By comparison, his opponent looked like a hick from the sticks. He'd governed, but little else. His security experience consisted of calling out the National Guard.

And yet, during an autumn debate, Bill Clinton successfully finessed the experience imbalance with these remarks: "Experience counts, but it's not everything. . . . We need a new approach. . . . The same old experience is not relevant. . . . [Mine] is rooted in the real lives of real people."

Today, of course, the Clintons are arguing precisely the opposite, dismissing Barack Obama as wet behind the ears, and working overtime to inflate Hillary Rodham Clinton's experience credentials - to the point where she falsely claims to have dodged sniper fire in Bosnia, falsely claims that she was "instrumental" in bringing peace to Northern Ireland (Lord Trimble, who shared a Nobel Peace Prize for his peacemaking role, scoffs that "being a cheerleader is slightly different from being a principal player"), and falsely claims that she "helped create" the federal children's health insurance program ("demonstrably not the case," says John McDonough, a health-care official present at the creation).

Bill Clinton actually had it right the first time. One reason Obama still stands tall in this race, despite an ostensibly thin resume (three years in the U.S. Senate, eight years in the Illinois Senate), is that Americans don't reflexively care whether a candidate has worked at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. And that's lucky for him, because Obama as senator has enacted almost nothing, and at times he has reportedly annoyed Democratic colleagues by trying to claim some of the credit for bills they authored.

Most voters don't care about that parliamentary stuff. They're not automatically impressed by a candidate who has piled up decades of service on the federal dime; if that were true, Bill Richardson or Joe Biden or Chris Dodd would have made it to the finals in Pennsylvania, because those guys have roughly 90 years of service combined.

Hillary Clinton, not long ago, uttered one of the dumbest lines of the campaign. At issue was which candidate would be ready to tackle a crisis on Day One. She said of John McCain: "He will put forth his lifetime of experience, I will put forth my lifetime of experience, Sen. Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002." Never mind the fact that Clinton, by sticking up for McCain at Obama's expense, was essentially writing advertising copy for the GOP. Dumbest of all was her implication that a "lifetime of experience," primarily in the corridors of Washington, is synonymous with Day One readiness.

Voters have repeatedly ruled otherwise. Ronald Reagan was elected after serving only eight years in Sacramento and 30 years in Hollywood. Woodrow Wilson, a future war leader, was elected after just two years as governor of New Jersey, preceded by 22 years as a Princeton academic; the New York Times editorial page sniffed that he had "little political experience [and] came into statesmanship out of other highly intellectual callings." Franklin D. Roosevelt, a future war leader, had served in Washington only as an assistant Navy secretary; years later, as a presidential candidate, he was derided by the influential columnist Walter Lippmann as "a highly impressionable person without a firm grasp of public affairs" and "a pleasant man . . . without any important qualifications for office."

But 1860 is the classic case. On paper, Abraham Lincoln should have been routed. Aside from two undistinguished years in Congress, his entire career had been in Illinois, sometimes legislating and sometimes lawyering. Yet he defeated Stephen A. Douglas, despite the latter's "lifetime of experience" that included 13 years in the U.S. Senate, four years in the House, one stint in the Illinois state legislature, and another as an associate justice on the Illinois Supreme Court.

The inexperienced Lincoln may not have been ready on Day One to bind the fracturing nation's wounds, but the historians say he was in full command by Year Three.

Lincoln, by the way, had to mop up the mess left by his predecessor, James Buchanan (Pennsylvania's only contribution to the presidency). Buchanan spent his term dithering while the nation fell apart. He did this despite his three decades of experience as senator, congressman, diplomat and state legislator. And speaking of dithering, that's how we also remember Herbert Hoover today: He sat idle during the Great Depression despite his sterling resume, which included eight laudatory years in Washington as U.S. secretary of commerce, a powerful job in those days.

The voters are wise to all this; they know that sometimes the seasoned players strike out and that sometimes the rookies step up. That's why the '08 lineup is still a bit of a mystery. Take McCain, for instance. He knows a lot about foreign policy - he's been in Washington for 27 years - and before that he literally suffered for his country. On the other hand, despite Hillary's plug for his "lifetime of experience," twice in recent weeks he has publicly confused the Sunnis and the Shiites (correcting himself the second time), and he is advised by some of the same neoconservatives who pushed for war in Iraq.

The bottom line is this: Nobody has ever come up with consensus experience criteria or found meaningful correlations between resume and performance. Even the detail-oriented Alexander Hamilton kept it vague; in the Federalist Papers, he wrote only that candidates should be "preeminent for ability and virtue," a thumbnail guide that invites subjective assessments of judgment and character, maturity and temperament.

Hillary Clinton's problem, which has only deepened her woes, is that she has oversold the experience factor. Far from being "the face of the [Bill Clinton] administration" in foreign policy, as one top surrogate called her, she did not hold a security clearance, or attend National Security Council meetings, or read the daily intelligence briefings, or participate in the crises in Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, and Afghanistan. Instead of trumping Obama on experience, she has undercut herself on credibility, a key component of the Hamiltonian "virtue" standard.

Her mistakes don't, however, automatically validate Obama. If he's the nominee, he'll face withering scrutiny on whether he is "preeminent for ability," and somebody will surely point out that Abe Lincoln, the Illinois outsider, never had to run a $15 trillion economy or command a global nuclear superpower. But it's all subjective, because ultimately there is no preparation for that job, no experience that guarantees success. Electing Obama, or either of his rivals, would be a leap in the dark. But so what? We've been leaping for 220 years.