Ask Ben: Experience

John Baxter, Downingtown, Pennsylvania asks:

You do not have experience in any of the areas that the other candidates may be bringing with them. For example: International Relations; National Security; the Economy; and administering a large governmental body. How would you make up for your shortcomings in those areas? We already have an inexperienced President, do we need another?

Dr. Ben Carson:

Okay, interestingly enough, experience comes from a variety of different areas. There’re a lot of people who’ve been bullied, almost, into thinking that the only place valid experience can come from is the political arena. I think that that is categorically false and, in fact, if you look at the political experience of everyone in Congress today, it comes out to just under 9,000 years. Where has that great experience gotten us?

I, on the other hand, have had a career of solving extremely complex medical problems and in many cases things that no one’s ever done before. I’ve had decades of experience in corporate America, learning how to make things work, not only in this country, but in other countries, and I’ve put together, along with my wife, a national scholarship program. Nine out of ten, you know, programs of that type fail. Ours not only has not failed; it’s won multiple national awards that are only given to one organization each year in the country. That tells you how successful it is.

So, the point being that experience can come from a variety of different areas and what is truly important is passion and common sense and the ability to solve problems. The reason that America went from zero to the pinnacle of the world in record time is not because we were overflowing with experienced politicians, but rather because we were overflowing with people who believed in personal responsibility, hard work, and compassion for others.

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