Does Experience Matter?
This past weekend a political pundit (can’t recall which one) pointed out that candidates often lose when they hang their election hopes on long experience. Nixon lost to Kennedy. Carter lost to Reagan. Hillary Clinton lost to Obama, and John McCain’s campaign appears to be done for.
The quantity of a person’s experience isn’t enough to grant authority to his or her thoughts or actions. This lesson was driven home to me more years ago than I care to admit, when I was a novice teacher in a public high school. One veteran teacher was fond of dueling on the ground of his experience whenever he was in a disagreement about school policy or teaching methods. His strong thrust in such arguments was, “Based on my twenty-five years of experience…”
