In my recent article on the Republican presidential candidates' positions on amnesty, one commenter remarked that he liked Scott Walker better than Ted Cruz because Walker has managerial experience.  I have heard this argument a lot – that someone with executive experience is best suited to be president – and I can't really agree.

Jimmy Carter had executive experience as governor of Georgia.  He gave away the Panama Canal and gave Iran to the ayatollahs (I am not exaggerating – by not supporting the shah, he effectively gave Iran to the ayatollahs).  George W. Bush was governor of Texas, but he radically expanded the size of domestic government programs and created the notorious TARP program and the super-costly Medicare drug plan benefit.  Now, Ronald Reagan was a governor too, and he didn't do all these terrible things, but my point is that the quality of a president is not dependent on whether he's governed before.

When Barack Obama gets up in the morning, he doesn't check to see if the FAA airport controllers have shown up for work.  He doesn't call the Labor Department to see if the payroll checks have been cut.  He doesn't check on the progress of the thousands of transportation projects around the country.  What does Barack Obama do?  He gets up late, plays a few rounds of golf, and then whips out his pen and his phone, and makes policy, sometimes within the bounds of authorized law, and sometimes not.

For although the Executive Branch is technically charged with managing millions of employees, it is actually the cabinet-level officers and those beneath them who do the managing.  It is the president's job to supervise them, but in practice, as I've said, most of what he does is make policy.

That's why I prefer a presidential candidate who has no executive experience but opposes amnesty, like, hypothetically, Ted Cruz, to a presidential candidate like, hypothetically, Scott Walker, who has executive experience but has repeatedly come out in support of amnesty.

All things being equal, of course, it is better to have managerial experience in a presidential candidate.  And it is even better if you have one who is telegenic: a candidate who has good hair, an absence of Mitch McConnell-style jowls, someone who doesn't drink so much that he falls down and break bones in his face, and someone who doesn't always seem to have deep suntans 365 days a year (without naming names).  But the most important thing is to have a president with a good governing philosophy and a willingness to fight.

Pedro Gonzales is the senior managing executive of Newsmachete.com, the conservative news site.