… by looking at their legislative records:
- Bills written and enacted; amendments passed in the 109th and 110th Congress.
- Bills co-sponsored and passed in the 110th Congress.
- Bills co-sponsored and passed in the 109th Congress.
Despite the attempts to (oddly) pooh-pooh legislative experience by the Palin/McCain campaign, these offer interesting looks at what’s of interest to the candidates, and their ability to actually get it passed. Which sounds like fine examples of leadership to me.
I haven’t had a chance to read in detail yet, but offered for your information.
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Thanks for posting these, Dave. I spent 30 minutes looking at the linked articles, and my impression is that Obama’s legislative activity is broader and more important than McCain’s. McCain appears to be pretty focussed on military affairs and regional issues, while Obama appears to have a broader portfolio of interests with a more national focus.
What I want in a president is competence, and I think the focus on experience in the current campaign is unfortunate. McCain has more experience in that he’s been in politics for longer than Obama, but in spite of that his record in the last two congresses seems to indicate that he is much less competent as a legislator than Obama. While experience is often a good indicator of competence, they don’t always correlate positively, and the articles you linked to suggest that Obama is more competent in spite of the fact that he has less experience.
I also want a new president who is a quick study. Whoever becomes president will have to learn a new job pretty quickly. I suspect that Obama is faster to learn a new skill set than McCain because Obama is younger and less set in his ways, and because it seems to me that Obama has a more diverse set of life experiences, indicating that he has practiced the art of learning a new job more frequently than McCain has.
You mention leadership, which I think is a particular skill that is a part of the competence I’d like a president to have. McCain has practical experience as a military leader and Obama has practical experience as a community leader. I don’t think the articles you linked to really indicate how well either candidate leads in the Senate. What I would like to see is a survey of other senators about the leadership abilities of the two candidates. I suspect that Obama will be a more effective leader than McCain in the current situation, partly because I think Obama is more dynamic and inspiring than McCain.
In past years, I have regarded the presidential election as a choice of the least of two evils. For that reason, and because I didn’t want to suggest that I supported either party unquestioningly, I’ve registered as an independent. As a result, I’m a little surprised to find myself reasonably supportive of Obama for president.
I’ll charitably suggest, in Sen. McCain’s case, that the last two years have also been a Democratically-controlled congress, in which case one would expect that a Democrat would get more accomplished (bills/amendments actually passed) than a Republican. That said, I would suspect that McCain’s interests were focused more narrowly than Obama’s.
Good point about which party controls the senate. Maybe the thing to do would be to compare McCain and Obama to the average for senators in their respective parties. Not that I have time to do the research …