Hillary or Obama? It’s time to choose

Published in Delco Daily Times, on Monday, April 21, 2008 under the title shown above.

By Mahmoud S. Audi, Ph.D.

U.S. Sen. Hilary Clinton, D-N.Y., believes she has the experience to make the tough decision if the telephone rings, after midnight, in the White House.
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., believes he has the judgment superiority to make the right decision, if the telephone rings.
Ordinary citizens know presidents do not make decisions in this manner. Instead, they consider and discuss problems with advisors, and others before a decision is made.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to examine the relationship between experience and judgment, and to shed some light on the merit of the claims of the candidates.
Dictionaries state experience is the accumulation of knowledge, or the learning of skills, from participation in events and activities. Judgment is the formation of an opinion, after consideration and deliberation. Beyond these definitions, the quality of the output, the judgment of the deliberation depends on the experiences of the participants. This truism underscores the relationship between experience and judgment. I acknowledge the relationship is not simple.
To help you understand what I am trying to say, simply note that experience and judgment are like trees and their fruits. Experience and judgment are neither apples, nor oranges; they are apples on apple trees, and oranges on orange trees. To wit, judgment depends on experience, figuratively, as fruits depend on the plants, and the trees that carry them.
Clinton claims she has the experience to perform the duties of president starting on her first day in office. Her years of experience in public service, including eight years as the first lady, qualify her for the job.
On the other hand, Obama claims that he, as a community organizer, and a civil rights attorney, has learned to differentiate between right and wrong. That kind of learning helped him conclude, before the war on Iraq started, that invasion was wrong.
On the other hand, Obama’s experienced opponent, Hilary Clinton, failed to produce, with her experience, a similarly acceptable result about the unpopular war. This is not to belittle her experience. On the contrary, experience is valuable in every field of human endeavor.
The problem is not what is experience and what are its benefits, it is the politicians, who are notorious for making irrational decisions. When a president stands in congress and uses patriotism and its language in presenting a case, he assures himself of enthusiastic applause, energetic standing ovation, and exciting march of the flock behind him.
For fear of stigma, rarely does a member of congress stand against a call to show patriotism, even when the member is not adequately convinced of the virtue of the case, and when his hunch tells him that the justification for war, for example, on Iraq was based on falsehood.

Further, experience is an indicator of the extent of learning, and the capacity to produce a well-reasoned judgment, or a plan of action. Theories inform us that learning is a process that goes through observations (collecting data), analyses, and generalizations. Internalization, and building new mental structures, or expanding existing ones follow, to complete the learning process.
Learning is not always easy; the ease and the speed of learning depend on the experience of the learner. An experienced person finds it easier to acquire new knowledge, and to absorb it faster, than a less experienced individual.
How experienced a president or those who aspire to become president should be? The constitution ignores this matter. At the time of the founding, only the elite held high positions in government, although the constitution does not spell that out. Today an idiot could become president of the United States as long as he or she is born in the U.S., thirty-five years of age or older, and wins the election.
For that reason, it is imperative that in addition to their own learning and their own experiences, presidents and leaders of all walks of life, should seek the services of advisors, consultants, and subordinates whose experiences, put together, widen and deepen the experience of the leader.
The impression that the experience of a person depends on his or her age, may not be true. An active younger person could become more experienced than an older less active one. Also, the younger person would be more likely to use the Internet, to enhance and accelerate her or his learning, than the older person.
To emphasize, experience and judgment are not to be compared to each other; they depend on each other. In a free situation, where politicians speak their minds without fear, better experience produces better judgments, but freedom may be claimed even when it does not exist, or when it is disabled. When experience and freedom to use it coexist, one can still produce bad judgments. In this situation the mistakes must be taken as learning opportunities.
Finally, neither the experience nor the judgment of the candidates should be our influencing criteria for electing a nominee, or a president. Similarly, age, gender, race, and detailed plans of promises should not be significant factors. Instead, we should pause virtual questions, to each candidate, and try to answer them ourselves.
Some of the questions are: like these. Do we trust the candidate to work for us fulltime once we put her or him in the Oval Office? Would she or he focus on finding solutions to the problems that beset us, the people? Would he or she learn from his or her mistakes and the mistakes of others, in the world? Would she or he be more inclined to solve problems peacefully, or she or he would tend to seek personal glory through wars? Would he or she seek to lead the world through love, instead of fear? Would she or she protect us from the greedy and powerful among us?
I am still thinking about questions and answers. I haven’t finished yet, but when the time comes, I will vote.