Campaigns show candidates’ executive skills

Herman Gordon, Las Vegas

Monday, Sept. 8, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

We keep hearing about the lack of executive experience of our two presidential candidates who come from legislative backgrounds. We hear a lot of false stories during the political season — and this is another one.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama conceived and mounted a movement that thrust them to the top of the heap among dozens of other Republicans, Democrats and independents who had such dreams. This meant they exercised enormous executive abilities to sustain and nourish their campaign organizations.

They had to demonstrate the usual executive abilities such as strategizing short- and long-term goals, choosing assistants, approving organizational structures, worrying about budgets, obtaining revenue, overseeing hundreds of thousands of employees and volunteers, conducting hundreds of meetings requiring decision-making and assuming responsibility and accountability for nearly everything associated with their campaigns.

These two succeeded while executives such as Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney couldn’t even get much traction in their campaigns. I don’t think it’s Obama’s and McCain’s executive abilities you have to worry about. That’s a phony story. Stick to the issues when you look for a president.

And, incidentally, most “experienced” executives, such as a mayor or a governor or a corporate official, take over a going organization. These two candidates had the added burden of organizing from scratch.