One of the issues that people who oppose Barack Obama's election to president like to trot out is the issue of his experience. I plan to take on the qualitative argument in a future diary, but first, let's put away the exceptionally silly historical quantitative argument based on age, number of years in office, and tenure at different levels of office.
Only three men in the history of the United States, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland, and Franklin Roosevelt, have won the popular vote in three elections. Two of these men, Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland, failed to achieve a majority of the votes in the Electoral College in one of their three popular victories, and therefore served only two terms as president even though they won three popular elections.
A number of people have proposed that Barack Obama's years of experience in elected office are not suitable to election to the presidency.
There are, of course, a number of examples of presidents who had no or exceptionally little experience as elected officials prior to becoming president. But I would like to propose the experience of Grover Cleveland, the only Democrat to become president between 1861 and 1913, a period of 52 years. I propose Grover Cleveland because he was a successful Democratic president and there are approximate parallels between his experience and Obama's.
Grover Cleveland served between 1871 and 1873 a brief 24 month stint as the sheriff of Buffalo before he retired to private life for nearly a decade. He became the mayor of Buffalo in early 1882 and was elected governor of New York later that year. Just two years later, in 1884, the people elected him president of the United States, an office he assumed in March 1885. In other words, the people's assessment of his qualities as a leader propelled Grover Cleveland from mayor of Buffalo to president of the United States in just three short years. When he became president, he had only a total of five years of elected experience. Grover Cleveland's successes as president caused the people to vote to retain his services two more times, though he was denied the presidency on his second election by the people on account of shenanigans in Indiana that rigged the Electoral College.
Barack Obama was a member of the Illinois Senate for seven-and-a-half years. He has been a member of the United States Senate for three-and-a-half years. With 11 years of experience in elected office, he has twice the elected experience of Grover Cleveland, who was (guess what) 47-years-old when he took the oath of office as president.
Can a man with recognized leadership skills and five years of elected experience meteorically rise to the presidency and successfully fulfill his tenure? The historical record clearly suggests this is possible.
Cleveland had a total of five years of elected experience before he became president; Obama at 11 years more than doubles Cleveland's elected tenure prior to the presidency.
Cleveland had two years of experience at the statewide level when he became president; Obama at four years of statewide experience in January 2009 will have twice Cleveland's experience.
Cleveland was 47 when he took the oath of office for president. Obama will be 47 when he takes the oath of office for president.
Cleveland proves it is quality in remarkable politicians, not quantity, that matters. In a subsequent diary, I promise to present a qualitative assessment of Obama's experience.
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