We know that Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are stressing their strong executive backgrounds in their presidential campaigns. But I have a column in USA Today about how the executive factor might play out in the Democratic race. Specifically: Does serving as first lady count as executive experience?

We know that voters like governors — chief executives — when choosing presidents; Govs. Bush, Clinton, Reagan and Carter could tell you that. The problem for Democrats is that only one candidate in the race today, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, has that experience, and he’s a long shot. Besides him, there’s not an executive in the bunch, unless you count Dennis Kucinich’s time as mayor of Cleveland.
But the front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton, has a card to trump her colleagues: eight years in the White House. And when she says, as she did at a rally recently, “I have the experience to get this country back on the right track,” she’s not referring just, or even mostly, to her Senate experience. If she were, she would have scarcely more case to make for herself then Barack Obama or John Edwards.
No, what she is saying is: I’ve been in the White House, I know the job, I’ve got the right executive stuff…