Dan McLaughlin (who blogs as the Baseball Crank) has written what may well be the seminal essay to date on Barack Obama’s experience, or what little there is of it. By all means take a few minutes and read the whole thing, but here’s a sample:
He’s never run anything at all, not even a small law practice like John Edwards. Besides his campaign, probably the biggest thing he’s ever run was the Harvard Law Review. He has nothing resembling national security experience or even particularly sustained advocacy on the issue before announcing his candidacy in 2007. The man has apparently hardly even traveled to Europe, to pick one example. He is running in a contested election outside the insular world of Chicago politics for the first time and has never had any sort of responsibility for political leadership. He’s never served in the military and seems to have scarcely any experience even knowing people who served in the military. His private-sector business background is negligible. Are any of these things disqualifying from the Presidency? No. But electing a man who is so seriously lacking in all of them is indeed unprecedented. And that is and should be a central issue in this campaign.
I would add to the Crank’s list a related point that I blogged on this morning: It often doesn’t seem like Obama has even seriously considered serious presidential-level matters as an outside observer the way most readers of this magazine have. The lack of literacy he has displayed on issues such as the capital gains tax and FDR’s shuttle diplomacy with Hitler are jarring coming from such an intelligent guy. But hey – he has great judgment, right? And that should compensate for everything else.
