Doing any job well requires experience or, at the very least, familiarity with the rules by which the position operates both by itself and as it interacts with subordinates, superiors, and equals. If I came into work having forgotten how the Daily does the news, with no ability to talk to columnists, editors, graphic designers or photographers, this page would look awful — if there was anything on it at all.

The same goes for politics and political office. But even though experience is essential, some of the Republican candidates for president this year have campaigned hard on their statuses (real or perceived) as a political outsider.

Part of my caucus experience included listening to a Michele Bachmann supporter explain that his support for her was founded partly on the fact that, in speaking with her, she doesn’t seem like a politician. Another part was listening to a Rick Perry supporter make Perry’s case for removing politicians from Washington, D.C.

While I believe that term limits are important, as I explained in a column published back in October, I also believe that any voters’ faith placed in the “outsider” of a political race is misplaced.

Politicians need to be effective. They need to be effective at working together and at making sure other politicians understand their ideas. They need, as the Newt Gingrich supporter at my caucus stated, to know what they’re doing and go through the give and take, negotiation and bargaining process to get things done. Effectiveness is a requirement for being a good politician.

To each system there are rules. That goes for political institutions and offices just as much as it goes for church, family, and school. And the sooner the members of a system embrace its rules, the sooner they can turn that system to their own uses — even if it was originally hostile.

One of the hats I wore in 2009 was as a legislative assistant to a member of the Iowa House of Representatives. That April, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in the case Varnum v. Brien that marriage licenses could not be denied on the basis that both parties were of the same sex. Basically, it made same-sex marriage legal in Iowa — not the law, mind you, but legal.

The Republicans in the legislature immediately set to work trying to override that decision by passing a constitutional amendment that contained the act the Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional. Essentially, the 1998 Defense of Marriage Act was supposed to become a part of Iowa’s Constitution. They were unsuccessful.

Simply put, the Speaker of the House knew the rules better than any of the Republicans involved with the amendment. The representative I worked for, Christopher Rants, the most knowledgeable Republican and perhaps member of the House regarding the rules (and in my opinion, lots more) was not initially included in the effort. After a leadership struggle a few months before, he was removed from his position as minority leader even though he was a former majority leader and speaker of the house.

Then the Republicans realized they needed him. Acknowledging the fact that debate and their own, more limited, familiarity with the rules would get them next to nowhere, his rivals buried their hatchets and turned to him for advice. And he rose to the occasion. Using the rules, he eventually forced a vote not on the amendment but at least on whether to open debate on the amendment. Iowans could now tell, in a fashion, where their legislators stood on the issue of same-sex marriage in Iowa.

By incorporating a kind of jujitsu into our lives that accepts the system we have to deal with and turns that system in on itself, we can change it. It is far better to participate and interact than it is to exclude yourself or boycott the world and hope that it notices your absence. We can make the world a better place only if we act upon it, not outside it.

And that applies to everything from these opinion pages to your wildest dreams.