On the strict comparison, Cruz has more leadership experience than Obama had at the beginning of his presidential campaign. Over five and a half years as solicitor general, Cruz led a large agency with hundreds of lawyers. Obama never ran an equally complex organization.
But that’s not the operative issue when executive experience is the question. The practical question is whether he has the kind of skills the Republican governors he’s competing against use every day and which most closely approximate the ones a president needs.
The reason this matters is that previous competency gives us some indication about whether a politician can back up the promises he makes with results. That was the critique George W. Bush leveled against John McCain in the 2000 race. The Arizona senator called himself a “reformer” and Bush retorted that as Texas governor he was a “reformer with
results.”The distinction matters particularly when you promise an agenda as sweeping as Cruz does.
The skills governors need include the ability to read the political landscape, pick priorities, build consensus among friends and foes, and convey their will to others.
Cruz has no problem with setting priorities. He knows what he wants to do. What he hasn’t demonstrated is any significant achievement as a political leader that compares with his opponents. John Podhoretz
put it bluntly in the
New York Post: “
Ted Cruz’s challenge: The other guys have done things.”
A key requirement for a president is building relationships and mobilizing the bureaucracy. In these two areas Cruz has shown the opposite of proficiency. His Senate colleagues would agree that he’s no community organizer. He is known more for the disorder he creates in his community. In fact, that’s what he’s running on: his stalwart opposition to the temporizing and capitulating GOP lawmakers in Washington. In the Senate, he has created more enemies than friends. This thrills his supporters, but it is not a recipe for governing. Cruz is good at winning a debate, but those talents haven’t translated to winning over the minds of his colleagues who didn’t already agree with him before he started. Their chief complaint is that while he may have focus, he is incapable of striving for anything besides symbolic goals. Governors can’t afford to do that kind of thing. In the same way that a governorship or presidency isn’t the same as a boardroom, it’s also not the same as a courtroom.