A man went to the hospital for a quadruple bypass. The surgeon recently suffered a debilitating stroke and his wife was filling in. The man was assured that the surgeon's wife had the experience for this as she was an office assistant for another surgeon during college, and for over 8 years she was married to one of the top cardiac surgeons in the country. She often visited the hospital and routinely traveled with the surgeon to medical conferences around the world. Thus, she was obviously qualified to perform the procedure.
A woman went to her financial planner in order to invest a huge inheritance she just received. Her financial planner, however, was on maternity leave. Yet, the financial planner's husband offered to assist her with the investment. He had been watching his wife for years, and although he was initially trained as an attorney, he recently went back to school for an accounting certificate. Besides that, he knew all the top financial planners in the country and thus had the necessary experience.
The CEO of a major company died in a tragic accident. The board held an emergency meeting to decide whom to promote as the next CEO. The company was on the verge of a major acquisition and the next CEO had to be ready on day one. The stakeholders quickly settled on the partner of the CEO, an amicable fellow who was always at the side of his partner at all company functions and trips. He had watched as his partner grew the company and prepared for the upcoming acquisition. In fact, after his partner became CEO, although a research scientist by trade, he decided to dive into the business realm and actually made it on his own merits up to the director level. The board felt that because he was the partner of the late CEO, he must have had a role in running the company himself and because he was a director, he had a degree of business acumen, thus he was qualified to be CEO.
I hope that some of the above scenarios, though different in their own right, shed some light on the current situation we face politically. One candidate, Hillary Clinton, has argued that she has over 35+ years of experience for the job of President of the United States. Of this 35 years, she frequently highlights the 8 years spent as First Lady (excluding her time as Senator, she claims experience in being First Lady of both Arkansas and the US, and working on political campaigns during college --- besides this she worked as a lawyer).
Though I do not discount that her time as First Lady was helpful in that she was privy to the workings of the government and did meet many world leaders, she did not even possess a security clearance! So, unless Bill flaunted security laws, he was legally forbidden from sharing a good deal of information from his wife.
If we take Hillary's experience as First Lady as valid, then guess who should be in the running for the republican nomination? Laura Bush! All she needs to do is get elected as a senator and in 2012 she would arguably be the 'most qualified' republican nominee. I hope this clearly shows the flaws in this argument...
Barack Obama is also a Senator, and in that sense, both he and Clinton have similar experience. However, Barack Obama did not become a high-paid lawyer as did Hillary. Instead, Barack, who was active in community politics and coalition building, decided to turn down lucrative offers both post-college and post-law school and went back to work in the local community. He did this until he realized that joining the Illinois legislature would offer him a better position from which to affect change. He never lost touch with his goal of helping the average American, even though that goal conflicted with a path to wealth that he could've easily taken. Even now, while running for arguably the most influential and powerful position in the world, he continues to speak of "we" and about how we all can create the change we wish to see.
Barack Obama, should, according to the math, be our next nominee. He will not be our nominee because of the speeches he gave but because of his experience and because of his ability to motivate us to collectively deal with the problems we face as a nation. Yes. We. Can.