by Quin Hillyer
Discuss the choice of the next U.S. president these days, and you hear one criterion regularly repeated: An “executive” background, people say, is crucial. A governor, or a business chairman, or a general, is better than a legislator, apparently by virtue of being blessed with executive fairy dust. Indeed, incredibly short stints in some executive positions – governor of Alaska or New Jersey, for example – is now seen as being more important than are broad-based experience and many years of legislative accomplishments.
History, however, offers little support for this theory.
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