
Over at View from the Right, Lawrence Auster takes note of an intensifying political focus on Obama's inexperience vs. Palin's inexperience. His take:
The belief that Obama's lack of experience is his most vulnerable point reveals the stunning intellectual emptiness of the many conservatives who hold that belief. It shows an inability to oppose Obama based on the things that really matter: namely, who he is, what he stands for, what he would do as president. Very few people vote for president on the basis of the candidates' experience; they vote based on who they think would be the best person to lead the country. The Founding Fathers never spoke of number of years in office as a qualification for the presidency. They said, over and over, that the qualifications for the presidency were virtue and wisdom.
Yes, a certain amount of experience is considered as a prerequisite. And Obama is unusual in that he seems to lack it. But there is no hard and fast line in such matters. At the time that Lincoln was elected to the presidency in November 1860, his experience in significant office consisted of two years in the House of Representatives in the late 1840s. Further, the people who support Obama support him because they like him and what he stands for, not because he has experience. By the same token, getting people to oppose him involves getting them not to like him and what he stands for. So to make his lack of experience the main reason to oppose him shows something like terminal cluelessness on the part of Republicans (just as Hillary's making her supposed experience the main reason to vote for her showed terminal cluelessness). And as a result of relying on that empty argument, the Republicans are now caught in the embarrassing contradiction of supporting a vice presidential candidate who has exactly the same defect which they've made the main reason for opposing Obama, revealing them as people without principles or consistency. If they had opposed Obama primarily on matters of substance (his political principles and agenda, his wisdom and character, etc.), and not on his lack of experience, they would not now be in this fix.