Experience, we saw yesterday, is the current theme of the 2008 campaign, with Clinton trying to define (deify?) herself as the candidate most possessed of this quality--the candidate most prepared to lead and most capable of effecting change.
Yet a fissure seems to have erupted in the path she wished to lay, with Senator Obama questioning the fundamental virtue of that trait:
"Nobody had more experience than Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and many of the people on this stage that authorized this war."
Experience, however, is not the primary question; rather, it seems to be serving as a proxy for a more primal quality we are desire in our leaders: judgment. When Senator Clinton called Senator Obama "Naive and irresponsible," she wasn't attacking his experience, per se, but rather his judgment; she only used his limited time in office as support for her belief that he lacked the judgment to hold the presidency.
Senator Obama's retort yesterday, captured above, flips the whole debate over judgment and experience on its head.
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In 2002, prior to the vote to authorize this disastrous war, Senators were given an opportunity to read the classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Some took this opportunity...others chose not to.
Hillary (along with some other esteemed members of the party) was in the latter group, and she subsequently voted to authorized George's Blunder.
The NIE, however, was not some bland document devoid of meaningful information; on the contrary, it was the decisive factor in CHANGING the mind of at least one man prepared to vote for the war, former-Senator Bob Graham. Said Graham of the NIE,
There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.
The decision to read the NIE should have been a no-brainer; sound judgment, after all, dictates that before one makes a decision about sending a nation to war one must possess all relevant information. It necessarily follows, then, that whereas people such as Rumsfeld and Cheney possessed experience, they clearly lacked judgment. And thus we find ourselves neck-deep in this quagmire.
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But back to Senator Clinton. While my commentary will be light, I believe my question is heavy-and deserving of a response from Senator Clinton's very vocal supporters. I think it bears directly on the question of experience and/vs. judgment, and I believe it calls into question the very attack Senator Clinton has leveled against Senator Obama.
Was Senator Clinton's failure to read the NIE "naive and irresponsible" and, if so, does her experience (whatever that means, and probably a topic for a whole other diary) fail to translate into sound judgment?
Cross-Posted at MyDD.