Have You Ever Been Experienced

There’s been a lot of debate in the election about experience; who has more experience, how much experience is enough, how much of that is relevant experience, and how important it is to have “Executive Experience.”
(Ah, “Executive Experience,” my new favorite bullshit term which didn’t exist until about a month when ago Sarah Palin arrived on the scene.)

Let’s cut the shit. Presidential elections aren’t about experience anymore. This thing has been a popularity contest for the last 25 years. People don’t vote on important matters like experience and track record. They vote with their emotions on irrelevant shit like charisma and personality. It’s really no different than high school when the more-qualified straight-A students would run for student council president and have their ass handed to them by the prom queen or the starting quarterback.

Conservatives have known for years that it’s not about issues. Remember how the Republican Party ran the Bush campaign. “Who would you rather have a beer with.” That’s what it’s about. Not “who do you think is more experienced.”
In 2000: “Who would you rather have a beer with: the kooky Tennessee cyborg who claims he invented the internet, or the good old boy from Texas?”
2004: “Who would you rather have a beer with, the monster from the Franken Berry cereal box if he were a New England elitist, or the cowboy Commander-in-Chief who don’t take shit from nobody!

Conservatives are just mad because liberals have someone who might win the popularity contest. Now it’s: “Who would you rather have a beer with, the young, charismatic handsome, rock-star Senator, or the crazy ex-Vietnam veteran with skin lesions.”

Experience is one of those archaic terms people still throw around like it means something. Let’s be honest, most Americans don’t even know the name of their Senator or local congressman until they seem them on the local news running from the court house into their town-car after being indicted for drugs, prostitution, or tax evasion.

When people talk about experience, they’re thinking back to a time when Congressman and Senators used to…you know…do thing things. Look at Hillary Clinton for example. Now she took almost two years away from her job running for President (which in all fairness to her, is now-a-days a full time job). And when it was clear that she had lost, she returned to the Senate and absolutely NOTHING had changed. Nothing. Any job where you can take a fucking year off without anything happening, is not that important.

You know what, I’m glad Obama hasn’t spent 25 years in the Senate. What a shame he couldn’t gain the valuable experience of spending decades raising money for re-election campaigns, being solicited by lobbyists, and having his vote influenced by campaign contributions. What a shame he doesn’t have that experience. It doesn’t matter whether it’s John McCain or anyone else, how much really gets done in the congress by either party.
“I have far more experience than my opponent at accomplishing relatively nothing. My opponent hasn’t spent nearly as much time not fulfilling his campaign promises. The American people deserve a candidate who knows how to talk a big game, but in the end bows down to the pressures of lobbyist and campaign contributors. I am that candidate.”

What does experience matter anyhow? After the last president, is there anyone out there who believes we can do worse? We could literally hold a national lottery where anyone can be president for a week and do better. And I am including in that lottery, illegal aliens who don’t speak English and convicted felons. (And not the nice felons like in the ovies either. I’m talking about the ones that are really crazy. The type that commit ass rape because they find regular rape mundane).

Sometimes I wonder if instead of sending people into voting booths, the Presidential Election wouldn’t work better if we used one of those applause-o-meters, the same way they pick the winner of a spring-break wet t-shirt contest.