On quals for President.

I've made no secret that I am not a fan of Senators, or anyone who has spent their entire career as a legislator, as a candidate for President.  That would include Senator McCain, honestly. 

Because there is almost nothing about being a legislator that prepares you for the direct, single responsibility of being the Chief Executive.

You have to propose a budget, work with the legislature to get it enacted, then you have to execute within it.  Or cope, directly, with the consequences of not doing so.  Legislators get to click their tongue at you, safe in the net of collective responsibility and plausible deniability.

Legislators are the "good idea fairies" of government.  They get to float all sorts of ideas, some good, many bad, some just mediocre.  And then they get to pass them off to the Executive to implement.  And if they go wrong, safe in their cloak of invisibility, they get to cluck their tongues again.

Those who can, do.  Those who can't, teach.  Those who can't teach, criticize.  Many legislators fall into the latter two categories.  Few are called into the first. 

Take Governor Jindal of Louisiana as an example.  Pretty new to the job, eh?  Had some rough moments, too, learning to deal with the lifelong legislative alligators, and lost a finger or two.

And, in the last two weeks, and in the upcoming weeks, is doing on-the-job training in governance that no pure legislator - good idea fairy - ever has to face.

He's juggling security, both passive and active, he's managing provision of health care, both acute and displaced long-term.  He's managing flood control, rescue, power distribution, provision of basic needs such as food, water, a place to sleep and... to poop.  He's got a mass population movement to deal with, he's working with local, state, federal response agencies along with well-established non-governmental agencies - and all the well-meaning volunteers.  Then he's got other states to coordinate with, as a result of both inter-state compacts and the population movements - and he's still got to meet the requirements of laws and regulations not suspended by various disaster declarations.  And, in the end, he's got to find a way to pay for it, and do so as a good steward of his state's, and the United States' (i.e., *our*) monies, too.

Most importantly - he's not directly managing that - he's managing all of it through subordinates, while keeping an eye on what's coming down the pike.

And he'll have to fight off the vultures in legislative garb who will swoop in for partisan effect.  Leave aside the pundits (yes, including bloggers like this one)  who will watch and carp.

He'll succeed, or he'll fail.  If he succeeds, in many respects, he'll be far more qualified and *experienced*  to be President than anyone, including Governor Palin, sitting on the national tickets right now.  The ability to manage a large-scale disaster is, in and of itself, not enough - you have to be able to do the routine stuff I started this post with. 

I prefer my President to have some real idea of what he or she is getting into.  And not vicariously.  That doesn't mean that both Senators McCain and Obama won't rise to the occasion - but, in many respects, the Republican Veep choice has got a leg on both of them., as well as her down-ticket rival.

Jim Manzi, writing over at National Review's The Corner, has some thoughts on the subject that mirror mine - he posits two forms of qualification - Executive Experience, or Supreme Command in Wartime - he then lays out the 20th Century Presidents based on those two quals:

 

Consider the list of 20th century presidents with one of these two qualifications (WSJ 2005 rank in parentheses): Theodore Roosevelt (5), Franklin Roosevelt (3), Eisenhower (8), Reagan (6).

Now consider the list of those without either qualification: Taft (20), Wilson (11), Harding (39), Coolidge (23), Hoover (31), Truman (7), Kennedy (15), Lyndon Johnson (18), Nixon (32), Ford (28), Carter (34), George H.W. Bush (21), Clinton (22).

Which deck would you rather draw from?

Indeed.


Update: Ack!  Bad blogger!  This post was done via email, and I didn't copy the last line after "Indeed" - which would have inoculated me against the observation Frank made in the comments -

"Though I see Manzi's own prejudices caught up with him, perhaps - both Presidents Carter and Clinton were Governors - of Georgia and Arkansas, respectively."

But, perhaps, since he has the "largest state" qualifier in there (though I suspect he rather meant "larger states") allows him to draw his Venn diagram that way.