[MRM]

A lot has been written on this lately. The concensus of historians seems to be that there is no experience that prepares you for being president and whether the person becomes a successful president depends on his (or her) personal qualities. Unfortunately, those personal qualities are intangible and are impossible to quantify in advance. We can make educated guesses, but in the end, it seems that our gut reactions to the candidates is as good of a predictor of success as anything. The reason for that might be because a campaign does reflect the candidate on some level and the campaign noise does offer some intuitive insight into what that candidate's administration would be like.

In my opinion, executive governmental experience is the most relevant to being president, but there is no real comparison to being president, so even that doesnt mean much.

Setting aside ideology for a minute and judging just on capabilities, what I think I see about Hillary is a petty, vindictive person who would pursue a liberal adgenda while rewarding her friends and punishing her enemies and saying F you to the rest. Kind of like LBJ or Nixon. I don't think she would get much done because she would offend enough people that her oponents would band together against her just to spite her. Kind of like they did to Nixon and LBJ. I see both McCain and Obama as much more reasonable in their approaches, and would probably be far more successful. Being president requires building concesus, rallying public support, pushing when you have to, gaining their support when you don't have to. Very much like Reagan did. I can see both McCain and Obama doing that. I suspect that either one would be quite successful as president, albiet with completely different agendas.