I think Governor Palin’s candidacy as VP has made it harder for me to explain how I feel about some of the candidates. Obama excited me, in part because he was fairly new. Palin excites me a bit, but also concerns me, in part, because she is fairly new. I didn’t like Biden because he wasn’t exciting, just old and boring, but I almost prefer Biden to Palin, even though Palin is more exciting, because Biden is old and boring. If you’re confused, so am I.

A lot of it comes down to my view of “experience.” I think of it as a continuum. At one end there’s “unacceptably unexperienced,” someone who we would all agree shouldn’t be running for office. But the opposite end of the spectrum isn’t, “Wonderful and experience,” it’s old and crusty. As years ago by, you get more and more experience. But at some point, you cease to become better because of the experience, but start to lose sight of the big picture, of the ability to change things, and of the fact that you’re there to represent your constituent’s interests. (And relax: I’m not going to assert that McCain or Palin are either of these.)

I also believe experience isn’t measured in years, but in what you’ve learned. There are people who work years and years at something and are only ever become mediocre. And then there are people who, in two week’s time, are extremely good at what they do. Time figures in there somewhere, but I don’t think it’s the key variable.

So, using various metaphors (and, at times, similes), here’s my attempt to explain some of my feelings about the candidates. (These are, of course, my opinions, based on my own political convictions and biases, as opposed to universal facts.)

Way back when he first announced his candidacy, Obama really excited me. I was worried because he was fairly new to the scene, but his short track record looked good. More importantly, though, he had lots of shiny new features. As I investigated candidates, I came to like him more and more. Let’s call him the Firefox of candidates: fairly new, but very effective and ripe with improved ways of doing things. I didn’t know what to make of Firefox at first, as it was pretty new, but my displeasure with the incumbent web browser (whether it was IE or Netscape, actually) led me to explore the alternatives. And I found that, while I worried about it being fairly new and not having been “in the wild” as long as Internet Explorer*, I soon realized that this was actually one of the great things about Firefox: it came with improved ways of doing things, and was much more effective at doing them than the stale and crusty solution it replaced. While the IE team spent their days releasing bug fixes and security patches, the Firefox team sat back and thought about what they could do to make Firefox even better. (Alright, apologies if I went overboard with this example.)

Obama got me to see that “new and young” doesn’t necessarily mean “inexperienced.” And he brought lots of excitement and new ideas. So when he announced Biden, I was kind of disappointed, and kind of shocked. Biden didn’t have the “new and improved” badge, didn’t come slickly-packaged, and frankly, just wasn’t interesting.

Shifting away (temporarily) from comparing candidates to web browsers, I’d say that Joe Biden is a 1997 Toyota Camry. It’s got 100,000 miles, doesn’t look great, and really has nothing “exciting” going for it. It still has a cassette player instead of a CD player. You have to use a crank to put down the windows. And if you asked about remote keyless entry or a navigation system, you’d just be laughed at. It’s plain and full. But at the same time, it’s very reliable, has lots of life left in it, and has never let you down. You don’t look forward to getting to drive your 1997 Toyota Camry, but when you go for a ride in it, you know that you’re going to get there without problems. It’s spent the last decade faithfully doing what you bought it to do, and you’ve never had any problems with it.

So then McCain shook things up with Palin. And at first, she really wowed me. She brought the excitement that Biden so utterly lacks. If Biden is a 1997 Camry, she’s an exotic concept car. It’s a very intriguing car, with some neat twists. And as for looks, while Firefox might be slick and attractive, the concept bar is in a league of its own. And much like Firefox, it comes with all sorts of neat-sounding features.

But most concept cars rarely come to fruition, or at least not for a long time, probably taking about 8 years before it’s actually ready. (Okay, that last bit was a pretty transparent joke.) They’re exciting, innovative, slick, and capture everyone’s attention. But at the end of the day, cars are meant to be driven. It’s neat to go see the concept car and what it has to offer, but you need to drive to work in the morning. The ’97 Camry has gotten you there safely every day. The concept car has only been driven on a test track and some back roads near the company headquarters a couple times. When you hear rumors that the car has some major safety problems and the media goes to get a statement from the manufacturer, they give a shifty answer and accuse the media of being on a conspiracy against them.

If I’m going to talk about cars, I’m going to talk all about the concept car. But when I’ve got to be at work in the morning, I’ll take the Camry, even though it’s plain.

I suppose there are a few problems with this post. (Not counting the fact that I’m a big fan of Obama and Firefox and probably didn’t hide it…) For one, Obama is Firefox and Palin is a concept car, which doesn’t leave room for a logical comparison. But that leads into the second problem, which is that this post is comparing VPs, not Presidents. VPs are important, for sure, but it’s kind of like choosing an operating system based on its web browser. But I think that the Presidential race is more obvious: the media’s having a field day with VPs because the Presidential candidates were turning into tired news. (And besides, if I were to do one of these on the Presidents, I might end up pitting Windows ME (after running for weeks on a cable modem with no anti-virus or firewall) against Snow Leopard. And that would be unfair. Because Snow Leopard isn’t out yet.)

* It really has nothing to do with my series of metaphors and analogies, but I should note that my displeasure with Internet Explorer stems from the days of yore, and that I was a devoted Firefox user by the time IE6 + SP2 was released. This apparently brought a huge improvement, and IE7 brought a ground-up rewrite (or so it seems), so that most of what caused me to gleefully abandon Internet Explorer has since been fixed. But it’s like going out to dinner, finding half of a dead rat in your meal, getting a refund, taking your business elsewhere, and then having the first restaurant be bought out and start serving good food: even though the problem has been resolved, you’re happy as you are, and not in any rush to go back.