The allure of the novice--Holiday Inn Express candidates

Michael Barone:

The Iowa caucuses have just passed and we await, with just two weekday prime-time news nights in between, the New Hampshire primary. The biggest surprise of the campaign so far is the success of candidates with minimal credentials and little if any experience in national governance.

The Wall Street Journal went to press before the results in Iowa were in, but Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, and Mitt Romney, a one-term governor of Massachusetts, were leading in Iowa Republican polls. Barack Obama, in his fourth year in the Senate, was running strong in the Democratic contest, as was John Edwards, who spent just one term in the Senate and has now been running for president or vice president for six years.

Even Hillary Clinton, campaigning as the candidate with experience, has limited credentials. She has some experience with the pressures of the White House and has taken some initiative on domestic policy, with mixed results. But as Patrick Healy of the New York Times pointed out recently, she never held a security clearance during her husband's presidency, and last week she was under the impression that Pervez Musharraf was running in parliamentary elections in Pakistan, although he was elected president in October.

New Hampshire may give us different results, and there is no guarantee that any of the top finishers in Iowa will be nominated, much less win the presidency. But what we are seeing this year is an unusual preference for outside-the-system candidates with less top-level experience than voters usually want in a president.

An unusual preference, but not unprecedented. In 1992 voters elected a 46-year-old Arkansas governor as president, and in the spring of that year, if the polls are to be believed, they were ready to elect a Texas billionaire whose governmental experience included serving as a junior naval officer and running a firm that provided computer services to local welfare departments. In 1976 voters elected a one-term former governor of Georgia who'd served as a state senator and a naval officer.

The metrically minded will see a common thread. Every 16 years--in 1976, 1992 and now in 2008--American voters have seemed less interested in experience and credentials and more interested in a new face unconnected to the current political establishment. What can explain this 16-year itch?

...

The voters made a mistake in both 1976 election and the 1992 election. The Carter mistake was more apparent because of his debacle in Iran. The Clinton mistake did not become as apparent until 9-11. Mike Huckabee has gotten some mileage out of the Holiday Inn Express ads. Self deprecating humor is usually charming, but it begs the question of whether he can put together a team to take on the serious problems we face and our war with a wicked enemy. His belief in redemption was very costly for the victims of crimes done by those he wanted released from prison. A similar mistake in dealing with our enemies could have even more fatal consequences. Huckabee's tax policy also appears to be more faith based than practical.

Obama is certainly capitalizing on "change" as a platform, but the change that he espouses would be a disaster for the country especially in the war being waged against us by a wicked enemy. Attacking Pakistan instead of Iraq would have been a disaster. Now that we are winning in Iraq, his policy would call for abandoning an new ally who is helping us defeat al Qaeda in what our enemy called his central font in his war against us. That is not smart, even if he did stay at a Holiday Inn Express.