[lit-ideas] Re: Least qualified presidential nominee
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 01:58:02 -0700
Interesting, John. Thanks, but I noticed that Obama hones in on Palin's
time as mayor, not as Governor. It was chairing the Alaska Oil and Gas
Conservation Commission
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Oil_and_Gas_Conservation_Commission>
and its ethics committee and then as Governor that she made a name for
herself. It wasn't just being Mayor of Wasilla. Since you are interested
in lies, would you call that one?
And Giuliani denigrated Obama's time as senator by saying he spent a large
chunk of that time running for President. He said 155 times he voted
"present" rather than for or against a piece of legislation. I gather
that Giuliani wasn't impressed with Obama's time in his state legislature -
just counting his time in the national senate and then noting that he didn't
devote all that much time to the job.
I checked Wikipedia about Wilkie. The section describing "experience" that
might qualify him as president would be in the following:
"In 1929, Willkie became a legal counsel for the New York
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City> -based Commonwealth & Southern
Corporation
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commonwealth_%26_Southern_Corpora
tion&action=edit&redlink=1> , the nation's largest electric utility
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_utility> holding company
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holding_company> . Commonwealth & Southern
provided electrical power to customers in eleven states. He rapidly rose
through the ranks and became company president in 1933. Willkie was a
delegate to the 1932 Democratic National Convention
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_Democratic_National_Convention> . He
initially backed former Cleveland
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland,_Ohio> mayor and United States
Secretary of War
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secretary_of_War> Newton D.
Baker <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_D._Baker> for the presidential
nomination, but once Franklin Roosevelt captured the nomination, Willkie
supported him and contributed money to his campaign. He was enthusiastic to
help the country out of the Great Depression
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression> .
"In 1933, President Roosevelt proposed legislation creating the Tennessee
Valley Authority <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority>
(TVA), a government agency with far-reaching influence that promised to
bring flood control <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_control> and cheap
electricity to the extremely poor Tennessee Valley
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley> . However, the TVA would
compete with existing private power companies in the area, including
Commonwealth & Southern. This prompted Willkie to become an active critic of
the TVA, as well as other New Deal <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal>
agencies that directly competed with private corporations. Willkie's
argument was that government-controlled organizations (such as the TVA) had
unfair advantages over private competitors, in that they did not have to
make a profit and could thus charge cheaper rates than private corporations
like the Commonwealth & Southern. This was not a new idea for Willkie - in
1930 he had stated publicly that it would be unconstitutional for the
federal government to enter the utility business. In April 1933, Willkie
testified against the TVA legislation before the House of Representatives
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._House_of_Representatives> . His testimony
convinced the House to limit the TVA's ability to build transmission lines
that would compete with existing private utility companies, including
Commonwealth & Southern.[citation needed
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed> ]
"President Roosevelt, however, persuaded the Senate to remove those
restrictions and the resulting law gave the TVA extremely broad power.
Because the government-run TVA could borrow unlimited funds at low interest
rates, Willkie's Commonwealth & Southern was unable to compete, and Willkie
was forced to sell C & S properties in the Tennessee Valley to the TVA in
1939 for $78.6 million. Willkie formally switched political parties in 1939
and began making speeches in opposition to the New Deal. However, Willkie
did not condemn all New Deal programs, and he supported those programs that
he felt could not be run better by private enterprise. His objection was
that the government had unfair advantages over private businesses, and thus
should avoid competing directly against them. In 1939 Willkie made a
highly-publicized appearance on the popular "Town Hall" nationwide radio
program, where he argued the merits of the private-enterprise system with
Robert H. Jackson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Jackson> ,
President Roosevelt's Solicitor General
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solicitor_General_of_the_United_States> and a
possible candidate for the 1940 Democratic presidential nomination. Most
observers felt that Willkie won the debate, and many liberal Republicans
began - for the first time - to view him as a dark horse
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_horse> presidential candidate."
Someone would probably need to argue that Wilkie's experience as at
Commonwealth & Southern Corporation, rising from chief counsel in 1929 to
CEO in 1933 and then being CEO until he was nominated for president in 1940
was better wualification than Obama's experience in the Illinois State
Senate from 1997 to 2004 and then being in the U.S. Senate from 2004 to the
present. I would be interested in what Giuliani would have to say about
that or whether he was just shooting from the hip.
Lawrence Helm
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of John McCreery
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 12:33 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Least qualified presidential nominee
From Jonathan Singer on MyDD
The Associated Press
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_giuliani> won't say
it, but I will: Rudy Giuliani told an out and out lie about Barack Obama
tonight.
"He's the least experienced candidate for president of the United States in
at least the last 100 years," he said to the cheering, chanting convention.
"Nobama, nobama," came the chants from the floor and the galleries. And
"Zero, zero" when Giuliani said Obama has no experience.
Simply untrue and demonstrably false. Let's start with Wendell Willkie
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Willkie> , the Republican nominee in
1940. He had no experience in elective office whatsoever. Woodrow Wilson
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson> had been Governor of New
Jersey for two years when he was elected President in 1912. Both Alf Landon
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alf_Landon> and Adlai Stevenson
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson> were Governor for four years
when they were nominated by the GOP in 1936 and Democratic Party in 1952,
respectively. That's four nominees with as little experience, or less, than
Obama in the last century.
If we're talking total time in government or elective office, Obama's
experience rivals that of George W. Bush
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush> (six years as Governor of
Texas prior to his nomination in 2000), as well as Ronald Reagan
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan> (eight years as Governor of
California before being nominated in 1980), Al Smith
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_E._Smith> (eight years as Governor of
New York before his nomination in 1928), Thomas Dewey
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_E._Dewey> (four years as New York
County D.A. and two years as New York Governor prior to being nominated in
1944), John Davis <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Davis> (one term in
the House, five years as Solicitor General, and three years as Ambassador to
the U.K. before being nominated in 1924), James Cox
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Cox> (six years as Governor of Ohio,
four as a Congressman before being nominated in 1920), and Charles Evans
Hughes <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Evans_Hughes> (less than four
years as Governor of New York and less than six as a Supreme Court Justice
before being nominated in 1916).
You can debate the half dozen or so names in that second list, but you can't
deny the names in the first -- particularly that of Willkie. Now the AP
might not want to call the statement a lie, they might want to run the
statement without even mention of the fact that it is not true whatsoever,
and it may not even mean that much in the long run, but when I see something
like that I can't help but speak up.
There is plenty to debate about in the particular answers offered. There is,
for example, the not unreasonable claim that ceteris paribus years spent as
a governor should count for more than years spent as a legislator. But I
think Barack does a pretty good job comparing his own experience to that of
Sarah Palin,
"My understanding is that Gov. Palin's town, Wassilla, has I think 50
employees. We've got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12
million dollars a year - we have a budget of about three times that just for
the month," Obama responded.
Our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made
clear over the past couple of years and certainly in terms of the
legislation I've passed in the past couple of years, post-Katrina."
I myself was once concerned about the experience thing. But having seen the
man assemble a crackerjack team that runs very smoothly, indeed, has
demonstrated an incredible grasp of the strategic and tactical opportunities
presented by both information technology and the mare's nest of local rules
and regulations that govern the Democratic primary and caucus system, and
triumphed over the Clinton machine (remember "inevitability"?), I see real
executive talent here.
John
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