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ATOMThe recent selection of Governor Sarah Palin as Senator McCain’s running mate in his bid for the Presidency brought immediate criticism that she has no foreign policy experience, and therefore would not be well able to assume the Presidency if McCain died in office. The implicit assumption is that substantial foreign policy experience is a requirement to be President, and that therefore anyone without that experience is not qualified. Let’s go with that assumption for a moment.
What is the probability that McCain will die in office, causing Palin to assume the Presidency? That’s difficult to calculate. A person’s life expectancy overall depends upon how long they have lived so far. Your chances of living to be 100 are much better if you are already 99 than if you are 34.
I went to a web site that claims to predict a person’s life expectancy. 1 The site asks forty health and lifestyle questions. I answered the questionnaire as if it were Senator McCain providing the answers, as best I could. I don’t know if the Senator eats his veggies and flosses properly, but there is published information about his age, problems with skin cancer and cholesterol, and the age of his mother. I assume that he gets very good health care. The results will not be as accurate as they would be with the best data, but the results should be in the ball park. Since the site is ultimately pushing health stuff, I assume they are not in the business of overestimating life expectancy.
The result was that Senator McCain can expect to live to be 98. Expectancy means that half of people with the supplied characteristics will live to be older. That makes the probability that he would live out his term in office quite high. I recently found someone on the net would went through a similar exercise using a different life expectancy calculator and his own set of data for McCain. He came up with a life expectancy of 97. 2
The job of being President carries with it an assassination risk that isn’t in the ordinary calculations. Historically, that has been high — more than ten percent. However, with current Secret Service protection, it is lower than in the days when Lincoln would ride his horse across Washington unaccompanied. We need a number, so lets say that the chances of McCain dying in office are 4%, with most of the risk due to assassination.
Therefore, the probability that his VP, who does not have foreign policy qualifications, assumes office is 4%. On Obama’s side, the candidate himself does not have foreign policy experience, but his VP does. Obama is young and healthy, so his risk of death is mainly in assassination, which turned out to be McCain’s main risk. Let’s assume that Obama’s chance of not surviving a term is 3%. If that is the case. If Obama is elected, the probability of having a President without foreign policy experience is 97%.
Now let us go back to the assumption that foreign policy experience it a critical factor in the Presidency. Of recent presidents, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and G.W. Bush had no significant foreign policy experience. If the claim is that such experience is extremely important, than you must claim that those presidents as a group were significantly worse overall than Nixon, Ford, and G.H.W. Bush as a group. I think few would make that judgment. No doubt foreign policy errors can be critical, and it is therefore a significant consideration, but it seems to me that other factors are more important.
Executive experience rates high on my list. Among our current crop of hopefuls, only Governor Palin has the edge in that experience, although McCain was a Naval officer.
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2. Zane_WaltZ, Can John McCain Survive the Presidency? Longevity Calculator Says Yes, April 11, 2008
