The Republican primary electorate seems distinctly uninterested in those who have experience in Washington

Jim Geraghty asks at National Review,

Why the Continuing Love Affair with Neophyte Candidates?

Bill Clinton ran in 1992 on a pledge to cut taxes on the middle class, then broke that promise once elected. In 2000, George W. Bush ran on a “humble” foreign policy. Barack Obama debuted on the national stage pledging to overcome the partisan divide, proclaiming, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.” (By 2012, Obama was running ads declaring Mitt Romney “isn’t one of us.”)

In other words, the candidate you see on the campaign trail is not necessarily the kind of president you get in office.

The Republican primary electorate seems distinctly uninterested in those who have experience in Washington; the perception seems to be that if you’ve been here as more than a tourist, you’re part of the problem. I can think of a wide range of conservatives on Capitol Hill who would bristle at the charge -- Trey Gowdy, Mick Mulvaney, Tim Scott, Jeff Sessions, Pat Toomey, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson. The idea that Ted Cruz is some sort of clubby Washington insider just because he works there doesn’t pass the laugh test. Bobby Jindal spent two terms in the U.S. House but is running on his Louisiana record, and he can’t seem to get a second look.

The philosophy with Donald Trump seems to be, “If you know the attitude, you know what the man will do in office.” Perhaps that’s indeed the case; Trump is not a man who ignores slights or insults, who is driven to exploit every point of leverage in negotiations, and relishes rhetorical and legal combat. Considering how frequently Vladimir Putin gives this administration wedgies, that sounds pretty appealing. Trump seems to know that failing to build a wall as promised would not just get him tossed out after one term; it would do irreparable damage to his reputation as the man who gets things done.

But in his September interview with Hugh Hewitt, Trump indicated he didn’t know the major players in the Middle East and didn’t feel any need to learn them, as they would probably change by the time he took the oath of office, and that he would catch up with his intelligence briefings after he’s elected. “First day in office, or before then, right at the day after the election, I’ll know more about it than you will ever know.” (That lack of interest is not reassuring, unless you hold the minority view that additional knowledge leads to worse decision-making.)

Do we know what we’re getting if the candidate hasn’t yet sorted out what he thinks?

Trump said he doesn’t care whether Ukraine enters NATO. Maybe it doesn’t matter to him, or to a majority of GOP primary voters. But under Article Five of the NATO treaty, we’re obligated to come to the aid of any attacked NATO ally, and Russian-affiliated forces are fighting in Ukraine right now. So the consequences of Ukraine and whether it someday joins NATO are indeed really big for America, whether or not Trump or GOP primary voters care to pay attention.

The philosophy with Dr. Ben Carson seems to be, “If you know the biography, you know what the man will do in office.” Carson has the most impressive life story of any of the candidates, and maybe a life well-lived is indeed the best preparation for the Oval Office. There is still time -- although not too much time -- to figure out the difference between the debt limit and the budget, or which countries are in NATO. But again, because he doesn’t have that long time in office, with lots of votes on a variety of issues, or a long list of decisions reached as governor, we don’t know exactly how Carson would come down on a whole host of issues -- and when we do, we rely on his statements, not a record. This applies to Carly Fiorina as well.

Maybe our personal connection with a candidate indeed matters most. But the GOP’s love affair with neophyte presidential candidates echoes the national gamble of 2007–08, betting the future of the country on a man running on the generic themes of “hope,” “change,” and “yes, we can,” a candidate who described himself as a “blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” That bout of national hysteria is precisely how our system is NOT supposed to work. There isn’t supposed to be much mystery to our presidents. We’re supposed to know who and what we’re getting.

From the Cuban Missile Crisis to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first job of the president was to prevent Armageddon. If you look at the men who won their parties’ nominations during that period -- Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan -- you don’t see a lot of young, untested political neophytes. (Carter and Michael Dukakis probably come closest.) You see a lot of political and military veterans, older men who had seen war and knew its consequences. Men who had long voting records, and whose views on just about every major issue under the sun were known and recorded. You didn’t gamble on a presidential selection during the Cold War. America needed a leader who the people could trust to keep a cool head in a crisis, who could deal with reports of troop movements near the Fulda Gap without panicking, overreacting, or inviting something worse by under-reacting.

The yearning for a celebrity president, a buddy president, an entertaining president was hard to keep down, though. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and within three years, Bill Clinton was playing the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show.