During the past year we’ve heard a lot about “experience” necessary “to be ready” for the White House. Initially, it was (the late) Hillary Clinton who said her broad experience as First Lady qualified her over Barack Obama, her Democrat opponent, and his limited experience as a social organizer and short-time state legislator.

Then it was John McCain’s charge that Obama lacked “executive” experience, which McCain had gained not as an elected executive of a governmental body, but as a navy squadron commander. The most significant experiences of the three are largely identical, i.e., in the U.S. senate. But in Obama’s first term in the Senate, McCain suggested, he had little experience in foreign relations. So, Obama added to his ticket one who had — yet another senator with no executive experience (and a couple of years as a part-time lawyer). Last week McCain changed the mix by adding to his ticket one with limited executive, but no legislative experience. Obama responded by saying the Republicans offer a grossly inexperienced individual who would be “within a heart beat” (a heavily worked adverb) of the presidency.

So, where does all this boasting of experience and charges of inexperience leave voters? Where it leaves isn’t the valid question, which should be where we start in our thinking.

Predictability of readiness for public office comes less from what positions have been held and how long and more from what one has accomplished in whatever positions — and then how much the person has grown in wisdom and skills from the opportunities. Actual accomplishment is a better predictor than mere “experience.”

The trainer of a management course I took some years ago asserted there are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who don’t know what happened. In the White House, I want the team best described by the first.

Having been reviewed and interviewed by several pulpit search committees, I was usually suspicious of the soundness of their thinking. (Most suspicious, perhaps, are those that extended a call to me.) Then I sat on one, and my suspicions were confirmed. After individually reviewing a pile of resumes and ranking them by interest, the other members agreed on the top three or four, but these were on the bottom of my priority list. Others had ranked high those with the greatest “experience,” i.e., number of positions over the greatest number of years. I asked them, first, to account for the unaccounted-for periods between positions (ranging from eighteen months to five years), I asked why no one had called them during all these times. Then I suggested reducing “the years of experience” to those actually spent in positions and then divide by the number of positions to determine the average tenure. Not only did those who had so impressed with quantity of experience suffer many years of non-employment, but each position they held was short-lived. There is, they finally agreed, good experience and bad experience.

What counts in pubic service as well as this is not quantity but quality of experience. We don’t need — and can’t afford — officials burdened by bad experience. This includes not just corruption or abuse or even incompetence; we ought to reject those who have  been no worse than non-productive.

The pair we must elect is the one whose past and current accomplishments predict presidential achievement. This is our opportunity in tomorrow’s primary election and in the November general election.

Whether this is Obama-Biden or McCain-Palin, I’ll report here within four years.

Right now, this is your responsibility to recognize and to act upon.