It was a little surprising last week to see Fox News’ Laura Ingraham criticize Vice President Kamala Harris for having “no experience.” There are credible lines of attack against the California Democrat, but this isn’t one of them.
After all, Harris has a lengthy record of public service that spans decades, which includes stints as a prosecutor, a state attorney general, a U.S. senator and most recently nearly four years as the nation’s vice president. For voters concerned about experience, this is a bar the Democrat has easily cleared.
In contrast, when Donald Trump was sworn into office in January 2017, the Republican was quite literally the least experienced president in the nation’s history. Indeed, Trump was the only American president to take office despite having no record of public service — at any time, at any level, in any capacity. By any fair measure, the television personality–turned–politician reached the White House despite knowing very little about the presidency or even how the federal government worked.
But now that both major parties’ 2024 tickets are complete, we can also compare the Democratic and Republican running mates by their years of experience.
Sen. JD Vance, for example, is the least experienced vice-presidential nominee for either party in nearly nine decades. The Ohio Republican did serve in the Marines for four years, but in terms of elected office, Vance has run one race — in which he badly underperformed in a red state — and arrived on Capitol Hill last year. The 40-year-old lawmaker has never passed a bill or helped lead a committee as either a chair or a ranking member.
Trump and Vance combined have roughly five and a half years of governing experience.
And then there’s Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz:
- served more than two decades in the Army National Guard, and his service included overseas deployments;
- served 12 years in Congress, which included a stint as the ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee;
- and is currently in his second term as governor of Minnesota after having been re-elected with relative ease in 2022.
If we widen the aperture a bit as to what should be included as part of a record of public service, it’s also worth emphasizing that Walz was a public high school social studies teacher and football coach.
Or put another way, Trump picked one of the least experienced running mates in American history, and Harris picked one of the most experienced running mates in American history.
