Does Experience Actually Matter for a President?

All right, everyone knows about the arguments that Hillary has been making since Day One against Barack Obama. I am referring, of course, to the "I have experience" argument (even though HRC's real world experience is debatable). The notion that an experienced President is necessarily a better one, and, conversely, that an inexperienced President is necessarily a worse one, is not borne out by the records of certain past presidents. Woodrow Wilson had never held a national level position. He had been governor of New Jersey for 2-3 years before he ran for Prez. We can see, of course, how his relative inexperience on a national scale hurt him when it came to conducting World War I. There are several other examples of strong Presidents who were relatively inexperienced, and highly credentialed Presidents who apparently did not gain much from their years of experience. The President who guided us through what was probably our greatest domestic crisis ever had served four terms in the Illinois House of Representatives and one term in the U.S. House of Representatives before his election to the presidency on the eve of the Civil War. I refer, of course, to Abraham Lincoln. Oddly enough, both his successor, Andrew Johnson, and his predecessor, James Buchanan, had years and years of experience in government. Buchanan failed to do anything worthwhile to prevent the Civil War, and Johnson messed up Reconstruction and got impeached to boot.

What I would like to see in the race is more focus on the candidates' past judgment, and how they think they would handle an MRC (Major Regional Contingency) or even, potentially, something larger than that. If 9/11 happened again, who would respond the best and fastest? That's what the voters should ask Hillary, Obama, and McCain (and Paul and Gravel, I suppose, if anyone cares about them anymore).