A Trivial Question About Presidential Candidates

I was talking with a friend a few days ago about the upcoming 2012 Presidential election. As we talked about candidates, my friends list of potential candidates was interesting to me, and one thing stuck out to me: none of the names on the list were people currently serving in Washington DC. As I pointed that out to my friend, the response was, "Exactly".

We discussed this for a while. It was pointed out to me that those in Washington just serve as members of the "peanut gallery". I realized that Obama came from the Senate, and while he was able to criticize President Bush from his then (and current) role as national Commentator-In-Chief, he was never a leader before and that has hindered him from being effective as Marxist-In-Chief.

So, does it help someone like Newt Gingrich who served in Congress, then left Congress to run for President later? What about Herman Cain, a man who has actually run businesses, created jobs, achieved profits and balanced a real budget? What about Governors like Time Pawlenty, Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie?

I'm interested in hearing what you think about this. Should our nominee be from outside of the Congress? What about names like Jim DeMint or Paul Ryan? I used the word "trivial" in the title of this post, I did that because I want a serious national discussion and dialogue about the real questions of our time. If the 2012 election turns into a non-sensical popularity contest, that gets us nowhere.