Chuck Raasch: Obama is not ready, neither are his foes

D ES MOINES – When it comes right down to it is anyone experienced enough to be president?

Over the past 30 years alone, the job has been widely perceived and described. It was supposed to be too much for one man during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. It was revived under a skilled political actor, Ronald Reagan, who brought innate American characteristics like optimism back to the Oval Office. The presidency was questioned as irrelevant during the early years of Bill Clinton. And now, there are those who think the job again is too much to bear (George W. Bush, post 9/11). All these men openly and often painfully aged in office. Political and media battering aside, just listening to the daily threat assessment from the intelligence services alone would age a person.

Can any human be fully prepared for the presidency’s darkest secrets or its most open expectations? Maybe that’s why God has been invoked so frequently in this marathon campaign that is suddenly turning into a sprint to Thursday’s Iowa caucuses.

By implication, the candidates are saying the challenges are beyond mortal beings.

Now, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Bill Richardson, Rudy Giuliani, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and others argue that their life and political experience make them uniquely qualified for the job. But that’s an unknown until they get there. It’s why Americans look to different things than length of a resume, especially at a time when respect for politicians and for the institutions of politics is so low.

This is what makes Hillary Clinton’s and her surrogates’ attacks on Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s relative lack of experience — he was an Illinois state senator just three years ago — so risky. Especially when her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is the messenger.

Bill Clinton faced the same “he’s not ready” arguments when he first ran for president in 1992. The Clintons sagely turned the dissention around as the desperate acts of an establishment hell bent on holding onto power, and portrayed themselves as fresh voices of change.

The assassination Thursday of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto could bolster Hillary Clinton’s claims that the times require an experienced president, and underscores the challenges facing whomever is elected president.

But if Obama can coherently make the Clintons’ case in ‘92 over the next five weeks, he could be his party’s 2008 presidential nominee.

About this time 16 years ago, then Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska was warning fellow Democrats that Bill Clinton was unelectable, that the Arkansas governor’s lack of Vietnam service would invite Republicans to open Clinton up like a “soft peanut.” Now Kerrey has endorsed Hillary Clinton, in part because of her experience. But Kerry also undermined the Clintons’ case against Obama by declaring the Illinois senator “exceptionally qualified by experience and judgment to be President of the United States.”

Back in 1992, the Democrats were attracted by Bill Clinton’s potential, and the Republicans never knew what to make of him. They portrayed him as a mediocre governor of a small state. Pat Buchanan, whose “peasants with pitchforks” primary challenge was itself a challenge to the indifferent leadership of the first President Bush, declared that the sum total of Bill Clinton’s foreign policy experience came at the International House of Pancakes.

Along came Ross Perot, a giant of business who was going to fix the economy, but who came across like a crazy uncle once he stepped onto the political stage. Clinton looked smart, stable, and ready to go. And Clinton the unprepared became president for eight years.

Is Obama any less prepared than Bill Clinton was in 1992? In recent interviews, Clinton has argued that the answer is yes, that he was the “senior governor” in the United States with considerable chief executive experience. But elected at 46, Bill Clinton was one year younger than Obama will be at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August. And in ‘92, Bill Clinton had been a government man, with no real experience in private business. Yet he ran a successful “it’s the economy, stupid,” campaign to confront a recession.

Even some of Clinton’s Cabinet members, including his Labor Secretary Robert Reich, have recently argued that Bill Clinton had virtually no experience beyond a small, rural state when he was elected in ‘92.

What is experience in the ‘08 context? Is it your age multiplied by five-point plans and action memos and the ability to out-negative your political opponents? Or is it the ability to articulate a believable vision, connectivity, optimism, and demonstrable judgment when it comes to things like going to war – as Obama often reminds voters?

Jerry Kellman, who in 1985 gave Obama his first post-college job as a community organizer in Chicago’s tough South Side, was asked whether the 46-year-old Obama was ready to be president.

No one is ever “ready” for the job, Kellman replied. But, he said, a younger Obama showed him something in a $10,000-a-year social services job that most people washed out of in three months.

‘“I think that Barack is much more reflective than the average person that runs for president,” Kellman said. “He has a more developed internal life, which makes him question some things that people take for granted.”

He said Obama arrived at his doorstep as an ideological and hopeful young man, but that he soon learned that “people were not always motivated by the best of motivations, and that they are not going to necessarily appreciate doing the right thing for its own sake.

“And that you have to deal with the realties of power and money if you expect to accomplish anything for yourself or other people,” Kellman added.

He said that Obama “is a quick learner, but he is being asked to learn at a very rapid pace. … Whether he learns fast enough to be elected president — we’ll find out.”