A Lawyer's View on the Question of Experience
Current mood: 
thoughtful
Category: Blogging
As an attorney with 25 years of practice under my belt, I have been looking at the current presidential debate about the candidates' relative amount of "experience" or lack thereof. As I have noted elsewhere, we have elected some highly respected presidents (Lincoln and Kennedy, for example) who had no prior "executive" experience. We have also elected, as governor of a couple of important states, men whose only prior experience was acting (Regan, Schwartzenager and Ventura). Here are a couple of observations from my perspective:
The constitution sets no requirements on prior experience of the President. But the President must swear an oath to "Defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States." Today I heard an interview with Lawrence Tribe, (Harvard Law Professor), one of the most respected men on the subject of constitutional law in the country. Obama was one of his students at Harvard and Tribe described him as the most gifted student he ever had (and he taught current Chief Supreme Court Justice Roberts and Justice Alito as well). After law school Obama then went on to be a civil rights community organizer and also taught Constitutional Law at Chicago University--routinely rated as one of the top three law schools in the country. Tribe described Obama as someone who truly loves the Constitution and knows it better than any other presidential candidate he has ever seen.
President "W" has done more to walk all over the constitution than any president I can think of. The people he has appointed to the Supreme Court are the ones who decide what the constitution says. And although you may not have yet felt the impact of their decisions, I can assure you, your personal liberty is being eroded with every new decision they write. Much like the current banking crisis, I fear that one day we will all wake up and realize our constitutional rights have been bankrupted and we will all say, "When and how did THIS happen?" And then it will be too late. Big brother will be so deep into your life you'll never get him out.
McCain has vowed to continue to appoint people who are of the same mind as the people Bush has appointed. There could be no more frightening notion of "more of the same" from my viewpoint. If Sarah Palin has any influence over McCain, or if she becomes president, you can expect widespread changes to implement the radical/conservative/fundamentalist/Christian point of view she advocates. I have no problem with her belief system, I simply do not see how she has any right to impose it on all of us...and that is what will happen.
So if you're going to be President of the most powerful nation on earth....and if the U.S. Constitution is the document that sets out the fundamental framework of our government, our system of law and our life as Americans....then by all means you should be someone who understand what the damn thing says and means! Give me someone who LOVES this document and the freedom it grants us as Amercians! Being a student of the Constitution is probably the BEST experience a candidate can have to be President of the United States. I see this experience in Obama. Biden has been the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee for many years...I know he is of a like mind. With McCain and Palin, I see only more pandering to the corporate interests that are literally raping this country as we sit by and watch.
My two cents.
- Rick Sharrard, Edwardsville, IL