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Obama: Not Ready. Period.

By amba | Related entries in Elections, General Politics

Mark Daniels has written the definitive post on why Barack Obama’s undeniable oratorical skills are not enough to qualify him for the presidency in 2008. Lucid, comprehensive, and conclusive — case closed.


This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 and is filed under Elections, General Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

9 Responses to “Obama: Not Ready. Period.”

  1. rob Says:
    October 17th, 2006 at 2:15 pm

    So what, Bush wasn’t ready.

  2. sleipner Says:
    October 17th, 2006 at 3:26 pm

    Bush could never possibly become ready for anything except a prison cell.

  3. Transplanted Lawyer Says:
    October 17th, 2006 at 9:36 pm

    Obama needs to be elected Governor of Illinois and run that state for a little while. Then he’ll be ready to be President.

  4. Mark Says:
    October 18th, 2006 at 7:18 am

    TL made the same point in the comments over on my site and I think he’s right. As I said in my post on Obama, governorships represent the gold standard of American presidential politics.

    Mark

  5. David Says:
    October 18th, 2006 at 9:12 am

    I agree with Mark and TL. Notice that every successful candidate since Kennedy has had executive experience. Personally, I want to vote for someone who has had to make life or death decisions as a chief executive (think clemency for someone on death row) – however they decided in the past, I don’t want their first experience with a decision of that magnitude to be in the White House.

  6. Mark Says:
    October 18th, 2006 at 10:01 am

    David:
    More than that, as far as I can remember–I need to check this–only Harding and Kennedy were elected to the presidency while serving in the Senate. In comments over at my blog, I surveyed what every newly elected president since 1900 was doing at the time of his election. Governors formed the biggest single group:

    1900: William McKinley (governor of Ohio); 1904: Theodore Roosevelt (McKinley’s VP, he became president when McKinley was assassinated; he had been governor of New York with other political experience when nominated for the vice presidency); 1908: William Howard Taft (had served in TR’s cabinet and as governor of the Philippine territory); 1912 and 1916: Woodrow Wilson (governor of New Jersey); 1920: Warren Harding (senator from Ohio); 1924: Calvin Coolidge (Harding’s Veep, he was serving as governor of Massachusetts at the time he was nominated for that post); 1928: Herbert Hoover (a millionaire mining engineer, Hoover turned his attention to relief work during WWI and was serving in the Cooldige cabinet when nominated for President); 1932, 36, 40, & 44: Franklin Roosevelt (governor of New York); 1948: Harry Truman (FDR’s VP, he was a senator when nominated for that spot, previous experience as what they call a county “judge” in Missouri, but is really a commissioner, an administrative position); 1952 & 56: Dwight Eisenhower (a general with extensive political experience, a political general in the best sense of that term); 1960: John Kennedy (senator from Massachusetts); 1964: Lyndon Johnson (one-time Senate Majority Leader who had been JFK’s Veep, elevated to the presidency when Kennedy was assassinated); 1968 & 72: Richard Nixon (former VP, a position he held under Eisenhower); 1976: Jimmy Carter (had most recently served as governor of Georgia, two years before his election as president); 1980 & 84: Ronald Reagan (his only political office was governor of California, from which he had stepped down several years before); 1988: George H. W. Bush (the first standing VP to be elected directly to the presidency since Martin Van Buren, Andrew Jackson’s Vice President had done it); 1992 & 96: Bill Clinton (governor of Arkansas); 2000 & 04: George W. Bush (governor of Texas).

    Mark

  7. Top Blogs » Are Barack Obama’s Oratorical Skills Sufficient to Commend Him to the Presidency? Says:
    February 4th, 2007 at 5:20 pm

    [...] [FURTHER THANKS TO: Amba for linking to this post over at Donklephant.] [...]

  8. Legion Says:
    March 2nd, 2007 at 11:40 pm

    Stop ripping Bush- you psychos are super insane! I spit on you idiots! And anyone that would vote for that loser Hussien Obama!

  9. TrueCentrist Says:
    March 3rd, 2007 at 1:04 am

    That was a very intelligent post, Legion, but his middle name is actually spelled H-U-S-S-E-I-N

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