Romney and Richardson, with McCain and Biden contending for VP. Instead, out of all the people in public life, we have three senators, none with executive experience, and a half-term governor. Pathetic.