Not nothing

At the recently concluded Republican National Convention, Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, in his speech and on cable news shows, that Senator Obama doesn't have executive experience ... that he has "never led anything."

One leadership experience touted in many contexts, but not - so far as I've seen - in response to the Mayor's sneering charge, is Senator Obama's service as the President of the Harvard Law Review - a post to which he was elected from among a group of 19 contenders. (The New York Times actually carried a story about his election at that time.)

I didn't attend Harvard Law School. I don't know firsthand what executive chops one gets serving as the Harvard Law Review's President (or, to use the more common designation, editor-in-chief). However, having served as an Articles Editor for the Northwestern University Law Review, I know that such an executive leadership post is not nothing.

Should Mayor Giuliani have known better? It would seem so ... he was, after all, a staff editor on the New York University Law Review for Volumes 42 (1967) and 43 (1968). (I just checked, and his name is listed in the front matter of both volumes.)

Do I expect the Obama Campaign folk to mention it? No. We wouldn't want to remind people that Senator Obama went to Harvard Law School. And besides, his law review service pales in comparison to heading an 18-month old national campaign organization that has raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars creating an electoral infrastructure robust enough to defeat the seemingly inevitable Clinton Restoration.

Comments

[anon]

I've led my family when we go for our Sunday walk. I've led my debate team. I was class president in 9th grade. All executive experience, if you ask me.