I’ve had dozens of interviews in the past two months and only recently been hired. Looking for a job is a frustrating business. Of course, I will walk out on a limb and suppose that hiring is an equally frustrating job. Human Resources personnel consider numerous character aspects while sifting through job applicants. What is the applicant’s work history like? How have they dealt with responsibility? Who are their references and how relevant are they to the position? This list goes on and on - a seemingly endless number of questions to find out whether or not the candidate is the right person for the job. This isn’t to say that all the job applicants aren’t good fits for A job, but maybe not THE job the company is hiring for. I’ve been grilled, raked across coals like meat on a barbecue so that potential employers can poke through my fleshy exterior and expose my strengths and weaknesses. I’ve granted background checks so that companies can rifle through my most private information and I suppose, ultimately discover whether or not I’m Jack the Ripper in lesbian clothing. My question is this… do we really expect any less from pundits or the general public when it comes to hiring an individual to take on one of the most important jobs this country has to offer? I want my Presidential candidates filleted, gutted, and seasoned with garlic and butter. And thank God for the media. The media is the FBI of background checks when it comes to politics. What would we do without their Broadway musical numbers which suggest that Obama’s citizenry is bitter and Clinton’s citizenry is heartless? “Bitter and Heartless” - sounds like a musical number from Sweeney Todd.

I imagine sitting in a large office chair behind the biggest most expensive desk money can buy and considering the resumes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for a more or less “ordinary” job. For the sake of this exercise lets exchange Obama and Clinton’s political experience with academic experience and consider them potential candidates for the position of Dean at a prestigious University. The reason I have chosen this particular field and job is because it does not remove the candidates from a position of hierarchy, importance, or knowledge (skills which I believe are essential for President) and therefore is not as far-fetched as considering Obama and Clinton for, say, fast-food cashier.

Truth be told, I don’t care if Obama can inspire hope and comradery amongst the staff at a University. For me, the ability to get along with and play nice with others is not one of my chief concerns. Its simply icing on the proverbial cake. I’m looking for someone who has experience being Dean or, has experience in a capacity close to the Dean. This, of course, is not an uncommon or unrealistic request. After all, this is precisely what Human Resources personnel look for when they are thumbing through hundreds of applications. Experience, experience, experience. If you’re sending in an application for Data Entry and the closest you’ve ever come to working with a computer is asking your Mother to type up your resume, you’re probably not what the company is looking for. If you won’t hire a fisherman to be an attorney because he has no experience being an attorney, then yes, experience is important - no matter how you slice it and dice it. (The very fact that Obama supporter’s so eagerly throw Clinton’s experience aside in favor of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. like sentiments makes me want to crawl in a hole and wait until the Experience Holocaust has come to an end.) If you wouldn’t hire a fisherman to be an attorney, why on Earth would you elect someone who has such very little experience to run an entire University? Its precisely like saying, “Well, the fisherman hopes he can change the way attorney’s do work!” Is hope and change a job qualifier? I don’t remember being asked this in any of my interviews. Maybe I should have brought up that “I hope I can change the way the company works” during my interview? Maybe that would have gotten me hired? Of course, I’m being facetious. I’m confident that if I had come into an interview touting what I could change about the company and how bitter employees were that I would never have landed the job. Never. Hiring committees would see this as cocky and probably a bit psychotic. You don’t endorse change in a company or in a system unless you have been around long enough to suggest it. Its that simple. Obama’s answer to experience has been that he can change things and make them better, yet he hasn’t been a part of the academic process long enough to know how to go about making change. Clinton wins the experience battle. Sure, she wasn’t the Dean before - but she was married to the Dean and she has an intimate understanding of what its like to live in the Dean’s house and deal with the politics of the University. She is a lot older, has been a part of academics for a lot longer, and is inherently more familiar with how to go about being the Dean than Obama is. Maybe a few more years of experience will give Obama what he needs to win the experience battle. (Of course, you could go back through this paragraph and simply replace the word “academics” with “politics” and “University” with country.)

The reason I have chosen to throw out this mock battle for Dean is because I think people are forgetting what it means to be hired for a job. People have chosen to ignore Clinton’s experience as a politician and as a former first lady in favor of hope and change - two ideals that would get any applicant laughed out of an interview. It seems that Americans want to elect what makes them feel good (Obama) or someone who is good to look at (Kennedy) or someone who promises change (Bush). Actually, the way in which American’s dote on politicians teeters on something vaguely reminiscent to sexual harassment. Why don’t we just slap Obama on the ass and say, keep up the hope inspiring words? Essentially, Obama is catering to every whim of the American people. We. We. We. We can change. We can make the government better. We can make the U.S. what it was supposed to be. All Obama is doing is feeding the American people what they want to hear. He’s certainly not more qualified to run the country than Clinton is. If you want to feel hopeful go read the Bible or the Quran or any other number of religious texts. If you want to hire someone to perform a job, stick to what’s rational and realistic. Hire someone who knows what they’re doing and knows how to do it. Give Obama some time to get some more experience so I can vote for him in another 8 years - could you? Would you?

Furthermore, the Clinton’s have been beaten up by journalists for years. The media has poked every possible hole it could think of poking into Hillary Clinton. There’s nothing left to talk about. What could McCain possibly throw in Clinton’s face? 10 years of controversy that’s all ready been discussed and hashed out in the media? Obama, on the other hand, is like a time bomb waiting to explode. Its just a matter of time before another Reverend Wright situation rears its ugly head. We don’t know enough about Obama. This is a fact that was repeatedly discussed during CNN’s coverage of Clinton’s primary win in Pennsylvania yesterday. According to Leslie Sanchez, “The problem for Obama was that his negative-related searches [on the internet]—searches of terms “Rev. Wright” and “bitter,” for instance – outnumbered all searches for Clinton by a margin of 7 to 1. While folks followed the rumor mill with Obama, even searching his name with Brad Pitt after reports surfaced they may be related, Clinton searchers predominantly focused on policy-related matters like “health care” and “economy.’” (http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/23/web-searches-may-hint-at-late-decider-votes/) Is this surprising? No. No. And no. The media is going to keep digging for facts about Obama. This is only the beginning. Why not let him go back to his Senate seat for a few more years and let the media dig into his background there?

Its just absolutely ridiculous to me that so many Americans are so eager to hire someone for a job when that person has almost no experience and has not been battle tested. Hillary’s resume proves she can deal with the chaos of the Presidency. All Obama’s resume says is HOPE AND CHANGE. Yes, you can hope that Obama knows what he’s doing and that he doesn’t have anymore skeletons lurking in his closet. Or you can change the Presidency by voting for Clinton. Are you an idealist or a pragmatist? Because this is the difference between an Obama presidency and a Clinton presidency. Vote with your mind, not with your heart. In the words of my Father, “You can wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up faster.”