This exchange speaks about executive experience, which almost all successful candidates for president possess, with the notable exceptions of James Madison, John Quincy Adams, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy. As you can see, three of our most successful presidents lacked this attribute, as does the current Democratic ticket of Obama/Biden. However, of those, the only president/VP ticket with both candidates lacking executive experience was Buchanan/Breckinridge. (Even Lyndon Johnson was head for a time of a large agency, the National Youth Administration.) But all this is meaningless in this exchange between David Frum and Eric Hosemann. Neither seems to know the definition of executive experience, and hence, this post is of little value beyond what Beth Wellington hit upon in her review on the differences between Republicans and Conservatives. (The difference between those two GOP camps is as great as the gap between Labor-Democrats and Social Progressives.) While Frum and Hosemann debate the elitism well, they seem clueless when discussing executive experience. It's not a Humanities/ English/ Liberal Arts concept associated with leadership; it's a business term. It means, among other things, did you hold one of the top two positions in a large government or business office, agency or organization? It also means did you have to deal with a budget, human resources, organizational charts, departments of employees, purchasing, accountants, inspectors, policies, legislative bodies, courts, etc.? Democrats may not like it, and the media certainly do not know how to portray it, but Sarah Palin and George W. Bush have more executive experience than either Barack Obama or Joe Biden (both senators who rely on Congressional Research Service to draft their legislation). John McCain relies on that office, too, because he is a senator who showed his lack of executive experience when he admitted to the Wall Street Journal editorial board that he didn't understand economics (see link below). This is why I have warned NewsTrust viewers about Biden as a poor VP choice in comparison to Bill Richardson who would have been better equipped to deal with Sarah Palin; conversely, had Richardson been chosen, the GOP probably would have selected another VP candidate--a fact still uninvestigated by the news media on what process, exactly, did the GOP use in naming the VP? My theory is the party had several acceptable candidates, did research on who would best appeal in contrast to the Democratic selection, and simply waited until Obama chose his running mate for the simple fact that the Democratic National Convention was scheduled first.