Obama; "I am a believer in knowing what you are doing when applying for a job".
That is what he said in this video on November 8th 2004 right after he won his election to a 6 year term in the U.S. Senate, (look at upper right corner of video).
I guess he changed his mind. It wasn't the first time, and he's been changing it ever since.
Experience shows Obama and Palin fit right in
By Peter S. Canellos
Globe Staff / September 9, 2008
WASHINGTON - To hear Republican leaders tell it at last week's convention, Barack Obama is one of the least qualified presidential nominees in history.
Fred Thompson, the former Tennessee senator, called Obama the "most inexperienced nominee to ever run for president."
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani said Obama "is the least experienced candidate for president of the United States in at least the last 100 years."
Democrats, meanwhile, were casting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as woefully underqualified for the vice presidency, though they avoided using history as their measure.
Good idea. Even a cursory look through history suggests that neither Obama nor Palin is out of the mainstream for presidential and vice presidential nominees.
Giuliani may have chosen the 100-year time frame to invoke the memory of William Jennings Bryan, who won the Democratic nomination three times between 1896 and 1908 with only four years in the House of Representatives as experience. He was 36 at the time of his first presidential nomination.
In 1904, the Democrats skipped over Bryan and nominated Alton B. Parker, who had no experience in national politics and served as chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals. (He was very tight with New York political power brokers, however.)
But even within the past 100 years there have been nominees with experience comparable to Obama's, which includes nearly four years in the US Senate and eight in the Illinois Senate. And there have been vice presidential nominees with resumes as slender as Palin's, which lists nearly two years as Alaska governor and six years as mayor of Wasilla.
The presidential nominees with weak resumes - by the standards used by Thompson and Giuliani - include Woodrow Wilson, who had less than two years as New Jersey governor under his belt before winning the Democratic nomination in 1912; he had no prior political experience, having been president of Princeton University.
Franklin D. Roosevelt has an aura of greatness about him, but his resume upon winning the presidency included fewer than four years as New York governor and a much earlier stint as assistant secretary of the Navy. Jimmy Carter had been governor of Georgia for a single four-year term, preceded by four years in the state Senate, before winning the presidency in 1976.
Nonetheless, some Republicans at last week's convention cited Obama's lack of executive experience as his key missing credential - suggesting that even a short time in the governor's office is superior to a longer career in the Senate. If so, that standard would largely rule out such career legislators as this year's GOP nominee, John McCain, along with former presidents John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford and Harry Truman, and past nominees John Kerry, Bob Dole, and George McGovern.
Of course, quite a few men won their party's presidential nominations without spending any time in the governor's mansion or Senate; for them, experience in the private sector or appointed positions was the entirety of their credentials.
This makes sense when considering such acclaimed figures in their times as William Howard Taft, who was governor general of the Philippines and secretary of war; Herbert Hoover, who oversaw relief programs across Europe after World War I; and Dwight D. Eisenhower, the five-star general who led the liberation of Europe in World War II.
But it strains credibility to suggest that John W. Davis, a corporate lawyer who won the Democratic nomination in 1924 after having served one two-year term in the House and a stint as solicitor general, and Wendell Willkie, who secured the GOP nod in 1940 after heading an electrical conglomerate, were better prepared for the presidency than Obama.
Standards for vice presidential nominees have been, if anything, looser. To cite two examples: Sargent Shriver, the 1972 Democratic nominee, had overseen various social programs under his brother-in-law President Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, but had no electoral experience of his own; and Spiro Agnew got the 1968 Republican nod after serving the same amount of time as Maryland governor as Palin has been Alaska governor.
Some of the less-experienced nominees went on to great service as president or vice president; some were undistinguished; others lost their races and quickly disappeared from history.
But to suggest that Obama and Palin are historical anomalies is, well, ignorant of history.
He continues Bush's policies better than Bush did.
He is a sleight of hand Master and a pea game hustler. Oprah's words "He is the one" keep ringing in my mind. Complete and total bunk!