Experience Is a Means to Wisdom, Not an End Unto Itself

[DrFunkenstein]

There seems to be a fundmamental misunderstanding about what experience signifies, both here and in the media. By the running logic, simply having been in a war makes you prepared to be a general. Or, to give another example, the person who has been in Congress the longest should be Majority Leader. Or the person who has been in the fire department the longest should be the fire chief.

Experience is certainly a means to wisdom, but experience does not mean wisdom.

An exceptional person can learn in a short period what a less exceptional person may never learn.

If I were to vote based simply on experience, I'd write in Dick Cheney. He's been in the executive office for years at the highest levels of power, he's got experience running the Department of Defense.

But then again, what has all that experience taught him? How to use military action to make yourself look "tough"? I don't want to vote for someone who takes this away from his or her experience. I want someone who can make peaceful solutions seem like common sense, who makes military action seem a matter of being smart or dumb - not of "weak" and "tough." I am tired of fighting the battles of the many years past where Democrats were afraid to look "weak" by opposing war.

If you have experience, but your experience has not taught you this, I have to question the value of "having been there."

Lots of people can have experience and yet have learned nothing from what they went through. I want judgment.

[Windy]

1. Bravo!!! n/t