A word about experience

I hate to suggest that experience is overrated, but I will suggest that very sentiment right now. I don't mean to say that experience doesn't matter. But experience and good direction are not necessarily bedfellows. I could blindly hike through a forest 10 times, but that doesn't mean I know the best way to get through. In other words, I don't want to hear about how much experience someone has. I want to hear what ideas you have for getting this country through difficult times. What I haven't heard from the "experienced" candidate in this election cycle is decent, tangible ideas about getting us through. What I hear is how he knows how to do this or that, how to win wars, how to fix social security, how to fix the economy. And yet, the ideas I've heard are either puffy fluffy pep rally rhetoric or comparable to the "naive" candidate, who also happens to be more focused, intelligent, creative, and unifying than the wandering nursing-home resident with "experience."

Let us not forget that no president is perfectly knowledgeable about every facet of governing. The president has a cadre of advisors and a cabinet for this very reason. Experience doesn't necessarily give someone a leg-up on choosing the best candidates to fill these positions. More important is a worldview consistent with things that matter to the average citizen: affordable and available healthcare, tax relief, a return to policies that encourage disciplined economic growth rather than the free-for-all that created insatiable and unimpeded greed, a commitment to GOOD educational policy (and, no, Bush's brainchild (left behind) is not good educational policy). I'm sorry, folks, but for all of his experience, the wandering old man candidate does not share my worldview. It has been many years since the "maverick" has truly been a maverick. And besides, Bush's cowboy attitude was, indeed, "mavericky." Is that actually what we need? Perhaps a unifier is more in order at this point.

P.S., even scarier than experience with poor worldview is no experience with equally poor worldview. Into this category, I pitch Ms. Hockey Mom. I don't want to live in a country led by President Palin. Come on McCain... really? Sarah Palin?