Experience or Judgment?
The two remaining candidates for the Democratic nomination for President are extolling their strengths in the areas they believe to be important – mostly because they feel that their opponent is lacking in this area. Hillary Clinton touts her experience as making her the more-qualified candidate. Barack Obama claims that his better judgment makes him the best choice.
I’m going to offer you, dear reader, some illustrations of why one of these qualities is far better than the other. If by the time you reach the end of this article you disagree with me, I invite you to respond in an intelligent manner. If you feel that I’ve scored a bull’s eye with this, please let me know.
My father was a career firefighter who retired with 20 years’ service to a major eastern city. I’m a volunteer firefighter, but age has caught up with me and while I can physically respond to the alarm, I let the young guys do the dangerous stuff. Overall, I’ve been exposed to firefighting in one way or another for very nearly 50 years. I know that by now you’re wondering what the Hell any of this has to do with politics. Here’s your answer.
When you’re inside a burning building with nothing more than a hose and two brother firefighters to do battle with The Beast, you know that your very life depends upon what you and your team decide to do in there. Experience counts. The experience of having fought fires in similar situations and knowing how fire consumes a structure will serve you well in getting the job done and the team out of the building alive. However, no amount of experience – however great it may be in scope or depth – is worth a damn if you can’t use it to make good decisions. It is this ability to apply whatever amount of experience you may have to the situation you are in that makes a firefighter a good firefighter.
This ability to make good "judgment calls" applies to nearly every aspect of human life. From farming to construction to police work to teaching – experience counts, but it is useless without the capacity to make the better decision based on that experience. The farmer has to make his best call on when to plant, the direction in which he should plow his fields, and when to harvest. Even if he’s done it 20 times before, if his judgment is flawed, so too will be his results. Think of your own life. If all you had was experience without the ability to put that experience to work for you in helping the decision-making process, you are not likely to do what is best. But, even with just a little bit of experience in whatever situation you find yourself, good judgment will serve you well.
So while Senator Clinton wants you to believe that her years of experience make her the better choice, Senator Obama is correct when he stresses that Good Judgment is the quality needed in a leader.
God knows that this country’s judgment was flawed when Bush was put into office. Let’s exercise some good judgment this time.