The last couple of days have provided us with a wealth of Democrats suddenly crying out for the need of experience in the second position on the national ticket, despite telling the nation for twenty months that Barack Obama’s lack of experience was an asset for a reformer.  This eruption of love for a long resumé comes in reaction to John McCain’s selection of a first-term Governor in his quest to oppose a first-term Senator for the White House.  We’ve addressed that particular hypocrisy in earlier posts, but let’s take a look at Democratic tickts of the last two decades to discover when this requirement arose.

• 2004: John Kerry, a 20-year veteran of the Senate with no executive experience, chooses Senator John Edwards as his running mate.  Edwards was about to finish his first term in any public office, and while he sat on the Foreign Relations Committee, he missed most of its meetings during his tenure in the Senate.  He spent the last third of his term running for the presidential nomination and then running for VP.  Before entering the Senate in 1998, Edwards made a fortune as a personal-injury lawyer.  Experience level: Zero — no executive experience, no military experience, no foreign-policy experience.
• 2000: VP Al Gore picks Senator Joe Lieberman.  We’ll get to Gore in a moment, but Joe Lieberman had 15 years in the Senate, preceded by eight years as Attorney General of Connecticut, an executive position.  Of course, in 2004, Democrats shrugged at Lieberman’s own bid for the presidency, opting instead for Kerry.  Experience level: Good.
• 1992: Bill Clinton taps Al Gore for VP.  Al Gore had been in Congress since 1977, first in the House and at the time for five years in the Senate.  He had no executive experience, and indeed no experience at all in the private sector.  He quit law school to run for his father’s old seat in the House at 28.  Gore served in Vietnam, but had no other foreign-policy or executive experience.  Experience level: Low.
• 1988: Michael Dukakis selects Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate.  Bentsen went straight from World War II into Congress, where he remained for almost 40 years before joining Dukakis and beating Dan Quayle like a bongo drum in the debates.  He had no executive or private-sector experience at all.  Dukakis, though, had been governor for three terms in Massachusetts.  Experience level: Fair, but all as a Washington insider.

Bill Clinton remarked, in defense of Barack Obama, that people thought he was too inexperienced to be President in 1992, but that sounds like a Clinton myth to me.  Clinton had also served multiple terms as governor in Arkansas, plus at least one term as Attorney General.  He brought plenty of executive experience to the ticket when he ran — more than the incumbent President had brought to his first campaign, in fact.

Sarah Palin has more executive experience than Obama and Biden combined.  She has more overall political experience than Obama does, having been working in politics while he was still in law school.  She has far more experience than John Edwards, whom the Democrats ran in the VP slot in 2004 and considered nominating this year.  If the Democrats want to continue debating experience, well … as Obama says, that’s a debate we’d be thrilled to have.