"Experience Alone Teaches Nothing"

I was amused by the recent attempts by Hillary Clinton to tout her experience and denigrate the capabilities of her opponents, specifically Barack Obama.

What is the depth and value of her experience? Her 7 years in the Senate pale with the experience of Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, and are only 4 years more than Obama has served.

What did she accomplish as First Lady? She took a lot of trips, but her significant project, health care reform, failed miserably.

In general, what is the value of experience? Dr. W. Edwards Deming observed that, "Experience alone teaches nothing". Learning requires having a theory (or set of assumptions), testing the theory, comparing the actual results with the expected results, and taking appropriate action. Was your theory (or set of assumptions) useful in predicting what happened?

One of the scary things about George Bush's refusal to admit he's made some mistakes is that, if he has not learned from his mistakes, he may repeat them.

When Hillary Clinton refuses to acknowledge that her vote to authorize Bush to take military action against Iraq was a mistake, a valid question is what, if anything, she really learned from the Iraq fiasco (other than that Bush seemingly misled the Senate about his real intent).

It seems to me that the life experiences of John Edwards (in helping the poor and disadvantaged) and Barack Obama (who spent some of his early years in Indonesia and has an enlarged world view as a result) have shaped their lives and given them experience useful to a US President and "Leader of the Free World".