Visiting Fellow John Yoo

An insurgent party ran a young lawyer from Illinois for president. With only a few years of experience as a congressman, he had bested the giants of his party for the nomination. In the general election, he defeated a lion of the Senate who had spent the last decade brokering compromises over the most difficult questions facing the nation.

It was 1860 and that young candidate was Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's inexperience did not prevent him from becoming our greatest president. George Washington may have been the man most responsible for the founding of our nation, but Lincoln was the one who saved it.

His predecessor, by contrast, had one of the most sterling resumes ever carried by an occupant of the Oval Office. James Buchanan, who was born near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, and studied law in Lancaster, had been a member of the House for a decade, an ambassador to Russia and Great Britain, a two-term senator, and secretary of state in the Polk administration.

But scholars consistently agree that Pennsylvania's only president was the worst chief executive in U.S. history. Buchanan did nothing as the South left the Union because he believed he had no constitutional power to use force against a seceding state.

We are nearing the end of an election of change vs. experience. John McCain has accused Barack Obama of lacking the maturity and experience to serve as president. The Obama-Biden campaign has returned the same fire on Sarah Palin, who has been governor of Alaska for only two years and before that was mayor of tiny Wasilla and chairwoman of the state oil and gas commission.

Colin Powell, in endorsing Obama last weekend, said: "I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made."

History, however, does not show any obvious link between experience and a president's success in office. Many of our worst performers in the Oval Office would have won the title of most qualified.

Franklin Pierce (president from 1853 to 1857) served in both the House and Senate. A rigorous survey of scholars ranked him 38th out of 40 presidents.

Andrew Johnson (1865-69) had been a member of the House and Senate, governor of Tennessee, and vice president. He came in at 37th.

Millard Fillmore (1850-53), who checks in right before Johnson, had been vice president, a member of the House, and a New York official.

Ulysses S. Grant (1869-77) won the Civil War as general of the Union armies, but his administration was ruined by corruption.

This is not just a lesson from some far off age. Richard Nixon was one of our most qualified presidents, serving as vice president and as a senator and representative from California. He engaged in the Watergate cover-up, risked impeachment, and resigned from office.

Long government experience does not bring any special ability to use presidential power to respond to crisis.

Herbert Hoover had been secretary of commerce and was popularly known as the "Great Engineer" for his engineering company and his organization of the postwar relief effort in Europe. He could do little to end the Depression.

Woodrow Wilson had been president of Princeton University, governor of New Jersey, and America's finest political scientist. His failure over the Treaty of Versailles sparked a deep isolationism that ended only with the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor.

Inexperience, of course, can easily bring failure too. Jimmy Carter's one-term as governor of Georgia left him unprepared for stagflation and the Iranian revolution.

Experience can also help presidents succeed. Washington, the two Roosevelts, Jefferson, Eisenhower and Jackson were prominent politicians, administrators or soldiers before assuming the country's highest office.

But experience is not the magic ingredient to success. It cannot substitute for other important qualities.

If we elect a candidate only because of his experience (McCain) or his political charisma (Obama), we deny him a true mandate. William Jefferson Clinton mistook the 1992 rejection of George H. W. Bush as broad support for tax increases and universal health care. A vote for ideology over experience produced the Reagan Revolution. Like him or hate him (he now sits sixth in the ranking of presidents), Reagan's unerring commitment to a few simple principles--free markets, low taxes, and aggressive anticommunism--proved more critical to success than a long resume.

The Framers of our Constitution invented the presidency to ensure that government possessed the "decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch" to lead the nation through the unforeseen circumstances of emergency, crisis and war. Judgment, character and political principles will dictate a president's success in acting swiftly and decisively, not how long he or she served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Today's candidates--three of four of them from the Senate--emphasize their legislative records. But congressional experience provides little preparation for the presidency. The legislative mindset favors discussion over decision, deliberation over speed, and consensus over determination. Most of our greatest presidents spent little to no time in Congress. In fact, our best modern executives have defined themselves through their opposition to Congress, not their deference.

In next month's election, unfortunately, our choices may promote themselves as agents of change, but their qualifications suggest they are more likely to be led by Congress than to lead it. And that has never been a recipe for presidential greatness.

John Yoo is a visiting scholar at  AEI.