Feb 22nd, 2008
Of experience and judgment
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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.
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Bravo!
I don’t really buy that too, but that’s what the Gahmen’s rhetoric hinges on, isn’t it? They are always saying that they have the experience, while in the private sector, people who are ‘experienced’ are replaced by fresh new faces with a different perspective and judgement. It’s two worlds in one island again, but then again, what’s new?
Something I wrote in Oct last year.
Just for laughs.
http://wherebearsroamfree.blogspot.com/2007/10/us-presidential-elections-2008-satire.html
hmm….could that be the reasons we have ex-generals in DBS, in Singtel, in Temasek, in IDA? No experience,but great judgement and leadership skills = qualified. you see, our gahmen have been very open minded all this while. so don’t worry.
Do Singapore’s ex-Generals really have great judgement and leadership skills? How much time did they spend in the military? And how does one know they are qualified for their civilian jobs?
Democratically governed countries have civil servants who run things on a day to day basis.
The civil service outlasts Presidents, Prime Ministers and Ministers. MPs, Senators, Congressmen come and go.
Thus an inspiring and able leader can galvanise the civil service.
And the country can be saved from a poor one leader/leaders by competent civil servants.
But if leaders and civil servants are well paid but lacking in “the right stuff”, who will help the country?
I concur my friend. This idea of experience is pretty much overrrated. If experience were really the determinative factor then one could just vote for someone older everytime.
Of course there are instances where judgment and experience overlap; namely whereby the more experience one has the better one’s judgment supposedly becomes but that again is not determinative and should not be the sole factor.
An interesting thing in Singapore is the fact that the ruling party often throws in the argument that having been the ruling party they have the experience. This argument is rather ingenuous because it makes use of the party’s name to shock people into voting for it, thus conflating the candidates abilities and that of the party.