The Experienced vs. The Outsiders

It's supremely weird when you see middle-school politics being played out on a national stage. Basically, the big choice for voters of both parties- if you can forgive sweeping generalizations (and if you read this, you probably can) is between the experienced Washington insider and the outsider with big ideas. Hillary and Obama. McCain and Giuliani (and maybe Romney.)

I first saw this false choice in middle school. Every semester, we'd elect two Student Senators to the Student Senate, and we'd elect a School President from among the ninth-graders. (The school ran 4th-9th grade.) And staring in the spring of 4th grade, the same kids we elected in the fall would run again. Never mind the fact that this governing assembly couldn't govern and barely even assembled- the incumbents would run on their "experience," and while using slightly simpler language, would promise to build on their accomplishments and track record of success.

Of course, there would always be another team or two that would run as the "outsiders." They would always drop the phrase "fresh ideas" in their speeches, and just like you couldn't go ten minutes without hearing Al Gore say "lockbox" in 2000, you couldn't go ten minutes without hearing "suggestion box" used. Never mind the fact that the suggestion box only seemed to garner intelligent commentary on Jimmy Campbell's mom, or on a certain elected student official's body odor. The always-proposed, never-enacted suggestion box was a perennial symbol of democracy, giving a hallway full of screaming fourth-graders a voice with which to speak truth to power.

The whole thing was ridiculous, and clearly served as more of a civics lesson than any real form of representation. The Student Senate's legislative accomplishments usually involved something to the effect of an extra dance per year, or more candy in the vending machines. (This was long before the era of healthy food at school.) But as a civics lesson, it worked, and it illustrated a fundamental question that gets continually asked, even in the 2008 presidential horse race- do you go with the experience or with the fresh perspective?

On the whole, I think it's a false choice. Back in middle school, "experience" versus "new ideas" really didn't sway the decision. It was about which kids had more friends, which kids were better at sports, or (in a move that would make Boss Tweed proud) which kids were smart enough to bribe their classmates with candy from the vending machines. (Whether you're quietly funneling highway projects to your Congressional district or furtively distributing Twizzlers among the electorate, no good politician is ever above buying votes.)

The point is that the new ideas were never really that new, and the experience was never really that valuable. You were voting for intangibles, and they rarely had anything to do with how the candidate made it to that point in their political career. Rather, it was about trust- whether you could trust, without question, that the person was going to do the right thing. Granted, "the right thing" in middle school involved pizza parties and sugar, not delicate foreign policy.

Trusting your guy (or girl) over their opposition is, loath as we might be to admit it, just another derivative of whether or not we like them. Nobody likes to oversimplify it this much, but we vote for candidates based on a Bush-like gut rather than a Gore-like brain. And that may be why Gore lost, in 2000- a few key voting districts thought Gore made some logical sense, but they trusted Bush to make the right call when it mattered.

A moment of silence for those voters.

Anyway. No one is going to vote for Hillary Clinton just because she's spent two terms or so in the Senate, the same way nobody's going to vote for Rudy Giuliani just because his lack of national executive or legislative experience gives him a fresh perspective. You're going to vote for him because he's Rudy goddamn Giuliani and he pulled New York City together after 9/11, or you're going to vote for Hillary Clinton because you know she's got the guts to turn things around. Or Mitt Romney because he's a good, God-fearing man, or Barack Obama because it's about time we had a black man run this country.

The American public does not read political resumes, even if the news media and the Beltway population do. While it might be nice if the experience/outsider choice had some legitimacy, no one, on a fundamental level, really cares. While it may draw a thought or two, voters on either side of the aisle won't be hamstrung by how much experience, or lack thereof, their guy has. They're going to want who they want- and no burnished political resume is going to change that. (Eyes open, Chris Dodd.)

Although in my opinion, the suggestion box is vastly underrated.