Inquirer editorial: How Trump would mark a stark departure from history

Donald Trump's show-business approach to campaigning and thinly veiled appeals to bigotry have captured public and media attention, but neither tactic is entirely new to presidential politics. Even his weird hair isn't without its forerunners. (We're looking at you, Jackson and Van Buren.) What is truly unprecedented about the man who accepted the Republican presidential nomination Thursday is his lack of obviously relevant experience.

If elected, the real estate developer, reality-television star, and onetime gambling mogul would be the first president in U.S. history with no experience in public office. A Republican National Convention that focused on what America might do "again" has thereby asked the country to do what it has never done before. Americans have elected sitting and former senators, governors, vice presidents, congressmen, cabinet members, and generals to the nation's highest office. But we've never elected none of the above.

In fact, few novices have come this close. Eight years ago, future Trump stalwart Rudy Giuliani called future POTUS Barack Obama "the least experienced candidate for president of the United States in at least the last 100 years." Given Obama's four years in the U.S. Senate and eight years in the Illinois Senate, it's difficult to know what Giuliani meant. But by one undeniably pertinent measure, public service, Trump really is the least experienced candidate for president to have made it this far in 75 years.

The last major-party nominee with no government experience, in 1940, was utility executive Wendell Willkie, who like Trump emerged from a fractured GOP. He had unsuccessfully opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt's Tennessee Valley Authority, which made him a prominent figure in a major public policy debate, before he unsuccessfully opposed the Democratic president's bid for a third term.

In accusing Hillary Clinton of seeking Obama's figurative third term, the Republicans gathered in Cleveland this week sought to turn her experience against her. They might be on to something: Recent trends don't necessarily favor Clinton's comparatively extensive political background as a former senator and secretary of state (as well as first lady). The last two presidents, Obama and George W. Bush, defeated opponents with longer political resumés.

While detractors like Giuliani cast aspersions on the substance of their service, Obama and Bush were nevertheless among the vast majority of presidents - 39 of 44 - who took office with some experience as an elected official. Of the other five, three - Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ulysses S. Grant, and Zachary Taylor - were distinguished generals. The remaining two, William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover, had served as cabinet secretaries.

In an election year that has been anomalous in many respects, especially on the Republican side, Trump's inexperience portends a particularly stark departure from American history. It's no wonder this convention betrayed remarkable division and disorganization - or that a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found 58 percent of voters deem Trump unqualified for the presidency.

Indeed, Trump's resumé wouldn't make the short pile if presidents were hired in the conventional way. But as this Republican convention demonstrated, they aren't.