Today, I got an email from my uncle, a forwarded one of course, attempting to detail and compare Barack's executive experience to John McCain's. The two columns of comparison were years in Congress and years in the military.
It was along the lines of McCain: Congress-26 years, Military-22 years...Obama: Congress-143 days, Military-0.
Here was my response.
First of all, how old is this forwarded nonsense? Obama has been in Congress since January 2005. That's over three years which is much more than 143 days.
Second, neither of these categories describe executive experience. The role of Congress is to create legislation, not to enforce any legislation. The definition of an executive is "a person or group of persons having administrative or supervisory authority in an organization," that is not what a senator does. A good example of executive experience might be community organizing, which is described as "a process by which people are brought together to act in common self-interest." The leader of such organizing would definitely show some executive, organizing, leadership type experience. Barack Obama was a community organizer in Chicago from 1985 to 1988. During these three years, he worked as the director of the Developing Communities Project, and during his tenure, he was able to grow the project's budget by 500%, and he was able to set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization. That is executive experience. Also, in his second year of law school, he was elected president of the school's law review. In this position, he served as editor-in-chief, and was responsible for supervising a staff of 80 editors. That is executive experience.
Third, during McCain's tenure in the military, which is very respectable, he spent little time in an executive role. His first executive type role would be in 1976, when he was a commanding officer of a training squad in Florida for a year. McCain left the Navy in 1981 due to the fact he was never likely to make full admiral due to "poor annual physicals and had been given no major sea command." (Timberg, American Odyssey, 135).
So, I hope this wasn't too long, but I think its a good summary of EXECUTIVE experience.
And by the way, this is my work, not a forwarded message.
Chris Comninel