Conventional wisdom holds that the primary reason U.S. senators rarely win the presidency - 47 have tried unsuccessfully since President Kennedy was the last to do it in 1960 - is that by the time they gain enough experience to be seen as credible contenders, they have also left a long paper trial, in the form of thousands of votes, which their opponents can scrutinize and distort to their own advantage.
This year, with the field of contenders down to Barack Obama and John McCain, the Senate will certainly break out of its 48-year slump. And McCain can just as certainly expect to have his 25-year congressional voting record scrutinized and distorted by his opponent.
Barack Obama, however, faces the inverse problem. Having served just three and a half years in the U.S. Senate, and thus having a thin legislative record, Obama must answer claims that he is the least experienced presidential nominee in modern times.
The question is: Will voters care that Obama has served less time (42 months) in the federal government than John McCain served (68 months) as a prisoner of war in Vietnam?
The answer may not be as clear as it seems. Consider the Democratic primaries, during which the most experienced candidates - Senators Dodd and Biden and Governor Richardson - fared worst, while the three least experience candidates - Obama, Clinton and Edwards - dominated.
The general election is, of course, a different game. And McCain can highlight Obama’s experience gap much more credibly than the similarly inexperienced Hillary Clinton was able to do.
But the key to exploiting Obama’s inexperience is not only to talk about how little time Obama has spent in government, it’s also to show how little the Democratic nominee actually accomplished there.
An indicator of problems Obama may face occurred in February during an exchange on Hardball with Chris Matthews between a Clinton supporter and Obama surrogate Kirk Watson, a Democratic State Senator from Texas whom the Obama campaign had deployed ahead of the Texas primary. Here’s the exchange:
MATTHEWS: Now, senator, I want you to name some of Barack Obama's legislative accomplishments tonight, if you can.
WATSON: Well, you know, what I will talk about is more about what he is offering —
MATTHEWS: No, no, what has he accomplished? Sir, you have to give me his accomplishments.
WATSON: Well, I'm not going to be able to name you specific items of legislative accomplishments.
MATTHEWS: Can you name anything he has accomplished as a congressman?
WATSON: I won't be able to do that tonight.
MATTHEWS: Well, that's a problem, isn't it?
This exchange highlights an inescapable reality: Barack Obama is a presidential candidate in search of a resume. In fact, the presidential candidate of “change” never stuck around anywhere long enough to affect any real change.
In the “about” section of his campaign website, Obama touts his years as a “community organizer” in Chicago. But he admits he wasn’t very successful. The website states, “The group had some success, but Barack had come to realize that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that community and other communities, it would take not just a change at the local level, but a change in our laws and in our politics.”
So much for “Yes, we can!” It was off to the Illinois capital for Obama. But during his eight years in the state senate, Obama didn’t distinguish himself either. As Illinois State Senator Dan Cronin told ABC News, “It’s not so much what he did, but you have to sort of look at what he didn’t do in many respects. There were no bold solutions, no effort to stand up to the Chicago public schools or the unions. There really wasn’t, and there were opportunities to do so.” And when those opportunities presented themselves, he often ducked. In fact, he voted “present” over 130 times.
Why such flaccidity? Because, according to former Illinois State Senator Steven J. Raushchenberger, Obama “…has always had his eyes on the prize. And it wasn’t Springfield.” Raushchenberger told the New York Times, “If he [Obama] deserves to be president, it is not because he was a great legislator.”
The prize, of course, is leader of the free world, a job Obama’s been eyeing since he was a toddler.
Even since becoming a U.S. senator in 2005, Obama has accomplished very little. In fact, as far as I can tell, the only piece of federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor is the “Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act.”
Of course, a president’s most important job is as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. And it’s on foreign policy matters that John McCain will try to draw the clearest distinctions with his opponent. But Obama, who insists the four years he spent living in Indonesia as a child gives him credibility on the world stage, isn’t ready to concede that he has less foreign policy expertise than does McCain.
In fact, Obama insists, implausibly, that “Foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton and Senator McCain.”
Barack Obama has been able to win over millions of voters by speaking infrequently and imprecisely about public policy, while instead speaking frequently and precisely about how he thinks voters feel: frustrated, disillusioned and ready to move on from the partisan politics of yesterday.
Thus Obama has presented himself to voters as the Rorschach Ink Blot Test presidential candidate - open to interpretation. By studiously avoiding actually accomplishing anything, Obama suggests he is a leader upon whom all Americans can project their hopes and dreams.
Obama’s primary accomplishment to date, besides destroying the powerful and ruthless Clinton political machine, has been his ability to camouflage his views, leaving voters with platitudes, not policy, to consider. But with an on-going war and an economy in flux, this is no time for on-the-job training.
