Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Matthew Yglesias flags this bizarre bit from Michael Barone, claiming that every 16 years the public doesn’t care about “experience”:

Every 16 years–in 1976, 1992 and now in 2008–American voters have seemed less interested in experience and credentials and more interested in a new face unconnected to the current political establishment. What can explain this 16-year itch?

Yglesias is definitely right to point out that with such a small sample size, it’s easy to find these patterns even if they are meaningless. But there’s a deeper problem: Barone is just wrong. Let’s actually look at the elections where Barone claims that the voters selected the experienced, establishment candidate. In 1960, the choice was between the sitting Vice President and a young, second term Senator with only four more years experience than Obama, and less political experience overall, *and JFK (barely) won. Barone points to 1976 as a model for an election where voters rejected “experience and credentials” and surely he means to imply that being the governor of a Southern state does not give a candidate “experience and credentials”, and this thread is picked up in 1992, with Clinton winning the nomination. But how does Barone categorize the 1980 campaign? Reagan was the two-term governor of California, and so he had as much “experience” as either Clinton or Carter. More importantly, Reagan was running as the insurgent candidate from the conservative wing of the party, while moderates like Ford and Rockefeller were still largely in charge. George HW Bush represented the establishment, and was also the candidate with the most Washington experience — former Congressman, ambassador to the UN, Chairman of the RNC, Director of Central Intelligence. For Barone’s analysis to work, we would have to accept that in the 1980 GOP race, Reagan was the establishment experienced candidate, when he clearly wasn’t.

UPDATE: See Weboy’s comment for more detail on JFK’s experience.  I had omitted his three terms in the House.  He had six years in the house and 8 years in the Senate, adding up to 14 years of “Washington experience” which is more than Obama has.  I think the larger point still stands — JFK was running as the fresh, new candidate compared to the ultimate establishment Washington figure — Vice President Nixon.