i don't want aides

My response to my preceptors response to my question on Clark's lack of policy-making experience:
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First of all, I think there are several dems who can beat Bush, namely Lieberman, Clark, Edwards and Kerry. So I'm not looking to Clark as the electable candidate. I want to know that he's going to be a good President.

You write: "We could elect my cat as a Democrat and I wouldn't worry about domestic policy. It's what Democrats do. And, if I do say so, we're usually pretty darn good at it. Foreign policy, however, is an area where we need to be able to present experience and knowledge." You seem to be hinting that Clark is the only one with foreign policy experience and knowledge. First of all, that's wrong. Lieberman, Edwards and Kerry all have extensive (Well i'm not sure you can put extensive and Edwards in the same sentence for anything) experience in foreign policy. Edwards is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kerry is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Lieberman is on the Armed Services Committee. Furthermore Lieberman has been heavily involved in foreign policy throughout his time in the Senate and it is obvious that it is among his main interests.

Secondly, while Clark does have foreign policy knowledge, he has no foreign policy-making experience. Commanding NATO or being a general in the US Army is not foreign policy making, it is foreign policy executing. He would do what the President and his superiors told him to do. He didn't get to decide (ok, I'm sure he got to decide some stuff, but not the meat of the policy, he got to decide how it was implemented, not its contents). So I'm not convinced that Clark knows how to make policy.

But you write: "he'll bring with him a staff of Democratic policy experts." Of course he would. So do Presidents with policy-making experience. But staff is not a substitute for a President. It's a complement. I have good ideas. So do you. So why not elect one of us President? We'll bring along the usual Democratic staff and be fine in office right? Probably not. I don't know exactly how Washington works (you probably do, so you got points up on me). And it ain't easy for Dems there right now. We don't have Congress (nor would I place much money on us having Congress in November), so it's not like a Democratic president is just going to guide his ideas into law. And if Clark's a New Dem, like it seems he's been hinting - a good thing in my book - he's not going to have an easy time with Dems in Congress either. You have to know how the place works. How to deal with politicians. How to work with Congress and K-street, etc. These are the challenges a Democratic president will face and Clark has only a little more experience than me and probably less experience than you in the DC political world. So I'm not comforted by the "strong staff" argument.