[mehwoot]

Obama was a community organiser in 1985, 22 years before the presidental election. He had already made political speeches in college previous to that (where he majored in political science). After that he was a civil rights attorney, and his first elected position was to the Illinois senate in 1996, 8 years before he was elected to the United States Senate.

That is 100% traditional career politician in almost every way, it's just he was good enough to do it faster than most people.

[StevePerkins]

From state legislator to launching an (ultimately successful!) Presidential campaign in a year-and-a-half? We'll have to agree to disagree.

Either way, if anything in U.S. politics is non-controversial... it should be the observation that three Presidential cycles in a row have been won by upstarts, whose credentials are strikingly out of place alongside their peers of the past century. That's not arguing equivalence, but ignoring all commonality is absurd.

Maybe it's attributable to being "good", or "lucky", or "racist", or some other factors of sheer coincidence. Or maybe it's a symptom of fundamental social or media shift, and signifies a new norm.

[CalChris]

George W Bush was not an upstart by any definition of the word. To be sure, he had no particular claim to talent but then his father had been President and his grandfather had been Senator.

[StevePerkins]

He's also outside the range that I just said.

As old as this might make one feel, George W. Bush's last victory was four election cycles ago.

[eropple]

And he'd been a governor.

[CalChris]

FWIW Texas is a weak governor system. Pretty much the only thing the governor does is throw the switch during executions which W did with abandon.

The Roman Republic had a concept, the New Man. W was not a New Man nor was his father. Neither were upstarts.