Experience Rankings

One of the points getting beaten into our heads during this primary season is experience. Hillary says she has 35 years of experience serving the American people. Barack Obama talks about the life experience that he has. John Edwards talks about his experience taking on insurance companies and fighting for the little guy. Their points all sound decent, but all three have been criticized at some point for a lack of experience. Clearly, something gives. What is undeniable is that experience is an important factor, so let's analyze the experience of these three candidates. I will use my own system of ranking experience, so if you disagree, let's hear how you would change the rankings.

1- National Legislator, Governor

1.5- Major Cabinet Member (Secretary of State, Defense Secretary, etc.)

2- State Legislator, Mayor

3- City Council or some other local government position

3.5- Major businessman (CEO of Fortune 500 company, similar positions, note that if paired with any of the above positions this can make for a strong resume) 

4- Advocate or Legal Work

5- Other

Now, none of these three held any kind of major business position, so we don't have to worry about that qualification for the purposes of our rankings. Also, being a board member will not be counted because that does not necessarily entail any real of responsibilty. We are now going to go through the resumes.

Hillary Clinton- Lawyer after graduating from Yale Law School (4), children's advocate (4), women's advocate (4), first lady (this gets equal credit as an advocate because that's really all a first lady does, yes I know she worked on health care, but she had no official duty in it, she was advocating a position), national senator since 2000 (1)

Barack Obama- advocate against poverty before law school (4), civil rights lawyer (4), state senator for 8 years (2), national senator since 2004 (1)

John Edwards- lawyer (4), advocate against poverty (4), national senator for one term (1)

Looking at the resumes, we can see that all three candidates have experience as advocates and lawyers, so we must look elsewhere to compare them. The argument could be made that one must look at how long each person spent in each position, but for this kind of experience I am chalking that up to a negligible factor for lawyer or advocate experience. Even if we were taking a closer look at this though, I consider this level of experience to have a negligible impact on my ranking of their experience. 

That leaves Hillary as a national senator since 2000, or a little more than one term. It leaves Obama as a state legislator for 8 years, then a national legislator since 2004, or about half a term. It leaves Edwards as a national legislator for one term.  Not too impressive.

For our rankings though, Hillary beats Edwards because she has spent longer as a national legislator. The question is where to put Obama. If Edwards has Obama beat in national experience by half a term, does Obama's state experience put him over the top? My answer is going to be no, due to the fact that I equate one year of national legislator experience to be worth more than 3 years of state legislator's experience. Upon doing the math, you'll realize that this formula leaves Edwards with higher marks.

So, final rankings are:

1) Hillary Clinton

2) John Edwards

3) Barack Obama

My final thought is that I am still not very enthusiastic about any of these candidates' experience. They better hope that people really do prefer change over experience.