"What I think is more important is judgment. Judgment can be borne out of experience. It would be nice to think the more experience we get, the better our judgment is. But I don't think that's the case. I mean, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have an awful lot of experience, and yet have engineered what I think is one of the biggest foreign policy failures in our recent history.
So I would say the two most important things are judgment and vision... judgment, vision and passion for the American people, and what their hopes and dreams are."
Interview with Anne E. Kornblut, the New York Times, 11/1/06
Another quote from Barack on this topic:
"I don't know exactly what makes somebody ready to be President. It's not clear that J.F.K. was "ready" to be President, it's not clear that Harry Truman, when he was elevated, was "ready," and yet, somehow, some people respond and some people don't. My instinct is that people who are ready are folks who go into it understanding the gravity of their work, and are able to combine vision and judgment. Having knowledge is important. I'm one of those folks—I wouldn't probably fit in with the Administration—who actually thinks that being informed is a good basis for policy.
Interview with David Remnick, New Yorker, 10/30/06
In addition, on the experience issue, it is relevant to point out that the only governmental experience of one of our finest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, was eight years in the Illinois legislature and just two years in Congress.
Barack Obama has served seven years in the Illinois Senate and is now completing his first two years as U.S. Senator.
The Committee
