I’ve been following America’s progress towards the presidential elections. In particular, the tight race between Democrat rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has been particularly interesting to watch.

Clinton is generally selling herself on the basis of her experience and has tried, on numerous occasions, to discredit Obama on this count. In response, Obama and his supporters have responded that experience and judgment are not the same.

Indeed, I would agree with Obama that experience and judgment are fundamentally two different things, and if I have to choose, I’ll choose a leader who has better judgment but little experience over one who has more experience but less astute judgment. The reason is simple: the former can make sound decisions in any situation but the latter can only make sound decisions in situations that are similar to what he/she has previously experienced.

That being the case, picking the right candidate is actually quite easy, if not for the fact that it’s almost impossible to know who has good judgment and who doesn’t. And besides, whether a given judgment is good or bad is often situated, be it culturally, socially, economically, politically… (the list goes on and on). Whether someone has good judgment or not probably all boils to a matter of personal belief.

It’s quite obvious that I have sympathies for Barack Obama. I think Clinton should stop harping on the experience issue. At the end of the day, even if the so-called ‘inexperienced’ Obama becomes president, he will not be governing the country alone. He will assemble a team to help him and, in that team, he can get the most ‘experienced’ people in the country. He doesn’t need to be ‘experienced’. All he needs is to be able to assemble ‘experienced’ people to work for him.

And, I think this is Obama’s strongest point. He has proved that he can rally different groups of people around him. Clinton may be more ‘experienced’ but she can’t do everything by herself, no? Besides, by harping on experience being an essential pre-requisite for being a president, Clinton is opening herself to attacks on mistakes that she has made in the past. It’s a double-edged sword.

Applying my argument to local politics, it should be no surprise that I don’t buy the rhetoric that political parties in Singapore other than the PAP are not capable of governance because these parties lack experience. Civil servants can share the experience of governance with an inexperienced politician. What is more important to me is whether I believe that politician I’m voting for is able to make a correct judgment.