The argument Republicans have been making that Obama has insufficient experience seems to me, on a little reflection, able to be shown as an essentially typical Republican (AND VERY ELITIST, AS REPUBLICANS REALLY ARE BY NATURE) position.
The argument Republicans have been making that Obama has insufficient experience seems to me, on a little reflection, able to be shown as an essentially typical Republican (AND VERY ELITIST, AS REPUBLICANS REALLY ARE BY NATURE) position, reflecting the notion that ONLY those annointed by providence (by being in a favored position, usually by birth or wealth - or by being the handmaidens of those people) are fit to lead; and Obama clearly doesn’t fit into that category, despite all his sterling qualities (which recitation is part of the Republican argument structure because the truth of those qualities is so obvious, and therefore must be countered somehow by means of this argument) essentially because he has not been around long enough to become part of the elite club of people who ARE qualified to lead (which could only happen, really, by his being accepted by those people - whatever such acceptance might cost). What seems particularly striking about this argument is its inherent opposition to one of the basic tenets of our democratic values, namely the wisdom of the ordinary, common person, and the terrific confusion in which that idea finds itself in the era of George W. Bush, who got elected as such a person, when he is both (a) obviously, by birth and education, NOT such a person by any means, and (b) also obviously, not in any way (except knowing how to win elections playing dirty) wise - it also being true that that notion of the meaningful wisdom of the common voter has a long history of public debasement and confusion in this country, from the demonization of Huey Long (i.e., the erasing of all his good qualities from the public mythology about him) to the fact that some of the most wise executives in modern history have been the liberal patricians Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, against which these profoundly elitist Republicans have crafted the highly politically successful attack on such people (including Obama) as elitist.
There has got to be something in these facts that can be used to blow up the evil Republican electoral death grip.