The experience factor

Rudolph Giuliani cut crime and welfare dependency by more than 50 percent in New York City, and then performed astonishingly well on Sept. 11. John McCain has taken the leadership role on all manner of issues in the Senate and has gotten results. Mitt Romney made millions as an investor, rescued the Utah Olympics and pushed a universal healthcare program through in Massachusetts.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has experience working and achieving results in the White House. Al Gore made serious contributions to governance in Congress and in the White House. Obama's resume includes one executive position: He directed Illinois Project Vote! in 1992. Two, if you count his presidency of the Harvard Law Review. He's been a law professor at the University of Chicago since 1993 and served in the Illinois Senate from 1996 to 2004, when he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Imagine a race between Rudy Giuliani and Barack Obama. Giuliani has centrist positions on some issues, while Obama has a voting record well on the left in the Senate. Giuliani has some interesting and novel things to say about issues; Obama can surely make good arguments for his stands, but they don't seem likely to be very interesting -- certainly not as interesting as, say, Bill Clinton's discussion of issues in 1992. And Giuliani can argue that he knows how to handle crises and how to get results from massive bureaucracies and uniformed forces.

Obama can say that he has that ability, too, and perhaps he does. But we have no way of knowing for sure. Obama has the ability to be a strong candidate. But it's not clear, perhaps not even to himself, whether he has the capacity to be a strong and effective president.