1. The weapon of experience: when the past serves as a resume and a shield
There are candidates who present programs, others who present ideas. Luís Marques Mendes presented “experience” — and with the air of someone handing over a sacred document.
According to him, it is the supreme criterion, the seal of quality, the passport to Belém. After all, who better than someone who has been through everything, including power, to guide us? The answer, however, is simple: almost everyone.
“Political experience”, in Marques Mendes’s mouth, has become a kind of portable argument of authority — a concept so elastic that it fits into any debate. It serves everything: justifying the past, disqualifying the present and avoiding talking about the future. It’s the political equivalent of the phrase “trust me, I know what I’m doing”, said by those who have already done it and ran… more or less.
The trick is old: when vision is lacking, experience is invoked; when there is no direction, memory is invoked. It’s the veteran’s charm — the same one that ensures the ship is safe… seconds before hitting the rock.
2. The Admiral and the Analyst: a duel of worlds
Henrique Gouveia e Melo’s entry into the presidential race ruined the former commentator’s perfect choreography.
Suddenly, someone with a real CV appeared — not in party assemblies or ministerial backrooms, but at sea, on missions, in real life.
And that, in Portuguese politics, is almost provocation. The admiral doesn’t come from the school of briefingsdoes not speak with polls in his head or measure airtime. It talks about duty, country, mission.
And this is where Marques Mendes’ “argument from experience” begins to reveal its fragility: his experience belongs to those who comment, not those who command.
While Gouveia e Melo spoke about leadership in crisis, Mendes explained to him — with the air of an expert — that “he lacks political sensitivity”. Translation: he lacks the practice of saying one thing and doing another with a smile.
Because, in the veteran politician’s dictionary, “sensitivity” means tact so as not to displease anyone, and “experience” means knowing how to survive in the same chair for thirty years.
3. Experience as a disguise for repetition
For decades, Marques Mendes has assured us that politics is art and science — and that he masters both. But your speech about “experience” increasingly sounds like an archive product.
It’s as if the country was watching a Sunday repeat of an old episode, only now in prime election time. The problem is that, when experience becomes a campaign argument, it stops being wisdom and becomes self-protection.
It’s the old illusion of experience: time spent in power is confused with competence to exercise it. If that were the case, the results of the last fifty years would be textbook.
But, as we all know — and as even statistics are tired of repeating — the last fifty years have not exactly been a political success. Perhaps experience has taught us many things… except how to govern effectively. And yet, it is used as a trophy.
Mendes presents himself as the man who “knows how the system works” — which, let’s face it, is an elegant way of saying that he never managed to change it.
4. Fear of renewal: when youth is treated as a threat
Experience, in this discourse, plays a clear role: preventing renewal. It’s the favorite argument of those who fear change but don’t want to appear against progress. “We have to have people with experience!”, they say — with the same conviction with which one would say “we have to continue to be us!”.
Marques Mendes, the eternal analyst, embodies this nostalgia for lived and relived power.
In his narrative, Gouveia e Melo is “a military man without political game”, a “man without parliamentary practice”.
In free translation: it is dangerous because it is new, because it owes nothing to anyone, because it does not speak to the lexicon of the runners. And that is precisely why many Portuguese listen to him.
The argument from experience, after all, is the argument against hope. It serves to tell the country that it has already tried everything and that, therefore, it must conform.
But a country that only trusts those who have already failed is not prudent — it is resigned.
5. Comment addiction and the illusion of authority
Even when campaigning, Mendes cannot resist his role as commentator. He speaks about his opponent with the paternalistic tone of someone evaluating an intern. “He’s authoritarian,” he says, with that smile of someone who confuses leadership with rudeness.
And the country watches, divided between irony and nostalgia, this duel between the man with the microphone and the man on the deck.
The truth is that political experience is a type of authority that only works as long as no one does it better. And when someone like Gouveia e Melo appears — who talks less, promises little, but conveys security — the trick is exposed.
Studio politics seem small compared to the authority of the sea. After all, the commentator’s experience is knowing how to explain why something failed. The admiral’s job is to make sure he doesn’t fail. And they are very different experiences — although the first one speaks much more.
6. Experience and its limits
In a world of constant change, political experience alone is not enough. Neither poison nor panacea: it is just one criterion among others, useful if accompanied by vision and character, useless if used as a substitute for both.
Marques Mendes speaks as if experience were synonymous with stability. But there is stability that is just stagnation with a tie. His campaign, supported by this veteran superiority, sounds like class defense: the old guard of commentary against the threat of the new protagonism.
Meanwhile, Gouveia e Melo talks about the future. And the future, by definition, does not fit into the archives of experience.
7. Conclusion: the argument and the mirror
In the end, the “argument from experience” reveals itself to be a mirror of Mendes himself: polished, rehearsed, full of reflections, but without depth.
It is an attempt to convince the country that only those who have already made mistakes are prepared not to make mistakes again — a logic that, if applied to aviation, would leave airports empty.
In politics, experience is useful when it lights the way; it becomes a trap when it only protects those who have been traveling it for too long. Marques Mendes uses her as a shield — and in doing so, he exposes himself. Because true experience is not knowing what happened, but knowing when it’s time to leave the scene.
And perhaps, deep down, that is the real argument: the experience of knowing when experience is no longer enough.