November 29, 2007--Experience Doesn't Count
Look what experience got us. Can you think of any people more experienced than Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld?
When George Bush chose them it signaled that the newly-elected, rather-inexperienced governor of a state where the legislature meets just every other year and where the governor in truth is a version of a glad-handing figurehead, that this governor, realizing he lacked experience, especially in foreign affairs, it appeared at the time that he had the good sense to turn defense and foreign policy over to two men who between them had more than six decades of high-level experience.
Many were comforted by this; but, as a result, here we are now having to deal with the fallout from the biggest foreign policy disaster in our history.
So when the Democratic presidential primary season recently turned to something resembling a debate about Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s experience it was déjà vu all over again. Here was Hillary claiming that she had 35 years of experience, the most relevant of which was during her husband’s tenure in the White House, in contrast to Barack who touted as evidence of his foreign affairs experience the fact that he had spent four years living abroad when he was a what . . . a child! Now talk about the ultimate apples and oranges. It looked at first as if Senator Clinton had really trumped the boy senator. (See NY Times article linked below.)
But then the pundits took a closer look at the situation. First they liked Obama’s retort—Yes it’s true, he said, Hillary had made, what was it, visits to 80 or 82 countries; but was she, as she claimed, “America’s face” while traveling? What might the real Secretary of State say about that? We know that too. Quick as a flash, Clinton-supporter Madeleine Albright said that she was thrilled to have had Hillary representing the U.S. during her trips. And further, she contended, they served as excellent preparation for the presidency. Why Hillary can just dial the phone and talk to . . . almost anyone. She didn’t add, however, that foreign leaders pick up the phone when any of our presidents call, even when it’s George W. Bush who, for God sakes, can’t even pronounce their names!
On the other hand, the talking-heads speculated, isn’t there a two-edged sword with Hillary Clinton claiming that her most relevant experience was as Mrs. (my italics) Bill Clinton? How good is that--to have our potential Commander-in-Chief playing the Little Lady card? Forget for the moment all the related gendered issues--this Mrs. Clinton approach doesn’t make folks feel secure, and it isn’t smart politics.
All well and good. But few went to the next step—critically examining Barack Obama’s experience. I assume that if the TV writers were not on strike Jay Leno and colleagues would have had a field day making fun of the foreign policy experience Little Baracky was acquiring while skipping around in short pants and knee socks in the third grade of some fancy private school in Indonesia. Hillarious. And now Oprah! I’m laughing so hard just thinking about this that tears are running down my face.
But then, I thought, if the richly-experienced Cheney and Rummy screwed up, and before them, to be bipartisan, the equally-experienced Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara, what after all is so special about experience of this kind?
Key, I am coming to conclude, is the this-kind part of this. The kind that is plugged into and thus powered by the conventional wisdoms about American exceptionalism and the manifest right to use our power to promulgate America’s so-called superior values on a global scale. The kind that is dominated by all of the elites, not just those that inhabit the political establishment—but also the corporate elite as well as those from academia and the media. Regardless of party, all who are tangled up together in the certainties derived from having danced with each other in a century-long interlocking Pavane of directorates.
Looking at experience this way, especially noticing what it has brought down upon us and the rest of the world during the past four or five decades, what Little Barack absorbed while growing up in the largest Islamic country in the world might be just what we need.
What First Lady Hillary experienced while traveling abroad, or what they allow senators to see when on junkets, is as far removed from reality as is Oz Land. We are in such trouble, as a result, that maybe, just maybe we need to take a chance with something entirely new. Maybe we need to turn to someone who has at least some experiential sense of what it’s like to be viable while being perceived as the “other” in a part of the world where, like it or not, we have to figure out how to maneuver.
Of course, if all Senator Obama knew was derived from those childhood years I would not be making this case. He has also acquired a terrific education, has had a significant if brief career in public service, and more than anything else seems centered and reasonably authentic because he knows who he is and what he isn’t. (Read his biography.)
And again, that experience of otherness which has in many ways defined his life also symbolizes America’s current place in the world. We may be hegemonic in economic and military terms (though this can be contested), but our metaphoric global face is more, like his, that of the other.
And yes, his name does rhyme with Osama, which it turns out may not be a bad thing.
When George Bush chose them it signaled that the newly-elected, rather-inexperienced governor of a state where the legislature meets just every other year and where the governor in truth is a version of a glad-handing figurehead, that this governor, realizing he lacked experience, especially in foreign affairs, it appeared at the time that he had the good sense to turn defense and foreign policy over to two men who between them had more than six decades of high-level experience.
Many were comforted by this; but, as a result, here we are now having to deal with the fallout from the biggest foreign policy disaster in our history.
So when the Democratic presidential primary season recently turned to something resembling a debate about Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s experience it was déjà vu all over again. Here was Hillary claiming that she had 35 years of experience, the most relevant of which was during her husband’s tenure in the White House, in contrast to Barack who touted as evidence of his foreign affairs experience the fact that he had spent four years living abroad when he was a what . . . a child! Now talk about the ultimate apples and oranges. It looked at first as if Senator Clinton had really trumped the boy senator. (See NY Times article linked below.)
But then the pundits took a closer look at the situation. First they liked Obama’s retort—Yes it’s true, he said, Hillary had made, what was it, visits to 80 or 82 countries; but was she, as she claimed, “America’s face” while traveling? What might the real Secretary of State say about that? We know that too. Quick as a flash, Clinton-supporter Madeleine Albright said that she was thrilled to have had Hillary representing the U.S. during her trips. And further, she contended, they served as excellent preparation for the presidency. Why Hillary can just dial the phone and talk to . . . almost anyone. She didn’t add, however, that foreign leaders pick up the phone when any of our presidents call, even when it’s George W. Bush who, for God sakes, can’t even pronounce their names!
On the other hand, the talking-heads speculated, isn’t there a two-edged sword with Hillary Clinton claiming that her most relevant experience was as Mrs. (my italics) Bill Clinton? How good is that--to have our potential Commander-in-Chief playing the Little Lady card? Forget for the moment all the related gendered issues--this Mrs. Clinton approach doesn’t make folks feel secure, and it isn’t smart politics.
All well and good. But few went to the next step—critically examining Barack Obama’s experience. I assume that if the TV writers were not on strike Jay Leno and colleagues would have had a field day making fun of the foreign policy experience Little Baracky was acquiring while skipping around in short pants and knee socks in the third grade of some fancy private school in Indonesia. Hillarious. And now Oprah! I’m laughing so hard just thinking about this that tears are running down my face.
But then, I thought, if the richly-experienced Cheney and Rummy screwed up, and before them, to be bipartisan, the equally-experienced Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara, what after all is so special about experience of this kind?
Key, I am coming to conclude, is the this-kind part of this. The kind that is plugged into and thus powered by the conventional wisdoms about American exceptionalism and the manifest right to use our power to promulgate America’s so-called superior values on a global scale. The kind that is dominated by all of the elites, not just those that inhabit the political establishment—but also the corporate elite as well as those from academia and the media. Regardless of party, all who are tangled up together in the certainties derived from having danced with each other in a century-long interlocking Pavane of directorates.
Looking at experience this way, especially noticing what it has brought down upon us and the rest of the world during the past four or five decades, what Little Barack absorbed while growing up in the largest Islamic country in the world might be just what we need.
What First Lady Hillary experienced while traveling abroad, or what they allow senators to see when on junkets, is as far removed from reality as is Oz Land. We are in such trouble, as a result, that maybe, just maybe we need to take a chance with something entirely new. Maybe we need to turn to someone who has at least some experiential sense of what it’s like to be viable while being perceived as the “other” in a part of the world where, like it or not, we have to figure out how to maneuver.
Of course, if all Senator Obama knew was derived from those childhood years I would not be making this case. He has also acquired a terrific education, has had a significant if brief career in public service, and more than anything else seems centered and reasonably authentic because he knows who he is and what he isn’t. (Read his biography.)
And again, that experience of otherness which has in many ways defined his life also symbolizes America’s current place in the world. We may be hegemonic in economic and military terms (though this can be contested), but our metaphoric global face is more, like his, that of the other.
And yes, his name does rhyme with Osama, which it turns out may not be a bad thing.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
3:34 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home