GREAT MOMENTS IN TRADITIONAL-MEDIA FACT-CHECKING

Matt Bai in today's New York Times Magazine:

...At a time when the nation looks for a leader to meet profound challenges to its decades-long dominance as an economic and military power, the five candidates who lead in state and national polls -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney -- have won a grand total of five statewide elections in their cumulative political careers and have served a combined 20 years in statewide office....

This dynamic would seem, at least at this very early stage of the campaign, to presage a significant break with the past. Through the long decades that saw the rise and fall of American industry and the cold war, serious contenders for the presidency could generally boast of distinguished careers in statewide or federal office....

Obama, who leads the field in financial contributions, would set a new precedent for inexperience in the White House; he was a state senator only three years ago, when he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic convention, and before that he was a community organizer....

Er, Dwight Eisenhower?

I don't mean to disparage his pre-presidential career, obviously, but if we're talking about lack of experience in electoral politics among recent presidential candidates, it's literally impossible to surpass Ike.

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Beyond that, Bai invokes the trendy explanation -- we're favoring inexperienced candidates because of that nasty old Internet and its "cult of the amateur." Bai completely ignores the GOP's pet project of the pre-Web era, the term-limits movement, with its lofty praise of "citizen legislators" and expressions of contempt for "career politicians." That's how we got such bright lights as Senator Dr. Bill Frist, and that's how we came somewhat close to having President Ross Perot.

Oh, and Bai cites Ronald Reagan as a recent president with a "distinguished career" of some length in electoral politics, overlooking the fact that quite a few Republicans wanted Ronnie to be the GOP presidential nominee in 1968, barely four years after his last movie came out. Computers still used punch cards back then.