Some Experience Necessary: Which Presidential Candidate Had the Best Résumé?

Terms of service are rounded, so they may be off a year either way. I only mentioned military service for Eisenhower, although obviously that figures in too with people like Dole, McCain, and Kerry.

Dewey: Governor, 5 years; District Attorney of New York County, 3 years

Thurmond: Governor, 1 year; State Senate, 5 years

Eisenhower: President of Columbia University, 5 years; war hero, WWII

Stevenson (same for ’52 and ’56): Governor, 3 years

Kennedy: U.S. Senate, 7 years; U.S. House, 6 years

Nixon (same for ’60 and ’68): VP, 8 years; U.S. Senate, three years; U.S. House, 3 years

Goldwater: U.S. Senate, 11 years

Humphrey: VP, 3 years; U.S. Senate, 15 years; Mayor of Minneapolis, 3 years

Wallace: Governor, 4 years

McGovern: U.S. Senate, 9 years; U.S. House, 4 years

Carter: Governor, 4 years; State Senate, 4 years

Reagan: Governor, 8 years; famous actor

Anderson: U.S. House, 20 years

Mondale: VP, 4 years; U.S. Senate, 12 years; State Attorney General, 4 years

Bush I: VP, 8 years; C.I.A. Director, 1 year; RNC Chairman, 1 year; UN Ambassador, 2 years; U.S. House, 4 years

Dukakis: Governor, 8 years; State House, 6 years

Clinton: Governor, 11 years; State Attorney General, 2 years

Perot: business guy

Dole: U.S. Senate, 27 years (minority/majority leader, 9 years); RNC Chairman, 2 years; U.S. House, 8 years; State House, 2 years

Bush II: Governor, 6 years; business guy

Gore: VP, 8 years; U.S. Senate, 8 years; U.S. House, 8 years

Nader: consumer advocate

Kerry: U.S. Senate, 15 years; Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, 2 years

Obama: U.S. Senate, 3 years; State Senate, 7 years

McCain: U.S. Senate, 21 years; U.S. House, 4 years

Romney: Governor, 4 years; business guy

Poppy Bush, obv, his generation's James Buchanan (whose resume also looks impressive).

I'm guessing Clinton falls somewhere in the middle of that list.

I might put Dole ahead of Bush; you have decide how to weight the different offices. If Kennedy had lived and LBJ been the nominee in '68, he would be #1 easily.

I'd put Nixon ahead of H.W.

And maybe Gore ahead of all of them.

dole. vp experience is worse than useless.

War Hero for Ike? More like Supreme Commander of Allied Forces

A lot of these guys were "war heroes"

I mean not that it was the best qualification for the presidency but Ike had the most impressive resume by far

I used War Hero as shorthand for three different high-command posts, assuming everyone would be familiar with the magnitude of his military service.

(xpost) I think I'd be inclined to go with Dole too, although you always hear that Gore's vice-presidency was more influential (on Clinton, that is) than anyone who preceded him in that post.

I included a couple of RNC chairmanships, but thinking about how hapless Reince Priebus has looked on TV the past two elections, I'm thinking it's become a pretty dubious post.

McGovern was also a war hero. He flew bombers over Europe in ww2.

yeah as a caveat the nature of the vice presidency has changed during my lifetime. i wouldn't seriously claim either biden or cheney's vp experience was "worse than useless". maybe not gore's either. but when ghw bush had the job it meant about as much as it did when lbj had it.

i would guess that back in the day ppl had to type on typewriters so the fonts were all the same, so im disqualifying all resumes made in the pre-PC age. meanwhile, i bet george w used papyrus or something to type his name. i bet obama used helvetica, he likes to minimize the number of choices he makes in a day, so i can see him not going too deep into the font library.

i'm gonna go with mitt romney: his "binders full of women" comment suggests a fastidious commitment to organization, so bet that same day they went to office depot to buy those binders, they also got some good resume paper, and i'd guess as a successful businessman and mormon that he cares deeply about appearances. so, romney had the best resume. but i bet he interviews kinda so-so.

Ross Perot still had lingering ties to IBM, so he was able to photocopy his the most.

ike

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