John McCain’s imminent GOP nomination and the near-certain choice of Barack Obama by the Democrats to run in this year’s presidential election could have been predicted, a U-M researcher says.
A new study by D. Scott DeRue of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business and Jennifer Nahrgang of Michigan State University shows that the number of years of political experience doesn’t matter much when it comes to getting nominated.
“Given the emphasis being put on experience in the current political campaign season, this bodes well for Obama, whose years of political experience don’t quite measure up to those of Hillary Clinton’s,” says DeRue, assistant professor of management and organizations.
As for McCain, experience does matter, but it’s his military experience and not necessarily his political resume, the researchers say.
While there has been a spate of recent debate about how much political experience matters in garnering a presidential nomination, much of it is based on anecdotal evidence or on scientific research conducted in nonpolitical environments or that looks only at the number of years of experience — not the type or quality of that experience.
DeRue and Nahrgang address these limitations by examining different forms and types of experience and the extent to which they predict who gets nominated as the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.
Using data from the career resumes of the top four candidates from each political party in every presidential campaign from 1948-2004, the researchers examined educational, work, political and military experience.
Education included college and professional degrees, Ivy League affiliations and Rhodes scholarships. Work experience included whether they were lawyers, judges or doctors and the number of years and senior leadership roles in the private/business and public/nonprofit sectors.
Political experience included whether they were members of a political family and length of service as a U.S. or state senate or house member, legislative leadership roles and committee memberships, as well as if they served as vice president, governor, lieutenant governor or in the executive branch cabinet. Military experience included number of years served, wartime service, branch of military and military awards won.
DeRue and Nahrgang found that the amount of prior political experience has no impact on the likelihood of nomination. This also holds true for educational and private sector/business experience.
Military experience, however, has a positive impact on the likelihood of nomination, especially if a candidate served in the Navy or during a war, as did McCain.
If one previously served as vice president of the United States, the likelihood of nomination increases and, like McCain, the more times a person runs for the nomination, the more likely he or she will eventually win the nomination.
On the negative side, if a person previously held a senior leadership position in a public sector/nonprofit organization, his or her chances of getting the nomination decreases.
In previous studies conducted in the private sector, they found that high-quality experiences — high levels of responsibility, managing change, working across organizational boundaries and managing highly diverse groups — are better predictors of individual job performance than total number of years of experience.
