That's the excellent point that doesn't seem to be recognized enough. No matter what their experience and background are, NOBODY starts that job with experience No one. General experience may be an advantage. (Or it may not; you know the saying about some people having 10 years of experience and others having 1 year's experience 10 times). But they haven't been President.

A corollary is they almost never get to work on what they intended to work on. Events always intrude.

>In fairness, when Teddy Roosevelt was elected President he did have experience ... being President ! <s>
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>>Your posts get more out of order all the time <g>. Replies inserted after your most recent comments....
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>>>I'm confused. I thought experience didn't matter from your other posts. I will agree that I think it does though - except in the case of Lincoln. Are you suggesting that Obama is another Abe Lincoln? You could be right, we won't know until he is there.
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>>I didn't say it doesn't matter, only disagreed with the notion that Obama is "too inexperienced" to be President. There are precedents, including JFK and Teddy Roosevelt.
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>>>>And that's never having been elected anything but Senator from New York. What would she be like if she had the most powerful position in the world? I don't think it's irrational at all not to want that.
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>>>I'm just not sure how Obama's experience is better? In fact, his experience consists of 8 years in the Illinois state senate, not the U.S. senate. He has a whopping 2 years in the U.S. senate... (Ok, I won't bring up that he voted present 130 times so he wouldn't have to take a position on an issue which is something he won't be able to do as president - oops wait - I did bring it up, didn't I?) :o)
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>>Although voting "present" is a localized custom in the Illinois legislature and is not necessarily as bad as it sounds, I also wish he had voted yes or no in most of those cases. Nobody's perfect <g>.
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>>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/us/politics/20obama.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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>>>Just trying to keep it real. I think Hillary would be the absolute worst thing that could happen to this country.