Kinsley: For president, no experience needed

LA Times ^ | February 17, 2012 | Michael Kinsley

[rightwingintelligentsia]

During a presidential debate in 1984, Ronald Reagan, who was then 73, famously said of his opponent,Walter F. Mondale, who was then 56 and trying to make an issue of Reagan's age: "I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience." The joke turns, of course, on the reasonable assumption that, as a rule, experience is a good thing and inexperience is a bad thing.

Mitt Romney started this year's presidential campaign with the same assumption. So did other Republicans. "Inexperienced" was their favorite one-word accusation against President Obama. It is witheringly dismissive without seeming overtly hostile or in any way racist. Come back in a few years, sonny, when you've had some experience. Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, called Obama "inexperienced," though I guess that's a step up from "the Great Satan."

If politics were a resume contest, Romney's would be hard to beat. Successful private businessman. Generally successful one-term governor. Saved the Salt Lake City Olympics.

Or so everybody thought, including Romney. Thanks to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, though, the whole successful businessman theme has turned from a plus to a minus.

[BelegStrongbow]

Kinsley manages to studiously miss the point about conservative objections to Romney. For myself, his business experience is quite a plus, just nowhere enough of a plus to overcome his Organization Man approach to policy, which I find to support the current Progressive movement far too closely.

But then, Kinsley doesn’t respect the few conservatives with whom he is vaguely familiar, so how would he know what an actual conservative would really think about Romney or just about anything else?

[sodpoodle]

***Republicans. “Inexperienced” was their favorite one-word accusation against President Obama.***

Still applies - too bad the MSM leftist propaganda machine worked overtime on his ‘charisma quotient’. And catastrophic that the sheeple were so easily led to slaughter.

[Da Coyote]

Hmmm,

1. Obama (aka Cretin-in-Chief) is inexperienced- never had a real job, never had a real scholarship, heck...never had a real birth certificate.

2. The Cretin-in-Chief is easily the worst, most inept, most corrupt, and stupid POTUS in the history of the country.

We could perhaps draw some conclusions here...were we actually to try thinking about it, LAT.

Hint: YOUR president is an inept, vapid, lying dork.

My only salute to him involes one finger.

[SoConPubbie]

It is precisely Mitt Romney’s Progressive Liberal experience as Governor of Massachusetts that disqualifies him as a GOP POTUS candidate.

[bagman]

Kinsley’s approach to formulating an argument is to take his putative opponent’s argument out of context, construct a straw man based on the flawed summation of his opponent’s argument, and then to declare the argument wrong and probably hypocritical. His approach is fundamentally dishonest.

This article is another example of his dishonesty.

[DJ MacWoW]

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[USNBandit]

Obama's problem is that he has never had to make decisions or direct people. He has never been held accountable for the bottom line, the end result, the finished product. Even when he has insisted on an initiative like the Stimulus or Obamacare, he delegated all responsibility to a spendaholic Congress. The man is devoid of leadership or even managerial skills. He isn't even much of a politician.

His own party is starting to figure this out.