Even if Marco Rubio can somehow come back from his awful debate moment on Saturday night, it’s doubtful that any of us will ever forget him getting caught in a feedback loop about whether President Obama knows what he’s doing. Indeed, the agony of that meltdown that has halted his momentum, and may have changed the dynamic of the race, has overshadowed any discussion about the point that he was trying to make. But before we bury Rubio or jump to conclusions about what will happen tomorrow in New Hampshire (about which the pollsters are probably even more clueless than they normally are), it’s worthwhile pondering the question about which he was so certain.

It is actually a topic about which the president’s opponents have always had a somewhat schizophrenic attitude.

On the one hand, Republicans bashed candidate Barack Obama relentlessly in 2008 as a man with a thin resume who was unqualified for the presidency. They speak of how he has mismanaged the government, created boondoggles in health care, and made frequent, tragic mistakes in foreign policy. But there has also always been a competing narrative about Obama on the right that has viewed him as a political mastermind who has foisted a left-wing wing agenda on the country, ruthlessly trashing the Constitution while also shredding traditional alliances in pursuit of misguided goals, such as détente with Iran. On foreign policy, some on the right go even further and speak of him as a secret Muslim or radical associate of the Muslim Brotherhood.

To the extent that these ideas veer into the territory of conspiracy theories, they may be dismissed, as they should be, as the product of the fever swamps of American politics rather than a serious discussion. But, whether you are sympathizing with Rubio or engaging in some schadenfreude about his rote repetition of a talking point, the subject is one that actually needs to be understood if Republicans are to think clearly about how to compete with Democrats or to undo the damage they think the president has done.

That’s why a sober analysis of this question forces us to realize that it is possible that both critiques — ideas and experience — are correct.

Let’s start by acknowledging that the point that Chris Christie and others have made about the importance of experience in government is a good one. President Obama had never run anything before becoming commander-in-chief and his lack of interest in governance issues or the nuts and bolts of how the federal leviathan works shows. The president’s blithe indifference to such details accentuated the inability of the stimulus to create a viable recovery and the incompetence of the ObamaCare rollout. His instinct is to dictate to subordinates and to ignore advice also made it harder for him to work with Congressional Democrats, let alone compromise with opponents in the cause of getting things done.

It can also be argued that his foreign policy blunders — even those, like his indecision over Syria or the nuclear deal with Iran, that he perversely calls triumphs — were in part the product of his inability to understand the nature of America’s geopolitical foes such as Russia and Iran. While it may be easier for some to put his poor negotiating skills down to a conspiracy to undermine U.S. interests or to advance those of bad actors, the more simple answer here is, as is usually the case is, the more persuasive one. Throughout the last 50 years of American history dating back to the debate over Vietnam, opponents of bad policy have always found it hard to accept the notion that seemingly very smart people can do dumb things. But that is often the case, and the Obama team is no exception.

But even if we are prepared to accept that Obama’s inexperience contributed to the failures of his policies, Rubio is right that there is more to it than that.

President Obama is the most liberal president in decades, and his single-minded pursuit of some policies is the function of his ideological obsessions more than it is the result of his inexperience. The president didn’t seek and gain a narrow partisan majority for his signature health care legislation solely because he didn’t know how to compromise but because he wasn’t interested in consensus. The same is true for his foolish pursuit of friendship with America’s geopolitical rivals and decisions to undermine alliances such as his rigid belief in achieving more daylight between the U.S. and Israel.

In that sense, the president has very much known what he was doing. If the president has helped transform America and U.S. foreign policy to make it more closely resemble his liberal vision, it has not been an accident but by design.

Rubio’s line about Obama knowing what he was doing is correct in as so far it concerns his determined campaign to get what he wants on health care, the environment and a host of other domestic issues as well on foreign policy. In 2016, the United States government is bigger and more intrusive and less accountable thanks to Obama’s obsessions and his belief in making end runs around Congress. At the same time, it would be foolish to think that a lot of the problems in Washington were not made worse by the president’s inexperience and lack of comfort with the business of operating with a divided and complex government.

It’s mistake to judge a candidate solely on a resume. Being a governor, even a highly intelligent one, isn’t a guarantee of success as Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson both proved. As Rubio likes to say, the president’s “ideas” are the main problem. But a more polished leader with experience might have left his successor less of a mess.

In our current age of hyper-partisanship, it is probably a given that any president will be assailed as both incompetent and a mastermind of evil policy by his critics. We saw a similar dynamic with leftist critiques of President George W. Bush. He was assailed as an incompetent moron while at the same time also being attacked, either in person or via the proxy demon of Vice President Dick Cheney, as part of a nefarious scheme to subvert America to the interests of the oil industry or some vague neoconservative plot to take over the world.

Republicans would do well to avoid succumbing to such irrational and unproductive arguments. But while governing experience should not be treated as a negligible consideration, neither should conservatives dismiss the power of ideas in shaping a society. Obama has in that sense known what he was doing. No matter who the Republicans nominate, that’s a lesson from the past eight years they ignore at their peril.