ACORN

[Jester]

Not all experience is equal. For example, experience as a governor of a State does better qualify someone to be the POTUS. Here is a more objective measure of the more recent history.

Quantification does not equal objectivity. By what objective measure is time in a state legislature worth exactly as much as a year of military service, but each is only a third of the value of a year in the US senate? The numbers are, as he admits, plucked out of thin air. Change the weightings, especially on the value of state legislative experience, and the rankings would change dramatically.

(Afterthought: The spreadsheet makes no distinctions as to the size of the state in question for Governors and state legislators. It ought to be relevant that, in Obama's case, Chicago, Illinois is a major city in a major state, whereas Palin's experience as Governor of Alaska is obviously not comparable to, say, Reagan's experience as Governor of California?)

(Afterthought no. 2: Should all years of military experience be counted equally? Wouldn't command, and especially high rank command, be the relevant measure? How about education? Does being a superb student in a relevant program at a great university not count more than being bottom 'o the class at Nowhere Community College? The objections go on.)

I don't think we need to go back and compare Obama to Abe now do we?

That has 3 basic problems.

1) It's not what you said. You said all presidential candidates *ever*. I was arguing with what you actually wrote here:

Obama has the least amount of experience of any POTUS candidate ever.

2) That's a very small sample size, being less than a quarter of all major presidential candidates.

3) It just so happens to leave out most of the best, yet least experienced, candidates in history.

-Jester

Afterthought: As for exceptional things Obama has done in his time as a legislator, I'm not looking to shill for Obama. He's not all that with a cherry on top, and surely every candidate could use more experience and better credentials, especially young ones. I'm just contesting your statement, which appears to be correct only if you use specious measures.

For the interested