The marvelous paradox of politics is that it is the only field in which lack of experience is considered a job qualification. Or, conversely, in which extensive experience is cited as a negative. Consider Mitt Romney’s none-too-subtle jab at Texas Gov. Rick Perry: “Career politicians got us into this mess and career politicians can’t get us out!” Sarah Palin took a similar swipe in Perry’s direction, inveighing against a “permanent political class.”
One could point out that Romney’s critique is a bit odd coming from someone who’s been in political office or running for one for the better part of two decades. One could note that Palin, other than her early stint as a sportscaster and later role in reality TV, has worked mostly in government jobs, from the Wasilla City Council to the Alaska governorship. My point is different: that the attack on the “career politician” is as misguided as it is familiar. Your career politician is my devoted public servant.
Indeed, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina made this point during the 2008 presidential campaign. “Well, I don’t think John McCain could run a major corporation,” said Fiorina, then a senior McCain adviser. “I don’t think Barack Obama could run a major corporation. … It is a fallacy to suggest that the country is like a company. So, of course, to run a business, you have to have a lifetime of experience in business, but that’s not what Sarah Palin, John McCain, Joe Biden or Barack Obama are doing.” Fiorina is demonstrably wrong, by the way, about the categorical imperative of business experience: see, for example, Dick Cheney’s tenure at Halliburton or Donald Rumsfeld’s at G.D. Searle and General Instrument.
And, of course, her belief in the imperative of experience in the business world did not translate into a belief in the similar imperative of political grounding. Running for the U.S. Senate in California two years later, Fiorina blasted incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer for “her 28 years of being a career politician in Washington, D.C.” You may notice that she did not become Sen. Fiorina.