Secretary-General Hillary Clinton?

[Keystone Phil]

The President must connect with the people and have the ability to instill a sense of moment, bring the country to war or rally it behind peace, exude confidence, etc.

But that doesn't mean that experience is any less important for the office.

True, but it doesn't mean experience is any more important either.

I'm not arguing that it's more important though.

For everything else that you mentioned, experience in some way is needed. Presenting ideas clearly and effectively is the result of confidence in an idea. A President has to have that. To have that, the President must be well versed in the subject. That requires experience. Same with being a "powerful international figure."

[Bacon King]

My two cents in the Purple/Phil debate here-

experience is neccesary in an appointment to a much greater extent than for someone running for election, as the campaign itself basically serves as an extended vetting process that an appointment lacks. See Lunar's opinion on Caroline Kennedy, for example, that he'd love to support her in the case of a special election but can't stand to have her just appointed to the Senate.

[Keystone Phil]

My two cents in the Purple/Phil debate here-

experience is neccesary in an appointment to a much greater extent than for someone running for election, as the campaign itself basically serves as an extended vetting process that an appointment lacks. See Lunar's opinion on Caroline Kennedy, for example.

I've never understood this argument. How does vetting someone give them experience?

[Bacon King]

My two cents in the Purple/Phil debate here-

experience is neccesary in an appointment to a much greater extent than for someone running for election, as the campaign itself basically serves as an extended vetting process that an appointment lacks. See Lunar's opinion on Caroline Kennedy, for example.

I've never understood this argument. How does vetting someone give them experience?

It doesn't; it serves as a substitute. A campaign shows how good the candidate is at running something, how they handle pressure, how stable their ideology is, etc. Kind of, but not exactly, the sorts of reasons people look at someone's past experiences.

[Purple State]

My two cents in the Purple/Phil debate here-

experience is neccesary in an appointment to a much greater extent than for someone running for election, as the campaign itself basically serves as an extended vetting process that an appointment lacks. See Lunar's opinion on Caroline Kennedy, for example.

I've never understood this argument. How does vetting someone give them experience?

Well, you can come back to your own argument for that one. The campaign provides the experience to be confident in and clearly express one's ideas when you constantly have to back them up, support, and explain them to a skeptical and sometimes hostile audience. This is one of the points I was trying to hammer in all along. Being elected by the people through the democratic process is almost all the experience one needs for such a position. To get to that point implies a certain ability to rise through the ranks already, otherwise one wouldn't even be a serious contender in the minds of the people.

[Keystone Phil]

My two cents in the Purple/Phil debate here-

experience is neccesary in an appointment to a much greater extent than for someone running for election, as the campaign itself basically serves as an extended vetting process that an appointment lacks. See Lunar's opinion on Caroline Kennedy, for example.

I've never understood this argument. How does vetting someone give them experience?

Well, you can come back to your own argument for that one. The campaign provides the experience to be confident in and clearly express one's ideas when you constantly have to back them up, support, and explain them to a skeptical and sometimes hostile audience. This is one of the points I was trying to hammer in all along. Being elected by the people through the democratic process is almost all the experience one needs for such a position. To get to that point implies a certain ability to rise through the ranks already, otherwise one wouldn't even be a serious contender in the minds of the people.

Being elected doesn't give you experience on a whole host of issues. You're talking about cosmetics and personality traits; I'm talking about actual experience.

I don't get how simply being elected gives someone "all the experience one needs for such a position." Do you realize the types of people that get elected sometimes? I'm not saying that they're not legitimately elected but their election doesn't mean that they necessarily have the proper experience and their election certainly doesn't bestow that experience upon them.

You talk about rising through the ranks as proof of capability and experience. This is so far from the truth in so many places. You claim that if they weren't capable, they wouldn't gain the trust of the voters. Well, let me share this with you...

Here in Philadelphia, we have a young man serving on the traffic court. He, along with other judges, hear cases regarding traffic violations. Well, ironically, this young man that hears cases regarding the public's traffic lapses has thousands in traffic fines himself. You see, if you become a traffic court judge here in my lovely city, your fines are wiped clean. Now we found this out months after this young man's election but guess what? Nobody really cared and they won't care in the future. It was a story for awhile, people expressed outrage but you bet that if he's re-nominated, he'll be easily re-elected. Nobody follows traffic court races. Or Register of Wills races. Or Clerk of the Courts races. You want to know why? Because in many big cities (and even in other types of communities) there are too many offices up for grabs for people to pay attention and in big cities, we know who wins those offices. So to say that you really have to be capable for all of these offices is false. And even if people did follow that stuff and you had to prove yourself "capable," that does not translate into actual experience with and knowledge of certain issues.

Just because you're good at communicating a message doesn't mean that you know what the hell that message really means or how to implement it.

[Purple State]

Being elected doesn't give you experience on a whole host of issues. You're talking about cosmetics and personality traits; I'm talking about actual experience.

I don't get how simply being elected gives someone "all the experience one needs for such a position." Do you realize the types of people that get elected sometimes? I'm not saying that they're not legitimately elected but their election doesn't mean that they necessarily have the proper experience and their election certainly doesn't bestow that experience upon them.

You talk about rising through the ranks as proof of capability and experience. This is so far from the truth in so many places. You claim that if they weren't capable, they wouldn't gain the trust of the voters. Well, let me share this with you...

Here in Philadelphia, we have a young man serving on the traffic court. He, along with other judges, hear cases regarding traffic violations. Well, ironically, this young man that hears cases regarding the public's traffic lapses has thousands in traffic fines himself. You see, if you become a traffic court judge here in my lovely city, your fines are wiped clean. Now we found this out months after this young man's election but guess what? Nobody really cared and they won't care in the future. It was a story for awhile, people expressed outrage but you bet that if he's re-nominated, he'll be easily re-elected. Nobody follows traffic court races. Or Register of Wills races. Or Clerk of the Courts races. You want to know why? Because in many big cities (and even in other types of communities) there are too many offices up for grabs for people to pay attention and in big cities, we know who wins those offices. So to say that you really have to be capable for all of these offices is false. And even if people did follow that stuff and you had to prove yourself "capable," that does not translate into actual experience with and knowledge of certain issues.

Just because you're good at communicating a message doesn't mean that you know what the hell that message really means or how to implement it.

I am mostly referring to federal or upper state positions. The lowest of municipal offices exist beyond the scope of what I am talking about because they are not based on anything but who has the better sounding name or whose sign you saw in a yard that morning. To rise to state elected office and then federal positions requires a certain level of experience and ability.

For higher elected offices, it is far more important to be able to express ideas clearly. You have advisers and aides to better craft what those ideas should be. The campaign provides the opportunity to better craft those ideas and improve one's ability to communicate them to the people.

For the appointed positions, they usually contain far more specific offices and more concentrated expertise. Supreme Court requires knowledge of the law. Cabinet positions requires knowledge of one organization or a handful of programs. But an elected office like President requires you to hold positions on the broadest range of fields and to have experience in all of them is not possible. To have some experience in even a few of them or to have a lot of experience in one is wholly insufficient for the office anyway. Experience for such offices doesn't matter the way it does for specific and appointed jobs.

[Keystone Phil]

For higher elected offices, it is far more important to be able to express ideas clearly. You have advisers and aides to better craft what those ideas should be. The campaign provides the opportunity to better craft those ideas and improve one's ability to communicate them to the people.

Ok, that's great. I understand that. That doesn't mean that there isn't more to the job.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Well, we're just not going to see eye to eye on this so we can let it be. 

[Purple State]

For higher elected offices, it is far more important to be able to express ideas clearly. You have advisers and aides to better craft what those ideas should be. The campaign provides the opportunity to better craft those ideas and improve one's ability to communicate them to the people.

Ok, that's great. I understand that. That doesn't mean that there isn't more to the job.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Well, we're just not going to see eye to eye on this so we can let it be. 

Of course it would come to that. It's all opinion about what matters more to you and me. We just view it differently. But now others can be educated on the two sides.