I just wrote the following letter to my Senator:
Senator xxxxx, Museums are one of the backbones of our scientific infrastructure. I wanted to voice my opposition to the Coburn authored "Limitation of Funds Amendment No. 175". Although the concept of taking a close look at any wasteful spending in the stimulus package is certainly laudable, lumping museums, zoos, and aquaria amongst the likes of flatscreen TVs and casinos is absurd. Quite the opposite is true. Funding for museums represents precisely the sort of program that makes for smart stimulus spending. Museums are among of the most important infrastructural components to science in this country. Any study on ecology, biodiversity, evolution, comparative anatomy, or comparative genomics relies on material housed in research collections. Museums, zoos, and aquaria are locations where some of the best science is undertaken and resources on which the best scientists depend. Science is "shovel-ready." Numerous quality scientists are underemployed or forced to seek employment elsewhere due to a shortage of positions. There are people ready to go to work if their salaries can be procured. There are quality research projects ready to be conducted if the funds are made available. Any member of an NSF funding panel will testify that every round of submissions sees a very high fraction of rejected research proposals that were deserving of funding. To issue a blanket rejection of stimulus funds to museums represents a rejection of some of the very best scientific research and a missed opportunity to provide jobs and infuse capital into a sector of the economy that represents both a long-term investment in our future and a short-term shot in the arm through jobs and money well spent. Whether appreciated or overlooked, museums will represent a key component in the new economy. For instance, study on the effects of climate change or environmental degradation on the living world would literally end tomorrow if museums were to disappear. In spite of their importance, most collections in this country are understaffed, often deteriorating, and long overdue for upgrades. I encourage you to not only reject Amendment 175, but to consider boosting support to NSF and to our research institutions, museums, zoos, and aquaria.
I thought I would try to address the experience issue with some numbers. I think one of the strongest rebuttals that can be made against anyone who says that Barack Obama does not have enough experience is to point out that Obama has an almost identical record of experience to Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president. At the time of inauguration in January 2009, Obama will have served 4 years in the U.S. Senate and 7 years in the Illinois State Senate for a total of 11 years as an elected official. Lincoln served 2 years in U.S. House of Representatives and 8 years in the Illinois State House of Representatives for a total of 10 years as an elected official.
But surely Lincoln was an outlier, right? One would assume that all of our great presidents weren't so inexperienced. I have investigated this by looking at the top U.S. presidents available here. The top ten list is based on an average of several attempts at ranking conducted by historians. I (obviously) had nothing to do with constructing the average list or any of the individual lists used to calculate the average. I divide experience into two categories: larger-scale experience and smaller-scale experience and calculate those separately. In larger-scale experience I include Vice President, U.S. Senator, U. S. Representative, Governor, and senior Cabinet member. Smaller-scale experience includes State Legislator, Lieutenant Governor, or junior Cabinet member.
I don't really know how to crunch the numbers to include the really big role that Eisenhower played in WWII, Jackson in the War of 1812, and Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War. Those were certainly relevant experiences and I feel the need to point out that they are not included in the calculations.
The average amount of large-scale experience for great presidents is 5.4 years with a median of 3 years. Total average: 8.3 years, Total median: 6.8 years. If Eisenhower is excluded due to his experience coming from a completely different location, the numbers are: Large scale-average: 6.1 years, Large-scale median: 4, Total average: 8.3 years, total median: 9.5 years.
So where do the top three Democratic frontrunners match up:
A cursory look at the worst U.S. presidents shows their experience record to be about the same as the top 10. Harding, Buchanan, Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Harrison, Grant, Tyler, Taylor, Garfield, and Nixon all had a reasonably large amount of experience holding public office or a strong military career to make up for it. I suppose Millard Fillmore was a bit of a lightweight.
Ultimately experience is a threshold question: "Do you have enough?" Once the answer to that question is "yes", there doesn't seem to be any connection to the answer to "how much" and the quality of the presidency. Does Barack Obama have enough experience to be president? According to the top 10 presidents in history, I think the answer is clearly "yes". Clinton's extra 4 years in the Senate and (if one makes the big assumption that being the First Lady counts) her extra 5 total years of experience don't seem to be an indicator of what sort of president she will be. Instead we should be asking which candidate has the integrity, incorruptibleness, foresight, intelligence, inspiration, thoughtfulness, and strength of character of Lincoln, FDR, Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Truman, Jackson, and Eisenhower. Meanwhile we, the voters, should be wary of any signs of the sort of cronyism, hyperpartisanship, lack of integrity, incompetence, overreaching of authority, and dishonesty that marred the legacies of Harding, Buchanan, Pierce, Andrew Johnson, Grant, Fillmore, and Nixon.*
[*Note that these are lists to describe the historical presidents, and do not apply perfectly to Obama and Clinton respectively. I do, however, think that Obama clearly scores much higher marks than Clinton when it comes to being like the first list over the second.]
