by Matt Barr

Accounting for all the successful modern Presidents who were former Senators

Prof. Marci Hamilton posits at Findlaw's Writ that governors simply lack the foreign policy experience to be effective modern presidents.

[S]tate-level experience is no preparation for the larger issues a President confronts at the national level, especially issues involving foreign policy and the conduct of war.

The job of leading the United States in war has become extraordinarily difficult. To think that someone who has had nothing but state experience could do it effectively is to fundamentally underestimate what is required.

It is simply not enough that a presidential candidate be briefed on the campaign trail, or that he or she be the titular author of a platform for a party that is crafted on the basis of expert opinions. The realities of diplomacy and war; of the intelligence agencies; and, lately and especially, of radical Islamicist terrorism, all call for hard-knocks experience in foreign affairs.

Thus, this is an era when a Senator who has served on the body's military and foreign affairs committees simply has better credentials for the job than any governor can.

It's strange how when President Bush's approval ratings are in the 70s he's a cipher letting a cabal of current and former Secretaries of Defense and other neocon warmongers run things for him; when he's having a bad year, he's in over his head and beyond advisement.

Noting that Woodrow Wilson and FDR were governors who became presidents who won wars, Hamilton limits her analysis to the modern era, when things are much more complicated. Fair enough, I suppose, but that leaves us two former Senators since World War II who have been President, none in nearly 40 years, and one of whom, Johnson, I hope isn't a serious argument for how you should run a war.

Acknowledging that the greatest foreign policy successes of the post-World War II era were accomplished by a former Governor of California, Hamilton calls Reagan the "recent exception that proves the rule," by which she seems to mean "the recent exception I can't explain," since proof of the rule is that Reagan "entered office with a vision for foreign policy and of the proper end of the Cold War."

Almost every president enters office with a vision for foreign policy, of course -- even the current one! But "a foreign policy concocted for a campaign season is simply not enough -- such a policy should come from a lifetime of thought about these issues, and dedication to principles that will yield steady leadership rather than fearful overreaching." You probably think she's talking about Sen. Kerry, but it's actually Sen. McCain:

Sen. John McCain has corrected the Bush Administration more than once, charging it with crossing lines it simply did not need to cross. He has seen some of the worst of war, as a prisoner of war, but just as important, he has been in the Senate working through these foreign affairs and war issues for years.

Though there are probably some other Senators who will be running in 2008 whom Hamilton will be likely to support, too. By primary season Sen. Clinton will probably have developed "a lifetime of thought about these issues," and -- dumb luck! -- she serves on the Armed Services Committee!

Browse books from Amazon.com:
Senate presidency neocon+cabals