President Obama brazenly overplayed Hillary Clinton’s experience in his 2016 DNC speech Wednesday night.
“I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as President of the United States of America,” the president said. The phrasing is so all-encompassing and direct it seems clear that this is not your typical platitude: he wants you to believe this.
Whether Obama believes it himself is another question. Though he says this praise “with confidence,” if you start from the top of the list of U.S. presidents, the very first one’s resume is so deep it’s difficult to imagine how theoretically there could have been someone more qualified.
Yet, starting from the bottom and going up, it does not take very long to find someone at least as qualified as Hillary Clinton. In fact, right before her husband took office, George H.W. Bush entered the 1988 election with congressional, United Nations, CIA, vice-presidential, and even “acting president” experience.
Hillary Clinton, by contrast, has been first lady, senator, and secretary of state.
It’s not unreasonable to play up experience, but the memo among top Democrats to portray Clinton’s level of experience as unique is unusual. Nancy Pelosi has said that Clinton would be “the most qualified person to enter the White House in modern history,” also adding “with all due respect to President Clinton when he went in, President Obama, President Bush and everybody else.”
Obama’s DNC speech is not the first time he has claimed that Clinton is the most qualified presidential candidate of all time. In his endorsement video for Clinton, he said, “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.”
