For my blog post today about Chris Matthews’ Kennedy & Nixon,
I will highlight two quotes about experience: How much experience
should a candidate have to be an effective President of the United
States?
On page 154, Matthews quotes something that John F. Kennedy said in a 1960 Presidential debate:
“Abraham Lincoln came to the presidency in 1860 after a rather little
known session in the House of Representatives and after being defeated
for the Senate in 1858 and was a distinguished president. There is no
certain road to the presidency. There are no guarantees that if you
take one road or another that you will be a successful president.”
On page 176, Matthews quotes from one of Dwight Eisenhower’s speeches during the 1960 Presidential election:
“A nation needs leaders who have been immersed in the hard facts of
public affairs in a great variety of situations, men of character who
are able to take the long-range view and hold long-range goals, leaders
who do not mistake minor setbacks for major disasters, and we need
leaders who by their own records have demonstrated a capacity to get on
with the job.”
Who is right here? It makes sense to me that an effective leader
would be one who has previous experience: who knows his or her way
around the block because he and she has been in similar situations in
the past. But can there be people with the qualities that Dwight
Eisenhower lists—-having long-range vision and goals, and being
resilient in the face of minor setbacks—-who have not had a whole lot of
experience? Sure. But I don’t know enough about Lincoln to say what
gave him the savvy to be an effective leader, even though he did not
have much experience when he became President.