Why Experience Matters

Back in December, when he was still a viable candidate, I saw Rudy Giuliani speak. His appearance covered many topics however his answers regarding taxes and spending will be ones I will remember for the long haul.

Rudy made a very fascinating point about the issue of taxes, and it is a point that one could only gather after the wisdom of experience. He said that when he decided the issue of taxes he always compared New York's tax rate on any particular tax to that of other large cities. He believes that the optimum tax is one that placed New York in the middle when compared to other cities. He made this point in the context of the corporate tax. He pointed out that the corporate tax rate in America is one of the highest in the world. He said that he wanted to cut it to just under 30% which would put it in the middle of the civilized world. He believed that if your tax rate was at the bottom, the city or country was leaving tax revenue on the proverbial table. On the other hand, if your tax rate was at the top that made your city or country uncompetitive.

On spending, Rudy said that being fiscally responsible came down to leadership. He said that in all his years of being mayor he never once had a department head produce a budget in which their particular budget was cut. Every department head wanted to make sure that their department maximized their budget. All of these were fine folks and of course they were his own appointees. Still, it isn't as though the head cop is going to produce a budget that cuts the budget of the police force. The same is true for the head of education and every other department. As such, in order to be fiscally responsible, it takes a leader willing to say no. It takes a leader that looks at all the budgets and figures out which ones need cutting.

These answers weren't just sensible and logical. They were also the answers of an individual that had the benefit of wisdom that came from experience. The reason that Rudy held such simple and logical ideas is because that is what worked in his eight years as mayor of New York. It's remarkable that in all of Barack Obama's speeches you'll never hear such simple logic. You'll hear all sorts of platitudes and broad and sweeping ideas. You won't hear anything that allows him to take those ideas and apply them to the real world. That's because he has no experience in the real world. The sort of wisdom that Rudy Giuliani has attained comes from the experience that Rudy Giuliani has attained. It is the sort of experience that is vital before becoming leader of the free world. It is the sort of experience that Barack Obama sorely lacks.