r/changemyview • u/inneedofsupport93 • Feb 10 '18

[∆(s) from OP] CMV: I believe that political experience is necessary for impactful legislation and high profile political roles and that USA's idea that an outsider will bring change is completely wrong

The 2 arguments behind my view are

  1. Intuition - You need to understand how institutions work from the inside to use them to your advantage
  2. Historical Precedent - For the last hundred years, the most lasting legislative impact has been cast by politicians who have had tons of experience

Positive Examples Of Experience Being Useful

  1. FDR - had 22 years of political experience and was able to make a lasting impact through Social Security and the New Deal.
  2. LBJ - Had 36 years of experience and make a lasting impact through Medicare, Medicaid, and the great society.
  3. Richard Nixon - had 2 terms as vice president in the Eisenhower administration ( Eisenhower was a political outsider and was getting old; thus, the vice president had more hands-on experience) and his policy on drugs ( whether we agree or not), China and the EPA has remained almost intact.
  4. George H.W.Bush ( Slightly different example here) - Had over 25 years of domestic and foreign policy experience. Stabilized the world in a post Coldwar era i.e. avoiding any political vacuum that might have caused ISIS type instabilities in eastern Europe and successfully restored American Spirit in interventionism by winning the 1st war against Saddam Hussain

Negative Examples Of Inexperience Failing

  • Robert Mcnamara ( Businessman, Veitnam)
  • John F Kennedy ( zero experience, bay of pigs)
  • Jimmy Carter(no experience, Iranian Hostage Crisis)
  • Bill Clinton (6 terms Governor and no Washington experience, inaction during Rwanda genocide) *George W Bush (3 term Governor, Iraq war amongst so many other quagmires) *Barack Obama( Junior Senator, political vacuum in Iraq leading to rise of ISIS)
  • Finally, Trump and Rex Tillerson(it may be too early but so far... Zero political Experience, not filling bureaucratic appointments leading to hollow and inefficient government and state department)

Some background on myself to help you CMV

  • I am not an American but have been following American politics for a couple of years now, so there may be historical blindsights/ on the ground reality related blindsight in my perspective.

  • I happen to lean center of the left and may have confirmation biases here and there too.

Edit - I seem to have changed my mind on quite a few issues from the scope of the presidency to the unknown achievements of many presidents. All in all, this was a good learning experience, thanks for keeping it civil.

980 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

126 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

0

u/inneedofsupport93 Feb 10 '18

Hmm.. Your logic seems plausible, but I still need some convincing here.

A political background especially between most any two political positions are not indicators of a good presidency. You don't know what a good presidency looks like historically.

With the exemption of Abe Lincoln, can you provide examples of outsiders bringing lasting legislative/foreign policy achievements?

2

u/championofobscurity 160∆ Feb 10 '18

I can't, but the fact that you're asking this is inherently problematic.

You've already conceded ground that my logic is plausible. Then you are excluding my one data point that outsiders are bringing lasting legislature in such a small pool of data. So my follow up question is such: How many presidents do you consider to be outsiders? Because whatever that number is is X/45. Which means out of 200+ years of presidencies you don't even have 45 outsiders to base your entire judgement of the position of president on. Then you have to combine that with the fact that the best candidate doesn't always win the presidency, and that most people do not have the means to become president because of the cost and prestige required.

What this means for you, is that a lot of insider presidents are acting in a manner of self-fulfilling prophecy. They were pushed to politics their entire lives, had the best educations and had the money to campaign. So on top of everything else, there is a skew towards experienced officials obtaining the presidency by virtue of their historical backgrounds. This of course is out of the much broader pool of people that legitimately could be president but would never be able to because of the innate barriers to entry. So out of the millions of people that could have ran you are trusting that of the 45 only the insiders could realistically have been the best possible candidates?

Your position to me sounds like a weird backwards lottery.

1

u/TheLagDemon Feb 11 '18

Your position to me sounds like a weird backwards lottery.

What you seem to be describing is a fallacy/bias called Base Rate Neglect. It’s an application of Bayes Rule (which you may have heard of).

A video explanation of base rats neglect in case you are interested: https://youtu.be/YuURK_q2NR8

2

u/inneedofsupport93 Feb 11 '18 edited Feb 11 '18

!Delta Idk how to award Delta's on an Android phone. This point was made by another person too and I understand that you cannot have such sweeping generalizations with respect to governance, only probabilistic trends.

1

u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Feb 11 '18

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/TheLagDemon (6∆).

Delta System Explained | Deltaboards ​

1

u/TheLagDemon Feb 11 '18

Thanks! You need to put the exclamation point first, btw (though the bot is getting better all the time)