Experience doesn't equal effectiveness

Experience counts? How about judgment?

Sen. John McCain's chief political adviser, Randy Scheunemann, and his company received over $250,000 this year alone lobbying for and providing advice to the Republic of Georgia. This is the same Georgia that in the middle of peace negotiations with South Ossetia Aug. 7 attacked South Ossetia, thereby inviting Russia to respond and crush their country and its military, killing thousands.

So how good and effective was the advice given by McCain's chief political adviser to Georgia on its relationship with Russia? What does this say about the value of experience from decades inside Washington's beltway? Should we be accepting the explanation from the McCain inner circle that it is better this happened in Tbilisi, Georgia, than Atlanta?

Not incidentally, in 2002 Scheunemann served as executive director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. We really should be focusing on the judgment of our presidential candidates and their close advisers, not "experience." After all, Dick Cheney has been in Washington for nearly four decades and hasn't he served us well?

Arthur P. Malm

Elgin