David Brooks is one of my favorite New York Times columnists.  As a moderate and an intellectual, I think he’s able to rise above a large amount of the petty arguments that are so commonplace on op-ed pages.

In today’s column, Brooks elaborates on the issue of “Why Experience Matters.”  The news peg for the article is fairly obvious, but experience has been a huge topic for debate this election cycle.  First, we saw John McCain and Hillary Clinton tout experience’s virtues, leaving the inexperienced (at the time, it was only Obama) to defend themselves as “change agents.”  Since McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his runningmate, however, we’ve seen an about face–those once gushing over experience (McCain) are now proposing change, and those dismissing experience (Obama) are taking another look.

Toward the end of his well-constructed argument, Brooks writes:

Experienced leaders can certainly blunder if their minds have rigidified (see: Rumsfeld, Donald), but the records of leaders without long experience and prudence is not good. As George Will pointed out, the founders used the word “experience” 91 times in the Federalist Papers. Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared.

But time will tell which of these issues, if at all, will determine the outcome of this election. For more David Brooks, I encourage you to visit “The Conversation” at the New York Times Web site. There, he debates with fellow columnist Gail Collins.